#626 – Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

Film review #626

Director: Steven S. DeKnight

SYNOPSIS: Ten years after the war of the Kaijus was won and the rift through which they came was sealed, pilot Jake Pentecost is living in ruined Los Angeles selling giant robot (Jaeger) parts. When he has a run-in with a girl named Amara who has been illegally building her own Jaeger from scrap parts, they are caught and given a chance to make up for their crimes: Jake is to train a new generation of pilots, and Amara is to join as a cadet. Both are put to the test however, as a new threat emerges…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Pacific Rim: Uprising is a 2018 sci-fi film and the sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim. Set ten years after the vents of the first film, in which the rift through which the giant kaiju monsters was sealed, we see the hero of the first film Jake Pentecost living in the ruins of a Beverly Hills luxury home, as he narrates how the intervening ten years have led to people illegally building their own Jaegers (giant robots used to combat the alien kaiju), and an emerging black market for parts to do so. Jake runs into a young girl named Amara Nanami, who is secretly building such a Jaeger, and when the two of them are caught, are offered a deal to keep themselves out of trouble: Jake is brought back to the academy to train new recruits, and Amara joins as one of said recruits. While behind the scenes some suspicious activity with a company wants to use artificial drones to pilot the Jaegers leads to a new threat and the new recruits having to step up to save the world. The story splits itself into two as we follow both the protagonists doing slightly different things: there’s absolutely no surprises here, and everything unfolds more or less how you would expect it to. There’s just this overwhelming feeling that nobody really knew what to do with the story here: just re-opening the rift and fighting kaijus would have been a direct copy of the original and rendered the victory of the first film somewhat meaningless, so it’s good they just didn’t do that. The trouble is that what they did do is to half re-hash the story by returning to newcomers and training a different generation of pilots anyway. The new story regarding the use of drones to artificially pilot Jaegers is somewhat interesting, but is more or less blown away and discarded when the “real” threat emerges. All in all, it just feels directionless.

The story is obviously not what you’re watching this film for I suppose: you want to see giant robots beating giant monsters, and you do get it…eventually. One of the big differences between this film and its predecessor is that the big fights take place during the day, whereas in the original it was all done in the dark and usually rain. This was one of the common critiques of the first film that you couldn’t really see what was happening during the fights, so it’s good that they actually revised that. There was something quite atmospheric about the night time fights, but I can see why they would choose to avoid that criticism entirely this time around. The characters have reasonably good chemistry, such as between Jake and Amara, but the development of their relationship is so predictable, and at the start of every scene between them you can work out how it’s going to end up. The characters from the first film too don’t really get that much development either, and due to the five year gap between films, I couldn’t really remember who any of them were. There’s just little effort to reconnect us to the characters or expand upon them.

Given that Guillermo del Toro stepped away from directing this film as he did the predecessor, it does suffer from his absence (he directed the Shape of Water instead, which won him multiple awards, so a good move on his part at least). The action scenes are decent and entertaining, but don’t really have much flair. The Jaeger and Kaiju designs aren’t memorable or leave an impression, and again, the effects are okay and solid enough, but don’t stand out. Pacific Rim: Uprising fails to build upon its predecessor; stumbling around well-trodden story beats to try and distinguish itself form the original, but just never achieves that aim. Some of the characters have chemistry, but it’s all done in such a cliché manner that you don’t even need to see it; the predictability of all the dialogue is nauseating and feels like a waste of time. The fight scenes are entertaining enough, and are obviously what carry the film, but everything else is directionless and muddled. Overall, a lack of ideas overshadows the film, but like the original it’s an okay action film. Although that said, you’ll probably want to watch the original over this one, as it at least was self-contained and didn’t have the pressure of re-treading old ground like the sequel has to.