Honest trailers described the original Pacific Rim as the greatest stupid movie of all time, with weird romantic interests, confusing operating systems, but still entertaining with lots of giant robots fighting giant monsters. It's an opinion that I can't help but agree with. So when heading in to watch the film I was sure to keep my expectations low, with the only goal of seeing giant robots battle giant monsters again. To that end, Pacific Rim Uprising reached that goal.
It does come across very Transformer-y. One would say "but they are both franchises based around giant fighting robots", but it goes much further. The film follows one of the protagonists Amara Namani (played by Cailee Spaeny), who is a young street-wise woman living in a destroyed part of town, working on her own giant robots, before she gets dragged into the plot that the male protagonist is begrudgingly reluctant to be involved in. If that doesn't even slightly resemble the beginning of the latest Transformers (The Last Knight), then you clearly haven't watched that film. Cailee Spaeny even has some physical features that match that of a young Megan Fox.
But the film isn't really about Amara. Pacific Rim Uprising is all about Jake Pentecost and his reluctant search for redemption and forgiveness from his family and peers. As far as plot goes, the reasons that he ends up in control of the flagship jaeger is flimsy, but for the type of movie it is, we allow it. Even the forced tension between John Boyega and Scott Eastwood's characters, thanks to a shared romantic interest, is let go. It's all irrelevant. The only important thing in Pacific Rim Uprising is when and where these giant monsters of Kaiju come in.
And that is the real jewel of the film. The source of the threat came as a surprise, and while looking back there were many hints as to who the real threat was, it was actually well disguised through misdirection and red herrings. It connects the two films and reminds the viewers of those little details that were forgotten from the first movie. The only real downside to it was that until the climax of the film, we have received a rather Kaiju-free experience. "Minor" enemies became too numerous, too easy to kill, and therefore never really created the tension and suspense necessary to keep the viewers properly invested. Even the final boss proved slightly anti-climactic.
I suppose the real issue with the film, is that when in the original film, you have to create giant robots to destroy a surprise enemy, one would expect the robots to be more advanced in the follow-up. More advanced robots fighting better-equipped kaiju. An arms race of sorts. Instead, we are fed a long period of exposition with very similar robots, a series of unfortunate and extremely coincidental events, ending with a hail mary. It was just lacking. The whole plotline around the vastly superior jaeger was not used to full advantage, neither was the plot point that many people were building their own jaegers. I would actually have loved a military vs. militia to come up in the film.
There were definitely some cool and a few holy s*** moments, and it entertained throughout, but I was there to watch epic battles between the Jaegers and Kaiju, and just like in Batman v Superman, there was just not enough of the actual battles in amongst the exposition-fest.
Originally posted on: http://djin.nz/Kr7883