Pacific Rim: Uprising

This review may contain spoilers!

What was good about the first Pacific Rim fades pretty fast in this film and devolves into a rather mindless blockbuster flick by the film's end. I would give Pacific Rim: Uprising a 4.5/10.

The film does a great job at picking up from where the last film left off, making an interesting setting in which ruined coastal cities are left in disrepair and junkyard Jaegers are pieced together by salvagers. The chaotic introduction of Jake and Amara and their inevitable recruitment into the Jaeger program is actually quite a nice first act and really makes you feel for a number of the characters within the main cast. The initial antagonist appears pretty obvious but some of the Jaeger versus Jaeger combat draws you in as a viewer and has you hooked. The cinematography looks great, encompassing the large sets and effects that take place within the frame as well as the more intimate moments between characters. The special effects look astounding; in particular, it's nice to see some new designs with the Jaegers shown throughout the film and the battle sequences are really what the film lives and dies upon.

John Boyega, who played Jake Pentecost, does a great job as the film's protagonist; his more relaxed and relatable persona really has you invested in him from an audience perspective. Scott Eastwood, who played Nate Lambert, is a very by the book gruff character who immediately fits his military role; Eastwood really lends a more open side to his character and you feel like he really acts as a pillar of support throughout the film. Burn Gorman, who played Dr Herman Gottlieb, is a familiar awkward personality with a thousand thoughts racing through his mind; Gorman is at his best when he attempts to re-establish the bond his role once shared with Day's and the effect the distance between them has had upon him. Rinko Kikuchi, who played Mako Mori, has some immediate sibling chemistry onscreen with Boyega (which is a nice surprise); Kikuchi really holds the weight of responsibility her character now wields well and you can immediately see her in the leadership role she has now taken on. Wesley Wong and Ivanna Sakhno, who played Cadet Jinhai and Cadet Viktoria respectively, are interesting new minor roles in this very different Pacific Rim; Wong makes for a great supporting character who is very welcoming to the Jaeger pilot initiative, while Sakhno's character is aggressive and has some interesting conflict with Spaeny.

However, the best performance came from Cailee Spaeny, who played Amara Namani. This is a real young gun with a streak of brilliance role in the film and she really stands out from beginning to end. Spaeny sets out to portray a lone wolf with a standoffish attitude that works very well alongside Boyega's performance. This character really is driven by a need to belong and fight back against forces she'd otherwise be defenceless against. The scene in which Amara's backstory is revealed is an especially harrowing one and Spaeny does a great job in delivering it. A brilliant performance and a young actress who will be on the rise in no time I hope.

At a certain point in this film, there is a decision to throw out a big twist and reveal the big villain and what motivates the antagonist for the rest of the second and third acts. This is really where you see that the writer for this feature never really got the first Pacific Rim, taking liberties in a major way that really just makes this film feel more like a mindless blockbuster than anything else. The Kaiju no longer feel motivated by anything that makes them interesting to watch so this just becomes what everyone assumed the first Pacific Rim film was going to be: a feature about giant robots slugging giant robots in the face. To make matters worse as the acts progress there's a real drive that this is a 'legacy' oriented film; by which I mean a number of younger actors playing child or teen roles suddenly take front and centre. The result of this is that the stakes are significantly lowered and you're dosed with a shocking number of cheesy one-liners and two-dimensional characters for the final fight of the film. This final fight is disappointing to watch not just for the characters in it, but also for the special effects; throughout the film has looked pretty good but there's no attempt here to balance live-action sets or landscapes with the CGI around it. Everything looks like an animated mess and the drop in quality is quite noticeable. The score for the film doesn't have much to it, there's a significant amount of fanfare and horns but nothing that makes the music within the film distinguishable.

Charlie Day, who played Dr Newton Geiszler, was a real standout performance in the first film and acts like he doesn't even really know what he's doing back this time around; Day doesn't suit the villain performance and his focus on delving into the comedic side of his role means that you don't really tend to take him seriously. Tian Jing, who played Liwen Shao, is a new role that isn't explored very much; the film spends too much time portraying her as a featureless big bad that when she is revealed to be a good character you don't really know enough about her to care. Jin Zhang, who played Marshal Quan, is a pretty generic leading military figure; Zhang fails to lend this character any personality and only ever plays to the stereotype he is given. Adria Arjona, who played Jules Reyes, is an awkward role that doesn't really have much place in the film; Arjona is wasted in a role that only seems to exist to create a love triangle between herself, Boyega and Eastwood. Karan Brar, Mackenyu, Lily Ji, Shyrley Rodriguez, Rahart Adams and Levi Meaden, who played Cadet Suresh, Cadet Ryoichi, Cadet Meilin, Cadet Renata, Cadet Tahima and Cadet Ilya respectively; were a bunch of characters who could've been treated as roles but were instead seen to be background extras; making these characters important only in the final act meant that the stakes were significantly lowered by the film's end and the quality of the narrative had gone down.