Pacific Rim: Uprising

A sequel to a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. What was expected? Bigger robots fighting bigger monsters. The same thing with little tweaks - as most sequels do. What we got?

A product. A film generated by an AI. I wasn't there, but I assume it went something like this. The first meeting of the creators of this movie follows.

Ok, Google, what do modern kids like?

1. Robots (Transformers) 2. Scary cool monsters 3. Robots fighting monsters 4. Robots fighting robots 5. Memes from 2009 (Trololo sing) really? + memes from 2017 (the salt). 6. Horribly executed kid rebel subplots (Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Hunger games whatever) 7. Action 8. Forced drama? 9. Bad jokes?

Ok, let's take The Independence Day Resurgence's basic plot and fail miserably at everything. Done.

In other words, there is nothing in this movie besides action scenes. The plot lives on its own, there are no characters, and even their substitutes are completely disconnected from the dead plot. Nothing they do matter, it just follows typical cliches until the end. It even gets confusing at some point, but then you see the light at the end of the tunnel. It rushes the ending knowing that by this point nobody cares.

All the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Most of the actors are just having fun knowing that there's no need to get invested into anything here. Sadly, Scott Eastwood's face is stuck in one emotion and is unable to display anything else.

CGI crews did a good job, I guess. Looks fine. There's even one creative action scene involving buildings. Other than that the action is generic, even IMAX can't make it feel better. Maybe it would've been more impressive but the overabundance of CGI city destruction in modern blockbusters seriously lowers the threshold for getting impressed by CGI.

I'd compare this to a long video game cut-scene, but modern games have more character development and creative visuals in their cut-scenes. For instance, pretty much all Blizzard cut-scenes are visual masterpieces.

Final verdict: not entertaining on the big screen and a total waste of time for home viewing.

Of course, adults are incompetent at doing anything to save the world, so the tweens must do it alone. Heard this plot line before? A thousand times? Of course you have. It's not any better this time.

You're not missing anything of substance by skipping this one. Just stick to the original and stay happy.

Will admit to enjoying the first 'Pacific Rim'. It wasn't great or perfect as an overall film, and somewhat of a case of style over substance, but it entertained and did well on delivering on its objectives. The involvement of Guillermo Del Toro and Idris Elba are reasons enough to see the film

Really do wish that the same can be said for its sequel 'Pacific Rim: Uprising'. The trailer was not good and the reviews not great (one of the weaker received films of those released so far this year), but saw it anyway due to liking the first film enough and wanted to see something that was pretty much the same sort of thing quality-wise (and perhaps with improvements). No such luck. 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' turned out to be a dull and soulless sequel and film, and one that comes over as pointless at the end of the day.

Starting with what 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' excelled with, which sadly is not much, much of the cinematography and editing are slickly atmospheric, the production design is gritty and audacious and some of the effects are top-notch.

Some of the action and spectacle is exciting, they're big and over-the-top but appropriately so. John Boyega is a reasonable and charismatic lead and the only actor to come over well.

On the other hand, nowhere near as good a job is done with the direction, nowhere near as in command of or at ease with the material the action, making for a film that tries to be both silly fun and taking itself seriously but fails at both and neither gels. The film doesn't know what it's trying to be, it can be dully paced and target audience is not easy to figure out due to the film's muddled done.

Boyega aside, the acting is very bad, especially from Charlie Day and Burn Gorman who are as irritating as they were before. 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' also has some cringe-worthy, childish and vomit-inducingly inane dialogue and paper thin stereotypical characterisation (enough to tick off the long list of cliches one by one in quick succession) where not much is done to develop the characters and make one properly care for them. There are clumsy and unnecessary references to the first film too and there is too much exposition that really bogs things down.

Although there are instances of them being good, other effects are cartoonish. A lot of the action doesn't work, not very inventive and not always cohesive let alone exhilarating. A big case of a lot of noise and attempted style but not a lot of brains or soul. Worst of all is the story, which is dull, ridiculous, barely coherent and with a cobbled together glued badly feel and a complete lack of emotional investment.

Concluding, a mess apart from a few good things. 3/10 Bethany Cox

I'm not sure there's too many people out there who would call Guillermo Del Toro's 2013 robot/monster infused popcorn event Pacific Rim a classic of any sort but the eye-candy clad and seriously entertaining experience looks like a genuine masterpiece when placed alongside this charmless and trite sequel.

Somehow turning the prospect of giant robots and oversized monsters going at each other in a battle of life and death into an utterly boring and tiresome exercise, Pacific Rim: Uprising is the early death knell to a series that should've been a brand name that became the perfect excuse to turn your brain off and enjoy some big screen spectacle that is home to cheesy one liners, over the top CGI infused carnage and some A-listers hamming it up for good measure.

