'Pacific Rim Uprising' Is a Pretentious Sequel

Pacific Rim Uprising is the sequel to Pacific Rim and set ten years afterwards.  It follows Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of the legendary PPDC Marshal Stacker Pentecost (the badass Idris Elba character in the previous movie whose heroic death seals mankind’s victory over the Kaiju), who has since abandoned the track of becoming a Jaeger pilot for a life in the criminal underworld.  However, when he gets caught up with Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny), a street orphan who illegally made her own Jaeger, he’s given the choice by his adoptive sister Mako Mori (Rinku Kikuchi), who is now the PDCC Secretary General, between going to prison or returning to the PDCC.  Forced to take the latter option, he’s reunited with his estranged co-pilot Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) as they train a new generation of Jaeger pilots who will have to respond to an unexpected development – the betrayal of mankind by one of their own and the return of the Kaiju threat.

Pacific Rim was one of my favorite films of 2013.  Though I found its story to be generic, it was nonetheless an epic movie in my eyes as it was the first of its kind: a Hollywood-produced live-action mecha movie.  Thus, the eye-popping “Jaeger vs. Kaiju” spectacles were enough to please me.  This isn’t the case with Pacific Rim Uprising.  As a result, I didn’t like it as much as the original.

First of all, being a sequel, it no longer has the benefit of novelty.  Thus, it needed to have something more than what its predecessor had to offer.  It’s not enough to just have some pretty giant battle scenes.  It must up the ante.  It must be deeper.  And it failed to deliver these.  Secondly, its action and visuals aren’t as potent and exhilarating as the first movie’s.  Yes, there’s still enjoyment to be had due to them.  But, again, maybe as the result of not having the advantage of novelty, they failed to awe me.

Moreover, I find it pretentious as a sequel.  It doesn’t feel like a true follow-up.  There is no mention of Raleigh Becket, the main character of the first movie.  Apparently, there is scheduling conflict with actor Charlie Hunnam, but production still pushed through.  His absence gives a “Will Smith-less Independence Day: Resurgence”-sized blemish to the movie.  Also, albeit a minor character, I would have wanted to see Ron Perlman’s Hannibal Chau again, considering his badass mid-credit scene in the first movie.  As for the original characters that did make it into this movie, they were stupidly mishandled.  There’s even this one character who has been bastardized just so the plot can have a shocking twist.  Lastly, there is an attempt to replicate the memorably fist-pumping “Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!” speech by Idris Elba, but it comes off as laughably flat instead.

Pacific Rim Uprising has moments of fun – it has giant robots and monsters brawling after all.  Nevertheless, it’s shallow, disappointing, and uninspired as a whole.  As a sequel, it’s a clear product of a business decision rather than an honest creative process.

But, hey, if the third installment is going to be exactly what the ending implied – Jaegers invading the Kaiju’s world – then I can be down with that.