'Pacific Rim Uprising' trailer has John Boyega ready for war — or the apocalypse

John Boyega keeps finding himself gearing up for apocalyptic warfare.

The “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” star is at the center of the new “Pacific Rim: Uprising” trailer that Legendary Pictures released Friday, leading a new generation of heroes to take the evolved aliens of the futuristic franchise to task.

“We were born into a world at war,” Boyega’s rebellious Jake Pentecost narrates in the teaser.

“Between the monsters who destroyed our cities and the monsters we created to stop them, we thought we had sacrificed enough,” he says. “But the war we thought we finished is just beginning. And the only thing standing in front of the apocalypse is us.”

“Pacific Rim Uprising” is the sequel to Guillermo del Toro's 2013 “Pacific Rim,” which, according to Legendary, was “only a prelude to the all-out assault on humanity” featured in the latest chapter.

(Del Toro’s film, starring Charlie Hunnam and released by Warner Bros. before Legendary was sold to China’s Wanda Group, was considered only a modest success, hauling in $411 million globally at the box office on a production budget approaching $200 million.)

Boyega’s Pentecost, whose father, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), gave his life to secure humanity’s victory against the monstrous Kaiju in the previous film, struggles to live up to his dad’s legacy and abandons his robotic Jaeger pilot training only to get tangled up in the criminal underworld. But with a new threat that promises to end humanity looming yet again, Jake is enlisted by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), to help lead the next generation of pilots, including gifted rival Lambert (Scott Eastwood) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (Cailee Spaeny), against the formidable and cantankerous aliens featured in the trailer.

Del Toro, who penned the original script and has stayed on the project as a producer, turned over directing duties in April 2016  to “Daredevil” and “Spartacus” director Steven S. DeKnight. DeKnight was given a new script written by Jon Spaihts, but that one underwent another rewrite by Derek Connolly a short while later.

The film, which also stars Jing Tian, Burn Gorman, Adria Arjona and Charlie Day, is due in theaters March 23.