Pacific Rim 2: Uprising (2018)

Pacific Rim 2: Uprising (2018)

3/10

Starring

John Boyega

Scott Eastwood

Jing Tian

Cailee Spaeny

Directed by Steven S. Deknight

The first question is: how great was the first Pacific Rim (2013) movie?
I recall it coming out during a time of remakes and superhero movies. There wasn’t much unique happening at the box office, so the first Pacific Rim movie, directed by Guillermo del Toro, was the new thing—and I, for one, didn’t like it.
Now, however, I have a different view and respect for the first Pacific Rim (2013) movie because this second one, released five years later, is worse.

This movie packs in a long takeoff time and a delayed middle, only to give us an ending that’s so silly and unproductive that I feel sorry for the people who had to sit through it with me.
What did this movie have to offer?
The answer is: nothing. The movie had nothing to give in terms of excitement, ingenuity, or even acting. They tried to do a “hero doesn’t get the girl” thing by changing the ending into a cliché tale. We all know the story: guy leaves the force to enjoy his life, gets pulled back in, and his partner is upset with him. Then there’s a girl, and they tried to spice it up by not letting the lead get her in the end.

The movie is so predictable that I wished I could just skip through some parts. It was easy to guess how some events would play out or even the gender of some characters before they were shown.
Okay, remember how the first movie ended?
Well, some additional things have happened, and this movie’s beginning fills you in. Then it introduces the lead, a former Jaeger pilot named Jake (John Boyega), who now spends his days stealing Jaeger parts and selling them on the black market.
Based on a series of events—which I won’t spoil for you—he meets a young girl, and both are caught as they try to escape a yard after stealing some Jaeger tech.
To avoid jail time, they’re drafted into the Jaeger program: he’s told to get back into his pilot uniform, and she’s sent to be a cadet.

Things start to go crazy when a company called Shao Corporation creates hybrid drones of Kaiju-Jaeger machines, which they plan to release to end the dual-pilot Jaeger program.
Things get out of hand when the drones start having a mind of their own, refusing to listen to commands and trying to kill the pilots and cadets of the Jaeger program.
Further investigations later reveal that the problem is man-made, and a human is behind it.

This new addition ends with links to a potential third movie. The first movie didn’t do so well at the box office, and this directorial debut of Steven S. DeKnight seems to have not broken even either.

The movie did have some of the fun you’d expect from Kaiju vs. Jaeger battles, but to me, this franchise shouldn’t have spawned a second part—let alone the hopes the makers had for a third one.
Save yourself the trouble.