Review – Pacific Rim: Uprising

When I walked in to the theater to see Pacific Rim: Uprising, the theater had it’s LED ceiling lights on, making the entire theater visible, as well as placing a heavy glare on the screen, making it difficult to see most of the trailers that were playing before the movie.  Eventually, the lights were turned off and Pacific Rim began.

I should have taken this as a sign that the cinematic God’s were telling me to not see Pacific Rim: Uprising.  I should have listened to them because this movie is awful.  A lifeless, boring movie with no emotion, stakes, or good performances.

In this sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 hit, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), son of the legendary Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba in the first film), is a troublesome loner and scavenger who continuously gets in trouble with the law.  When scavenging for Jaeger (robot) parts, the most valued parts around this area, he meets Amara (Cailee Spaeny), a precocious, sassy teen who has made her own Jaeger, an illegal act which causes the police to arrest both of them.  Jake, being on his last strike, has two options: jail or join the military’s Jaeger pilots while also bringing along Amara and putting her in the training class.  With a chip on his shoulder past feuds lingering over his head, Jake tries to get over living in his father’s shadow while a new Kaiju threat lurks close by.

There have been a number of sequels in recent Hollywood, some justified, some not.  But with these sequels, directors usually change hands and that’s the case for this film.  Guillermo del Toro directed the first one and then the reigns went to Steven S. DeKnight, a television director known for Starz’s Spartacus and Netflix’s Daredevil.  Out of all the sequels Hollywood has made over the years and of all the director changes, no sequel has missed it’s original director as much at Pacific Rim: Uprising.  DeKnight brings none of the magic, fun, or creativity that del Toro brought to the original film.  Del Toro knew the kind of film he was making and he knew what needed to be involved.  It was robots vs monsters in a battle for Earth.  He gave us rousing action, great special effects, and really highlighted the robots and the monsters.  DeKnight does none of that.  The special effects are fine, but the movies action is lackluster and we really only get the monsters and robots at the end, but by that point, the most has become a lost cause.  We don’t ask much for a movie about monsters and robots except for the monsters and the robots and we didn’t get that here.

The biggest issues with the movie is the lack of stakes and terrible characters.  Sure, the action and visual excitement isn’t the best, but that wouldn’t matter if we had characters to care about and a world in jeopardy.  Never once was I worried about the monsters winning.  Never once did I think Jake was ever in trouble or that the world was ever in danger.  They don’t ever establish real danger in this movie, and that lack of fear was seen throughout the entire movie.  And it is impossible to care about any of the characters.  They are all written so formulaic and so cliché that we can’t relate to them, making us not care what happens to them.  It is never good when you’re in a movie and you don’t care if your characters live or die.  We should always want our characters to survive, but in this movie, it doesn’t really matter.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is not a good movie.  There is nothing about this movie-going experience that I enjoyed.  The action is weak, the characters are awful, and there are not stakes in the film.  This is just another unnecessary Hollywood sequel that should never have been made.

Did you see Pacific Rim: Uprising?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.