Taking over directing duties from Del Toro, debut feature film director Steven S. DeKnight brings none of the child like charm or enthusiasm the Mexican auteur brought to the table with his entry as we instead get a lame and tame tale of Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecosts' child Jake (played by a struggling John Boyega) turn from troublemaker to Jager pilot, as the world finds itself once more under threat from the dreaded Kaiju monsters.

The first Pacific Rim had a similarly dumb plot and characters that were more like walking caricatures but there was a sense that everyone involved was having a great time and despite better judgements, you as an audience member did to.

That's completely lost here, there's little fun to be had with the bland and uninteresting action scenes, the main cast are all completely forgettable, while even returning cast members such as Charlie Day's Dr. Newton Geiszler and Burn Gorman's Hermann Gottlieb are more of a tacked on accessory, with Day in particular getting an embarrassing character development that is both lame and totally misguided.

With a pulse-free plot line and thrill-free action there was little chance Uprising ever had at succeeding and there's little mystery as to why this unwanted sequel failed to capture the dollars at the box-office, guaranteeing the Pacific Rim brand is now dead in the water.

Final Say -

Not even the most hardcore of Pacific Rim fans will find much to enjoy in Uprising, an utterly forgettable and disposable new entry into the wannabe franchise that somehow manages to turn it's over the top foundations into a bland, charm-free and tiresome event.

1 child mechanic out of 5

To say that this movie is wrong is to understate it. If I could begin with one positive thing to say about it - it's that the giant robot fights can give Transformers a run for their money. Alas, this is as far as it goes.

Pathetic Rim swipes old characters under the rug, adds the black stormtrooper.... excuse me, getting a deja vu here..., introduces the characters "way" out of proportion(on the Marvel\Transformer level of stupidity, despite this being a damn Del Toro franchise), and barely tries to stay coherent throughout the runtime.

Instead of trying to do what honest sequels "must" do - reconnect with the story and make the viewer feel like they are watching Part Two, Pathetic Rim throws a few expositions, introduces us to an irrelevant situation that has Last Knight written all over it, shows a few scenes that are supposed to be reminiscent of what we've seen in the original. Oh, and, of course, once you see characters randomly reciting the events of the previous movie... you know that the writer has the experience of a first-grader. Not once, not twice, multiple characters will blatantly try to make this movie look like a sequel by laying out that major events of the original.

What is the movie about? Well, let's see... Last time I checked, the Jaeger Program was scrapped. Frankly, for a good reason. And that's before the victory. A few years after - we see numerous Jaegers around the world. Why? As a deterrent? Or to use the resources to build toys instead of rebuilding the damages? Of course, in light of all the Jaegers, there "have" to be places with "decommissioned" Jaegers, just waiting for brave looters to dig in. That's not just Last Knight, this is A Force Awakens rip-off if I ever saw one. But why rip off trash?

Somewhere in that mess of the girl from Last Knight and the ridiculous situation of AFA, we get our black stormtrooper, who is apparently an "already" prodigal son of late Marshall Pentacost - adhering to the nature's call of his race. Seriously. Don't you dare get offended. I am not a director, who put a black protagonist in a position, where he enjoys gangster stuff, looting and thug life. Just pointing it out.

After the aforementioned irrelevant situation - the two protagonists find themselves among the "new generation". Somehow - the whole deal is overseen by China. I understand that they are powerful, but does Europe count for nothing in this world anymore? God forbid they mention Russia, obviously, but, besides the base being located in China, which I could understand, because it's a "Pan Pacific" Defense Force, we also meet a large... that's right... Chinese corporation. And that's not even Last Knight, that's Age of Extinction. I get it, Chinese silicon infrastructure is world-leading, and USA is trying to appeal to them... well, tried to, before Trump... but besides that - they aren't that far ahead. Not in military. Not in machinery. Not in science. Any kind of precision german engineering, at least some Tesla ripoff - fine. But another movie with a large Chinese company building drones? No, thanks.

For a little bit, we are supposed to believe that this corporation is bad, because this is how it goes. Until a rogue Jaeger shows up and tears Gypsy a new one. After that - it's only questions. What was in that Siberian base? Plan B? Why was there only one rogue Jaeger? Why did the antagonist have to be where the plot needed him to be? Why were the Jaegers made out of butter back on the base? Why is the girl suddenly drift-compatible? Why was there the female object for our two protagonists? Why was the head lady suddenly a pilot? And, of course, why was the movie resolved like a deadline? No, not even cliffhanger - deadline. A cliffhanger promises something, this isn't even a promise.

It's not a waste of time, however, it can play ball with Transformers just fine. But it's not Pacific Rim. Del Toro showed us what the genre could do. What Godzilla, Transformers and even others "should" do. In the original, we saw Gypsy Danger smack the kaiju with a freighter, a god damn freighter. That scene alone gave the movie an extra pair. What can Pathetic Rim show us? A plasma cannon that kind of crushes down one skyscapper after another on a kaiju. Even Man of Steel would cringe, and that's saying something.