Oh yeah, I think they were going with the whole “politicians are kinda stupid, they want to control the whole defense program and probably cut costs” thing. The wall idea was very stupid.

They did underutilise many of the jaegers, true. I get that the Kaiju adapted because Newt drifted with a Kaiju brain but it felt like they did that because they realised they couldn’t have a fair fight with that many jaegers active lol.

The Black has a bit of a time skip and has a bit of a time skip where the Kaiju won (I can’t remember why) and people live in private militarized groups with Kaiju running around. It doesn’t have too much to do with the first movie as it was finished as you said.