Director: Steven DeKnight
Starring: Johnny Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spainey, Tian Jing, Rinko Kikuchi, Burn Gorman and Charlie Day
Rated: PG
Running Time: 1 Hr, 51 Mins
I adored the original Pacific Rim and while I was salivating for a sequel, I was more than a little nervous when I learned that Guillermo del Toro (y’know, the guy who just won an Oscar for Best Director) wasn’t coming back. When franchises abandon the guy who got them to the top of the mountain, the rest of the ride tends to be down hill.
I went into Pacific Rim: Uprising with cautious, tempered expectations. Which is probably why i enjoyed it for that it was; a half-decent sci-fi adventure. The real box office question is will audiences be willing to unshackle it from their expectations and give it a chance to stretch its legs outside the original’s shadow.
Video Universal Pictures
A decade after his father helped win the war against the extra-dimensional Precursors, Jake Pentecost (Johnny Boyega) makes a living as a thief and a con man. But when he and scrappy amateur Jaeger builder/pilot Amara (Cailee Spainey) get caught, they’re sent packing to the Jaeger training program (since the alternative was prison, their decision was pretty easy). It’s a homecoming of sorts for Jake, who washed out of the program and has lived in his legendary father’s shadow ever since.
Jaeger pilots may be an endangered species though, as the world stands on the brink of a new generation of Jaeger drones. But on the eve of this new revolution, things begin to go suspiciously awry. Powerful and mysterious new Jaegers pose a new danger and the Kaiju threat the world thought was over has adapted and found surprising new life. Jake soon finds himself leading a band of untested cadets into an impossible battle.
Don’t think of Pacific Rim: Uprising as a sequel to the original. Think of it as the second chapter in a book instead. A chapter that continues the story but isn’t quite as good as the first.
The visual effects are definitely back (though the darker aesthetic of the original somehow worked better than the much brighter Uprising) and watching giant robots duking it on the big screen with giant monsters (and occasionally other giant robots) will definitely scratch your geek itch. Uprising does an excellent job of world building, creating a convincing future landscape where giant robots and unimaginable industry have become the norm.
Boyega does an admirable job as Jake Pentecost, a defiant and stubborn young man struggling beneath the weight of his iconic father’s memory (Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba in the first Pacific Rim). Scott Eastwood is decent as Boyega’s rival/co-pilot/ Nate Lambert, but while both are suitable replacements for what Charlie Hunnam brought to the table in the first Pacific Rim, neither brings the same gravitas or weight Elba did.
Cailee Spaeney stands out as the willful Amora. Spaeney brings just the right amount of grit and spirit to the young orphan who learned how to fight and build Jaegers on the street. Spaeney and Boyega share an amusing fraternal chemistry in some of their scenes and a if a third Pacific Rim should make its way to the big screen, it should make their relationship the focus of the story.
Uprising does its best to match the action of the first film with plenty of fight scenes. The Jaeger versus Jaeger face-offs are memorable and it adds a new twist to the final battle against the Kaiju. In fact, just when you’re about to write the story off as average, it pulls off a Shymalanesque twist, insuring your interest for the rest of the movie.
While it could have offered a few more nodds to the original (while some of your favourite characters are back, there’s no word about Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh Beckett) it avoids the pitfalls that made Independence Day: Resurgence a poor carbon copy of that franchise’s first movie.
Other than missing Elba’s rough charisma, Uprising suffers from a problem that has plagued previous movie franchises; it can’t match the same level of novelty as the first. Pacific Rim was unlike anything audiences had seen when it hit theatres in the summer of 2013. And while it would be wrong to say it’s effects have become old hat five years later, they have become more common. The same happened to both Jurassic Park and Terminator: Judgement Day. Both films enjoyed box office success because of their ground breaking special effects but it wasn’t long until those same effects started showing up in car commercials. The freshness was gone. And while Uprising’s story is a little more inventive than you might expect, it isn’t enough to clear that hurdle.
Pacific Rim: Uprising is a decent, sci-fi popcorn movie on its own. Ditch any expectations that it might be as good as the original, because it isn’t. Like it’s main character, it can’t live in its predecessor’s shadow. But if you let it step outside that shadow, you’ll probably enjoy Uprising enough to forgive it that particular sin.
Just think of it as Pacific Rim: Chapter Two instead of Pacific Rim: The Sequel.
Image Universal Pictures
