Pacific Rim: Uprising offers great action but little else
In 2013, director Guillermo Del Toro managed to bring to life a unique vision of grand scale in a truly stylistic manner.
Giant monsters from a different dimension known as Kaiju began terrorizing our planet. As a response to these attacks, the Jaeger program was initiated developing huge combat robots piloted by two persons to battle the creatures. The Jaegers became the only ray of hope for humanity.
Pacific Rim: Uprising, directed by Steven DeKnight (producer of the first season of the Marvel/Netflix Daredevil series) picks up 10 years after the events of the first film. It follows Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), son of the legendary Jaeger pilot Stacker Pentecost, as well as Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) an orphan who also happens to be a highly intelligent and resourceful scrapper.
After getting into trouble with the law, both characters find themselves forced to participate in the Jaeger program, their only alternative to prison. Once there, they meet up with the experienced Jaeger pilot Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) who is tasked with showing them the ropes, sort of. During their time in the program, a series of disastrous events unfold obligating our protagonists to fight for the well-being of the Earth.
The premise of this franchise may sound somewhat cheesy and fantastical, but it was the style, vision and originality of the first installment that gained attention and intrigue from the audience. Unfortunately, the sequel fails in what the first film was able to accomplish. Pacific Rim: Uprising was more Transformers than it was Pacific Rim. It traded in the stylized visuals and impressive world-building for big nonsense action between robots and monsters. Rather than having a well-developed plot that climaxed with great action sequences, it felt as though there was a very loose plot barely stringing along until the next opportunity to have some robot action.
This put a lot of pressure on the action of the film since it was set up as the main course. Luckily it does not disappoint in this area. If what you are looking for are big explosions and action pieces then there are enough of them in this film to be quite entertaining, but there is not much else to be too excited about.
The tone of the film is all over the place. Characters do not fall in line with the tone set by the scenes. There are several uncalled-for quirky comments and reactions in serious situations that break the feel of the moment. Much of the film did not make sense. One of the things that stood out the most in a negative way was the storyline built around teenagers. This made no sense at all. There also seem to be some inconsistencies within the narrative.
Even though this didn’t turn out to necessarily be a standout movie, there certainly were some standout aspects in it. The score of the film composed by Lorne Balfe was quite notable; it aided with an immersive feel and gave even more excitement to the all of the massive battles.
There are two side characters who are Kaiju scientists played by Burn Gorman and Charlie Day, and while these characters were quite over the top in nature since the film does not take itself too seriously, I was able to appreciate their performances.
Some of the threads followed to establish the base plot of the movie were very intriguing. While the final execution of these was not all that great it was nice to see some of these issues tackled.
Overall, the second installment in the Pacific Rim franchise turned out to be a letdown, but there are some redeemable qualities to it, as there are for most films. This movie does not offer nearly as much as the first one did in visuals, imagination or originality. It does, however, have exciting and large-scale action.