Pacific Rim Uprising is A dull monsters/ robots sequel
Loud and obnoxious, Pacific Rim Uprising threatens to bore viewers to death, Chris Knight writes.
PACIFIC RIM UPRISING ★ out of 5
Cast: John Boyega, Cailee Spaeny, Tian Jing, Charlie Day Director: Steven S. DeKnight Duration: 1h51m Loud and obnoxious, 2013’s Pacific Rim is probably the least del Toro-ish film that Guillermo ever directed. But it glimmers like The Shape of Water next to this Kaiju-brained sequel, cowritten and directed by Steven S. DeKnight (no relation to this critic, and I’d deny it even if he were). I’ve had airplane cutlery that wasn’t this dull.
Set 10 years after the events of the first film and featuring only a handful of the original cast, Pacific Rim Uprising, imagines a world where invading monsters (Kaiju), from another dimension have been vanquished by giant fighting machines called Jaegers, but humanity is still girding for war, because who knows if they’ll come back one day?
John Boyega of Star Wars fame plays Jake Pentecost, the son of Idris Elba’s hero from the last movie. He’s determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps, until a brush with the law lands him back in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. There he butts heads with Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood), and ogles Jules Reyes (Adria Arjona), because — well, I’m not sure exactly, except that doing it the other way around might have offended some of this film’s target demographic. He’s also joined by Amara Namani, a scrappy cadet played by the winsome 20-yearold Cailee Spaeny. This is her first feature role but you’ll be seeing more of her, and in better movies. Pacific Rim Uprising might well be her Fantastic Four. Don’t hold it against her.
Two returning characters are a pair of scientists named Gottlieb and Geiszler, played by Burn Gorman and Charlie Day. One of them will prove to be good and one of them evil; looks like the screenwriters did a little reading up on how to create tension in your $150-million movie. But they skipped the chapter on continuity; how else to explain a trip to a frozen island in Russia that literally goes nowhere?
About three hours into the movie, more Kaiju monsters appear and have to be put down.
One robot-upgrade montage later, Jake and the rest of the Jaeger pilots suit up and jump into their massive war machines, which have exciting names like Gipsy Avenger, Saber Athena, Guardian Bravo, Obadiah Stane, Frisbee Phoenix, Lucifer Oreo and Rose Byrne. (Full disclosure: I started making up those names halfway through the list.)
Uprising is an odd title for a sequel. In the good ol’ days, they would’ve gone with the simple Pacific Rim II. But it looks like they’ll have a chance to try again, as the final scene holds out the promise of yet another episode.
Actually, it sounds more like a threat.