Pacific Rim: Uprising movie reivew

Here's what you need to know; it's been a decade since humanity closed the Breach and won the war against the Kaiju, but while some areas of the globe have been propelled forward to a brighter future, vast areas of the Pacific coast are still struggling to recover. The victory also brought with it however a new wave of Jaegers, ranging from tiny one-man rigs built from scrap, to building sized automated drones. But while the contentious drone program ignites debate in the PPDC, a new threat emerges from the depths of the Pacific, one that may herald the return of the Kaiju, and leaves the survival of all life on Earth hanging in the balance.
So Pacific Rim 2 finally got made, and I should be happy about that, so why aren't I? My concern was obvious; Del Toro not directing this sequel was a huge red flag to me, as Pacific Rim could easily have been garbage were it not for his masterful execution, but while he was off making a best picture winner, Pacific Rim 2 looked to be helmed by a first-time director and a studio still craving a taste of that MCU magic. But the important question is is Pacific Rim: Uprising good? Now that's a question.

This film raised my brow right out of the gate, showing footage from the first Pacific Rim in a prologue sequence. I knew this wouldn't bode well for my enjoyment of the film, though I know it's there as a sort of 'previously on' to catch the audience up. I thought it would be like being reminded of that amazing Indian restaurant you went to once before tucking into a cheap takeaway curry, and sadly, as you will learn throughout this review, I was right to think that. Let's start with the characters in the film, not exactly the first film's greatest strength, so it could only get better, right? John Boyega is great as usual, and is very charming as Jake Pentecost, Idris Elba's character from the first film's son. It's good that he's such a likable guy, as he gets all the screen time, which isn't all that untrue, it's about 70%, I do prefer him as a hero to Charlie Hunnam's Becket, but that's no doubt down to John Boyega's coolness rather than any kind of improvement in the writing department. But him hogging the screen time kind of leaves the rest of the cast in the shade, and like the first film, most of the supporting cast gets the short end of the stick in terms of character development. This film's Mako is a little girl named Amara, played by acting newcomer Cailee Spaeny, and just like Mako, she has a troubled past with the war and the Kaiju, one that at least explains her motivation for building a Jaeger, though not necessarily her means. Scott Eastwood's Lambert is, in the same vein as Jake, a likable enough character that's lacking in depth, the two have one good scene together, but the film doesn't give him much to do besides being Jake's co-pilot. Mako returns, for five minutes, and is given pretty much nothing to do, and the training Jaeger pilots are given very little development, besides the one who, in a totally untropey way, is adversarial to Amara, there's also a similarly tropey kid who's nice to her. Then there's Newt and Gottlieb, the scientists from the first film, Gottlieb's actually pretty good, and has a great line about having nightmares from when they drifted with a Kaiju. Newt on the other hand; on paper, what they do with him is a smart idea, but in execution, it's bloody weak, the film completely fails to explore any sort of character struggle with him and turns a potentially brilliant plot twist into a contrived joke.

Let's talk about that plot, as like Newt, a lot of what it puts on the table is great on paper, but weak in execution. The drone program for example, an interesting idea, if not exactly a new one, about the threat posed by automation. What's weak about this is that the entire drone program is revealed to be a red herring, and not a good red herring, but a daft one. The plot twist is great on paper, but when it comes to fruition in the film, you're just left asking why, it's contrived. The first film wasn't above this; what with the Precursors actually being dinosaurs, but at least that film never broke its own rules, unlike this sequel. Gone are the days of "the deeper the bond, the better you fight," now any pair of drift compatible pilots can be put in a Jaeger and be completely fine, now the size of the Jaeger is important, and one small enough can be piloted by a single person, so all that neural load stuff is nonsense because you don't even need the drift to interface with a Jaeger. Then the film does some retconing that makes literally no sense in the context of the first film, which already didn't make a lot of sense because again, the Precursors were dinosaurs. The film even tries to replicate the emotional beats of the first film, with a tragic drift flashback similar to Mako's in the first film, and a speech before the big finale, the problem is that Amara's flashback conveys nowhere near the same sense of fear and dread that Mako's did, it wasn't scary like Mako's was, and while I like Boyega in the role, he's nowhere near as good of a speech giver compared to his dad. And to top it all off in a nice little package, the film even has a stinger, because Universal still want their own MCU, apparently. All of these problems could be swept under the rug if the film wasn't so try-hard, if it just existed to be a vehicle for the monster mash, like the first, it would have been easier to forgive the problems, but that need to set up a lore and to build the groundwork for a franchise means the film takes itself too seriously, and that approach doesn't work when it's giant robot men fighting interdimensional Godzilla monsters. The film lacks the sense of levity that the first had, it's not as fun.

Pacific Rim was not above being easily nitpicked, it was a flawed film; like its sequel, its characters were weak and its story was daft and dumb. The strength that Pacific Rim had however was Del Toro, the man, the myth, the Mexican who is a master behind the camera, the film was visually stunning, polished to near perfection, and oozing with style. Guillermo del Toro has yet to make a film that isn't fantastic in my eyes, Steven S. DeKnight on the other hand is someone I've never seen before, as his background is in television, with which I'm not very acquainted. Visually speaking, the film doesn't venture too far from the aesthetic established in the first film, though the effects don't look as good this time around. The problem is that the first film was all style; the film was aware that it was dumb and shallow, and prioritised being fun as hell, which it was. Pacific Rim: Uprising however has a cinematic universe to set up, and so takes its story and characters more seriously, while somehow managing to be even shallower than its predecessor, this is a bad combination, as it makes you question the film more, and thus see its flaws more clearly. Like Pacific Rim, Uprising's greatest strength is in its action; now throwing in some Jaeger on Jaeger before the big Godzilla battle in the climax, but without Guillermo del Toro at the helm, it feels like something is missing. The effects aren't as good, the explosive visual style and crushing brutality of the fights is effectively gone, as silly as it sounds, the film just isn't as magical as the first. The fights themselves are entertaining when they're on, but it's a bit like the two American Godzilla's, where one (2014) is a visual feast in the Godzilla scenes, and the other (1998) is just turn your brain off action in the Godzilla scenes. Pacific Rim had style, Godzilla (2014) had substance, Pacific Rim: Uprising tries to have both, but in fact has neither. And something that just boggles my mind; the music from the first film is barely used, the first film's crazy awesome badass theme that makes all who hear it's testicles quadruple in size is used once in the sequel, and not even in an action sequence, but in a montage of the characters repairing their battered Jaegers, which makes it start to look like they were actually trying to suck the magic out of this franchise.

Pacific Rim: Uprising doesn't improve on the first but does succeed in being inferior in pretty much every way. Charisma alone makes Jake a more likable character than Becket, but the sequel still struggles with weak, poorly developed characters, moreover it still struggles with a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense, only with the added hindrance of trying to be serious and set up a Pacific Rimiverse. The Sequel also has the same strength as the first, but again there is the hindrance of the polish and style of the auteur being noticeably absent without Del Toro behind the camera, the film just isn't as cool. The contrivances of the story are made almost impossible to ignore, and the film squanders any potential that it had with lacklustre execution. It's watchable when shit's going down, but in the end Pacific Rim: Uprising just feels like a knockoff, a lower quality clone of its predecessor, a feeling that I couldn't escape once I was out of the theatre, and still can't. Pacific Rim: Uprising is serviceable, but it could have been and should have been so much more, and I personally wouldn't recommend it.