Just how badly does Pacific Rim: Uprising suck? Pretty badly. Let’s put it this way, I was already checking the time, wondering when this piece of shit would be over, a mere ten minutes into the movie. A sequel to the charming and fun Pacific Rim, released back in 2013, Uprising never would have existed had the original not drawn huge box office numbers in China. The original Pacific Rim didn’t exactly set the American box office on fire, despite being an enjoyable pastiche of Japanese monster movies--the kind that have giant monsters stomping cities.
Pacific Rim posited that there was a special force of giant robots, crewed by human pilots, that were sent out to stop these monsters, called Kaiju. The robots are called Jaegers. The sequel takes place ten years after the first film, in which the Kaiju were finally stopped. John Boyega, better known as Finn from Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, stars here as the son of the Jaeger leader (would that make him the jagermeister?) who lives a debauched life as a squatter amidst the ruins of a Kaiju rampage. He gets captured while dodging other squatters who’re out to kill him.
Rinko Kikuchi returns as Mako long enough to recruit jaegermeister jr. into the ranks of the Jaeger fighters--even though there hasn’t been any use for them in years. Uprising lacks the epic storytelling that Guillermo del Toro so effortlessly brought to the first Pacific Rim. Yes, that flick also had a silly premise, but del Toro wisely grounded it in a gritty foundation that had an assured world-building quality that kept it realistic. Del Toro also worked hard--through the production design and special effects--to create a truly original story that made sense on many levels.
In contrast, Uprising has all the gravitas of a Saturday morning cartoon show. That’s not surprising, since there were moments during the air-headed Uprising when I felt like I was watching either Transformers or Power Rangers. The sequel lacks the imagination to create its own thing, instead preferring to imitate other fantasy properties left and right (there’s now precious young cadets studying at a Jaeger school, right on the military base, and when everyone dies, these whacky kids take over!).
This is a shame, seeing how hard del Toro worked to make Pacific Rim stand apart on its own two Jaeger legs. But the sequel just pulls so many dopey ideas right out of thin air whenever a “twist” is needed that I stopped caring about what happened halfway through the movie’s run time. Here’s hoping the Kaiju and Jaegers finally find a permanent peace this time and just give it a rest. --SF
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