Watch first footage from 'Pacific Rim Uprising' in new recruitment video

Fire up the Jaegars. The first footage from Pacific Rim Uprising, the long-awaited sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim, has arrived in the form of a recruitment video.

Creator Guillermo del Toro first announced plans for a sequel back in 2014, and after many delays, it is finally slated to premiere on Feb. 23, 2018.

The recruitment video, released Thursday, appears to confirm speculation that the sequel will take place some years after events of the 2013 original. John Boyega is portraying Jake Pentecost, the son of Idris Elba’s character in the first film, Stacker Pentecost. Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman return in their original roles.

The video asks, “What is a Jaegar?” — telling the story of the specialized mobile weapons that were instrumental in the defeat of the Kaiju monsters in the first film.

“When the monsters came, we did not wait for heroes to fall from the sky and save us, we saved ourselves – innovation is our superpower,” says the narrator, as we scan over shots of Jaegar machinery.

John Boyega gets a brief shot, intoning us to “Join the Jaegar uprising.” The footage plays like propaganda material, and it’s difficult to ascertain whether the Jaeger machinery might prove friend or foe in the sequel.

Watch the video above for more.