not bad... just a complete waste of potential
PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING (2018) [no spoilers!]
Director: Steven S. DeKnight
Starring: John Boyega, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Burn Gorman
Summary: Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, reunites with Mako Mori to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat. (IMBd)
Let’s just make it clear that 1. there is NO POINT making a sequel if you’re not even going to keep to the standards of the first movie; 2. There is no worse feeling for a fan than the sense of lost potential when something just… could’ve made it,,, but didn’t (or when it’s creators CHOSE NOT TO); 3. There is SO MUCH INJUSTICE in turning an emotionally-rich world into a cash cow franchise.
The thing is… Pacific Rim: Uprising wasn’t a bad movie. It was entertaining, ticked all the boxes of an action movie, set up a world for a continuing franchise, and even had lots of Chinese stuff so it could make money in China. It’s just that… if you want to watch this movie because you like the first Pacific Rim (for more than its action robot fights),, we want to tell you very clearly that you will not find what you’re looking for here.
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The chief reason why we are disappointed with Uprising is mostly because it could have done so much more with what the first film left. For us, it was the original idea of having two pilots for every Jaeger, of having them be drift-compatible, sharing each others’ minds and memories. Del Toro narrowed the entire plot down to that one relationship between two drift-compatible pilots — Raleigh and Mako — two strangers that tore open their hearts for one another to save the world. Everything else, the robot fights, the Kaiju, the action and the tech, all that was secondary and supplementary to making that one relationship as personal and real as possible. They were just tools to put a relationship through hell and back, and show us how trust between two people can outlast anything.
That is the potential that Uprising missed out on. What we were given instead was a Transformer-esque approach to relationships — them taking a backseat in favour of special effects and towering robots. Sure, the friendship that was built between Jake and Amara was plausible, sometimes even well written, but Uprising tried to balance developing that with developing a coherent “team spirit” of sorts for the teenage recruit team that Jake ends up leading. It commits the same mistake that DC did in Justice League: trying to give us a team in the span of the first act, instead of taking its time over the course of several arcs (and several movies,,,, like Marvel) Because of that, we don’t get enough time for Jake and Amara to seem real and personal, and the team spirit thing just flops because making something like that requires much more time than one relationship.
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The tone of it was also inconsistent, in that Uprising couldn’t decide between being a comedy with no real consequences for recklessness, or a realistic portrayal of battle. This indecision leads to its attempted humour falling flat, and its emotional moments lacking weight (particularly in the third act,,,, no spoilers) In the first movie, they didn’t really try for the humour + action combo that blockbusters like The Avengers have popularised (apart from the mad scientist duo), and instead devoted its time to balancing its action with its emotional depth, creating realistically high stakes to complement its realistically personal conflicts.
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Furthermore, even if Uprising wanted to best its predecessor with improved special effects and action scenes… it didn’t actually succeed. The most memorable thing about Pacific Rim 1 was its dark and drenched battle scenes. It was a robot fight set against the backdrop of a neon-edged churning sea, highlighting every plasma blast or burst of kaiju blood.
What Uprising gives us instead are fight scenes against cityscapes and concrete, the lighting dull and drab (at least till the very last part of the battle). It resembles the airport battle scene in Civil War than any stylistic imagining of a battle in its predecessor’s terms. Which was honestly a shame — it’s rare that we get genuinely visually captivating battle scenes.
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Overall, worth a watch, just don’t expect anything more than entertainment :’)
PS if you have any thoughts that are spoiler-y (e.g. that plot twist in Uprising) feel free to DM us!! We welcome any and all thoughts!!
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