Pacific Rim: Uprising review

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING:

SATISFIES IN DUMB POPCORN ENTERTAINMENT BUT LACKING THE UNEXPECTED BRILLIANCE THAT MADE THE ORIGINAL UNIQUE!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

The Jaegers are back to face a new enemy in Pacific Rim: Uprising

            The Jaegers are back to battle the Kaiju once again in the sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 hit, Pacific Rim, the movie that gave Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise and Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla movie a run for their money. The film had a unique style of production design, thrilling action that never gets repetitive, a variety of different robots, monsters, and fight scenes, and a spark of intelligence in a dumb action flick.

            Naturally a sequel was inevitable because as we all know major Hollywood movies can never be self-contained anymore, they either have to become a franchise or part of a larger cinematic universe. In comes Pacific Rim: Uprising, with Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water) returning as producer and Steven S. DeKnight making his directorial debut.

            Does this Pacific Rim sequel stand as tall as its predecessor? Is bigger actually better? Well…not exactly, but it’s at least fun. Like its predecessor, Pacific Rim: Uprising is filled with eye-candy, non-stop action, and unique-looking Jaegers and Kaiju monsters to the point where it pretty much plays like a corny toy commercial (And you know what? I’d buy the toys), but it does lack in originality and it doesn’t offer much of the intelligent side that the first movie offered.

            The first movie is silly and consistently over-the-top action, but it was balanced out through its concept of the robots being controlled through the memories and thoughts of its two pilots which determines how strong it is in battle. Besides introduce new robots and monsters to sell toys, Uprising doesn’t really do much new with the story and focuses more on being a dumb popcorn flick.

            Ten years after the war between the Jaegers and Kaiju, the film follows rebellious teenager, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega-Attack the Block, Star Wars franchise, Imperial Dreams), a once-promising Jaeger pilot and the son of war hero, Stacker (Idris Elba’s character from the first movie) who risked his life to save humanity, abandoning his training to become caught in a criminal underworld. However, when a Jaeger mysteriously goes rogue and re-opens the Kaiju portal, and releasing an even bigger enemy, Jake is given one last chance by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi-Babel, The Sky Crawlers, Norwegian Wood), who now controls the Jaeger program, to live up to his father’s legacy and lead a new team of Jaeger pilots to fight the Kaiju and save humanity.

            Jake is joined up by gifted rival pilot, Lambert (Scott Eastwood-Gran Torino, Suicide Squad, The Fate of the Furious) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker, Amara (Newcomer, Cailee Spaeny) as he whips this new team into shape to stop the Kaiju from destroying the world.

            The film also stars Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Horrible Bosses, Vacation) as Dr. Newton “Newt” Geiszler, Burn Gorman (Torchwood, The Dark Knight Rises, Game of Thrones) as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, Jing Tian (Dragon Nest: Warriors’ Down, The Great Wall, Kong: Skull Island) as Liwen Shao, Adria Arjona (The Belko Experiment, Emerald City, Life of the Party) as Jules Reyes, Zhang Jin (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Grandmaster, Ip Man 3) as Marshal Quan, Karan Brar (Diary of a Wimpy Kid trilogy, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Bunk’d) as Suresh, Ivanna Sakhno (The Spy Who Dumped Me) as Vik, Mackenyu (Night’s Tightrope, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable Chapter 1, Peach Girl) as Ryoichi, Zhu Zhu (Cloud Atlas, The Man with the Iron Fists, Tubelight) as Juen, and Nick E. Tarabay (Star Trek Into Darkness, The Veil) as Sonny.

            Overall, Pacific Rim: Uprising is dumb fun and it never tries to be anything more, which could be either a positive or negative depending on your perspective. On one hand the action is exciting and people looking for rock-em, sock-em thrills will get a huge load of it with little slow moments, but on the other hand, as silly as the first film was, Charlie Hunnam and especially Idris Elba stood out as memorable characters and offered a new take on a genre that has been done to death, besides John Boyega and Charlie Day (For reasons you’re probably not expecting) are the only stand-out characters here.

            Outside of playing around with concepts of Kaiju-controlled Jaeger drones (Didn’t Iron Man 2 do something like that?) and the team’s Jaegers that look like they were ripped straight out of the Zords from Power Rangers, the film doesn’t do much new and offers exactly what it advertises, giant robots and monsters fighting each other. But unlike Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, at least Pacific Rim: Uprising isn’t a relentless, chaotic, frenzy that never ends.

            If you know what you’re getting into, Pacific Rim: Uprising is worth a watch, it delivers plenty of flashy visuals, thrilling action sequences, and a colorful collection of Jaegers and Kaiju monsters that make for some entertaining popcorn fun. However, if you’re looking for something more with your robot and monster action, then Uprising may be a disappointment, I don’t think it’s bad but compared to the first movie, there isn’t much to it, take it for what it’s worth.