The massive Kaiju vs. robots featured in “Pacific Rim” was a
welcome treat back in July 2013. Guillermo del Toro who helmed the original opted out of the sequel to direct a different creature in “The Shape of Water” (2017) which eared an Academy Award for best picture, he did however produce and write the film. This is Steven S. Deknight’s 1st blockbuster movie after writing and directing several TV show episodes of “Daredevil” and “Smallville”.
“Pacific Rim: Uprising” follows 10 years after the original. Leftovers of the impressive Kaiju v.s Jaegar wars are spread over the globe, littering the landscape like dinosaur bones. The world is still picking up the pieces from the great battle, and the economy has been flipped; in the streets, anyone can scrounge for scrap parts and sell them on the black market, including hotshot former Jaegar pilot Jake (played by John Boyega). He’s the son of Idris Elba’s character in “PR1”. Jake meets-up with another scraper – a young girl interested in building bots of her own. He takes her under his wing, kind of like what Mark Wahlberg did in the last “Transformers” movie.
Jake is thrust back in to the fight, rejoining with old friend Nate (played by Scott Eastwood). This marks the 2nd big franchise Scott Eastwood has joined including “The Fast and the Furious”. Now with the current generation combing with the next generation for the big, impending battle, suiting-up in Jaegers 2.0 to fight-off the Kaiju and rogue Jaegar’s.
Like its predecessor “PRU” has no shortage of grand scale action sequences meshed in place by the usual elements of plot and character development. There’s quite a bit of cliché motivational dialogue (Character A: “We’ve only got one shot.” Character B: “Then we better make it count!”)
Boyega does get to shine here and seems to enjoy returning to his native British ascent; he seems to be more into himself that he was in “The Last Jedi”. New comer Cailee Spaeny does well as the new recruit under Boyega’s wing.
Charlie Day reprises his role as quirky/goofy supporting character Dr. Newton (which is basically the role Charlie Day plays in every movie he’s in). Day does get to deliver the film’s two clever lines. One is a take on the most memorable line from the first movie (shouted by Elba).
I didn’t see this one in theatres but it was one of the few 3D movies on Amazon that was fairly cheap. The 3D here was on par with the original, they did a pretty good job with the in-your-face-aspect and the depth. The colors were very vibrant and it seemed like the HUD display scenes were enhanced as well.
They did leave this one open for another sequel more so than the last. Hopefully it doesn’t take another 10 years though.
Now on VidAngel & ClearPlay
I give it C+
