Pacific Rim Uprising Makes Only Average Size Waves

Oh boy, Pacific Rim Uprising was my first sequel of 2018, and it was definitely a thing. The first Pacific Rim movie was Guillermo del Toro’s love letter to giant mecha anime, and tokusatsu, with his own personal flare. It was by no means a perfect film, but it was fun to watch and I got what I paid for. On top of it being a solid popcorn flick, it was a decent self-contained story, which I feel was del Toro’s vision.

Pacific Rim Uprising directed by Steven S. DeKnight, takes on the daunting task of trying to expand on essentially an open and shut narrative from part one.

Uprising takes place 10 years after the Battle of the Breach. Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), former Pan Pacific Defense Corps officer and son of Kaiju War hero Stacker Pentecost, makes a living by stealing and selling jaeger parts on the black market. When both he and self-taught jaeger engineer Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) are arrested, they get thrown back into the ranks of the PPDC.

Jake and Amari train and for an inevitable kaiju return, but are also threatened by Shao Corporation’s drone program, which offers to mass produce remote controlled jaegers developed by Liwen Shao and Dr. Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day from the first film), combining jaeger technology with cloned kaiju cells.

I really had no expectations going into this one; Pacific Rim was not a movie that I ever expected to get a sequel. Turns out I had fun, but Uprising totally lacked the artistry of the first film and that shows in a variety of ways.

Del Toro is life-long lover of anime, especially shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Mobile Suit Gundam, and he did his best to put that into account with his work. DeKnight put his best foot forward with Uprising and his own love of mecha anime, making nods to Gundam, Mazinger Z, and even tokusatsu shows like Ultraman and Super Sentai, albeit not as nuanced.  He just took the parts that looked cool and made some well-animated fight scenes, there wasn’t a lot of heart to the fights.

Speaking of visuals, most of the jaegers this time around felt much more generic, the only stand out design was Saber Athena, and that’s only because it had a sword and was bright orange. I had to look its name up for this review.

The cast was decent enough, and John Boyega was always fun to watch on screen. I found his cocky demeanor overstaying its welcome at times, but he managed to get a few chuckles out of me. Cailee Spaney was an adorable if not generic little sidekick, but she and Boyega had good chemistry, and I think she has a lot of potential as an actress. Scott Eastwood tried really hard to fill Charlie Hunam’s shoe’s (don’t ask me why…) but he never convinced me, and I feel like he should have tried to make the character of Nate his own.

Jing Tian as Liwen Shao serves as a nice red herring for the movie’s not so subtle plot twist, but once she reveals her true nature, she’s not as interesting. I was happy to see returning cast members Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman, and they performed very well, but none of them were as dynamic as they were in Pacific Rim.

Story structuring was okay, if not predictable and I could honestly forgive that for a giant robot movie, if this was the first entry. You can see character deaths coming a mile away, it relies heavily on common action movie tropes, and aside from the leads you can’t really connect with characters. The Jake Pentecost “I’m not my father” arc got tired real quickly, and relied so heavily upon exposition that it really felt like a moot point.

The soundtrack was fine, and I was ambivalent to the movie’s score.

Uprising’s third act was where all the meat and potatoes really lay — this was the final battle I wanted from part one, and was honestly the only thing I liked better than the original.

Pacific Rim was a passion project by a true otaku and artist, but only a handful of people really loved it in the U.S. Uprising is a nearly two-hour toy commercial. Everything felt like a less irritating version of the first Transformers live action film; style without substance. And as a testament to how processed Uprising is, there was even sequel baiting.

It was okay, just okay.

I give Pacific Rim Uprising (Legendary Entertainment, PG-13, 1hr 51mins) a 3 out of 5.