Pacific Rim: Uprising is a 2018 action adventure film about the son of hero who helps to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots against a new Kaiju threat.
While Guillermo del Toro‘s 2013 Pacific Rim didn’t really inspire me as well as I’d hoped, it did have several great moments and made itself prime for a sequel, the sheer joy in watching giant robots battle giant monsters almost impossible to resist. Now, five years later, we finally get that movie, this one helmed by Steven S. DeKnight, and while it picks up well after the events of the first, lacks most of the punch to be anything more than a standard visual-effects laden beat ’em up with plenty of terrific mayhem and little else.
It’s ten years after the Jaegers – huge human-piloted robots – defeated the invading Kaiju that entered our world through a dimensional portal at the bottom of the ocean. Jake Pentecost (John Boyega) is the son of that war’s fallen hero Stacker (Idris Elba), and he’s not much like this father, taken to a life of crime, infiltrating scrap heaps where stored Jaegers are kept, stealing parts for the black market. One day, while rifling through such a place, he meets young orphan Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who shows some pretty highly-honed skills at driving these machines. Naturally, she gets noticed for her abilities and is taken by the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps (PPDC) to join their forces as Jake is given an ultimatum by his adoptive sister and current PPDC General Secretary Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) to rejoin the Ranger program and finish what he started. There he faces off against rival Nate (Scott Eastwood), though soon they must combine efforts to stop a new threat brought about by a Chinese corporation that constructs remote controlled Jaegers to police and secure the world, assisted by Dr. Newt (Charlie Day), though there is a much bigger problem on the horizon.
If there was anything the original had, it was a sense of style and place, with some pretty spectacular sequences that were, no matter the outcome, jaw-dropping. The film was action-heavy but dark and rich with atmosphere, the oppressive plight of a possible end to all humanity always at the forefront. With Uprising, it’s a much more sterile affair and far less dark, revisiting some of the same characters we met before and a few of the same old themes. While the cast are all in it for the win, with Boyega brooding and Eastwood sneering, they aren’t much more than archetypes that we’ve seen countless times before. I like Spaeny, too, even if she is also backed into a corner development wise.
That’s half the point of course with the plot mostly meant to get more big things to punch each other, even if it takes a bit of time to get there. I can’t, of course, give away what and how the new threat has come about and what they are, but at least it has some plausibility in the world where this story takes place. By doing so, it shifts a lot of the story to the Chinese side of things, which is surely a well-intentioned studio decision that will further improve international attention. Either way, there are some obvious parallels between the first and this, with Amara having some of the same setbacks that Mori had in making her skills inside a Jaeger be most effective.
This is a much brighter looking movie, and for fans of the first looking to see what the film promises, they most likely won’t be disappointed, even as the dialogue and personal conflicts remain less than impactful. This is a tried and true story that isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel per se, only wanting to fill the screen with spectacle and mayhem. At least the story diverges from what most probably thought this would be, where more kaiju burst through the portal, instead trying to be smarter. What’s apparent though is that maybe a story like the first really doesn’t lend itself to more, the absolutes of these huge characters limiting their scope. There’s much here that does find its footing and for fans in need of a big budget fighting robot war hit, this is a solid serving, just not with any spirit.