Pacific Rim: Uprising | Film Review

In Pacific Rim: Uprising, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega) – you know, the son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) that people seemed to forget to mention existed back then – reunites with his adopted sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), to lead a new generation of Power Rangers…sorry, Jaeger pilots. These include his rival Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) and a fifteen year old hacker, X-23, sorry I keep doing that, Amara (Cailee Spaeny), against a new Kaiju threat. I’m having a little fun with telling you how the story plays out because honestly some of it is frustrating and unimaginative, while other parts are obviously inspired by what worked in recent movies. The cool thing is that they did find fun ways to make the story unique and generate some real surprises. All combined, it’s a fully realized story that has some groans, laughs, and cheers.

John Boyega seems to be playing the role with an abundance of confidence, like he knows exactly what he is doing every step of the way. If he stopped and winked at the camera after every line it wouldn’t have been surprising in any way, and would have fit perfectly with his delivery.

Scott Eastwood’s Nate Lambert is a story of stark contrasts to Boyega’s Pentecost. Eastwood plays it all very straight and doesn’t have the charisma or strength to come out from beneath Boyega’s shadow. Cailee Spaeny’s Amara Namani is the only person on the screen that seems to have the ability to peak out from underneath the shadow of charm that Boyega cast. She gives you someone to root for, and well as gives a pull on your heartstrings. Charlie Day’s Newton Geiszler and Burn Gorman’s Herman Gottlieb are back for this installation of the Pacific Rim story and reprieve their roles of comic relief. The two of them are fun and do a great job at reminding us that the movie is not only a creature feature but also a living cartoon.

The production in Pacific Rim: Uprising contrasts from its progenitor in subtle yet noticeable ways. Uprising shows you nearly every giant robot, monster, and everything in-between in the clear light of day, and it almost doesn’t work. Some of it feels like a 70s Toho monster movie, rubber suits would not have been surprising. At other times it feels fresh and high tech. However, where the first movie took loving care in how it displayed and imposed the size of these creations, this movie was more matter of fact and unimpressive.

Uprising completely missed the epic feel of Pacific Rim. In that first film, the Jaeger pilots wore impressive looking suits of armor. It truly looked like future tech that bound them physically and mentally to their Jaegers and each other. At the very least they should have been able to CTRL-C, CTRL-V that stuff from the first movie, but they changed it all. The interior of the Jaegers looked more like the Megazord from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the pilot’s uniform was more of a canvas or Kevlar body suit with padding and plates strapped to it. Think of it as an updated version of the Robot Jox uniforms and cockpits rather than something in the same lineage of the previous Pacific Rim. You may notice the differences or you may not, it doesn’t exactly hurt the film. This review is simply written by someone who draws cool things when they aren’t writing oddly worded reviews.

If you do any looking into the backstory of how this movie was made, you will see that it was done at a crazy, breakneck speed to take advantage of whatever goodwill was left over from the first Pacific Rim. It’s a different production team with a separate aesthetic and a specific storytelling style. Looking at the final product, it’s hard to escape that it is solely a name and reference that bonds the movies together, and not much else.

So, keeping all of that in mind, look at Pacific Rim: Uprising on its own. It has its own fun, unique surprises, and it doles out Rock’em Sock’em Robots in a legible manner rivaling anything given to us by the Transformers franchise. John Boyega is having a blast and makes it easier for us, the viewer, to have fun with him. Finally, we are introduced to a story that promises to up the scale in possible future installments. Is it the first movie? No. But it does stand enough on its own to leave us with something to look forward to.