‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ Fails Guillermo del Toro’s Original Monster Mash [Review]

Opening nearly five years ago in 2013, Guillermo del Toro‘s “Pacific Rim” was far from a cultural milestone upon release. Handsomely produced with del Toro’s obsessive attention to detail, the Kaiju monster mash movie eluded both mainstream success and widespread critical approval. The Mexican director’s film had its diehard fans (myself included), but the mishmash of disparate influences (Japanese animation, old monster movies, art deco architecture) proved too much for the masses. However, “Pacific Rim” did connect with and and and make a ton of movie in China, which was enough to begin development on a sequel. Unfortunately, that follow-up, “Pacific Rim Uprising,” feels like a betrayal of everything that the original film set up and stood for, playing more like an episode of a low budget Saturday morning cartoon series than a big, bells-and-whistles Hollywood extravaganza.

‘Uprising’ takes place ten years after the climactic events of the first “Pacific Rim.” Even though they had seemingly closed “the Breach” (the gateway between our world and a hostile alien dimension),  production on jaegers, the building-sized robots designed to combat giant monsters entering our world, has continued (this is one of the first red flags that this entry doesn’t give a fuck about what came before, considering that in the first movie the Jaeger program was in its last legs and on the brink of shutdown). Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the never-mentioned-in-the-original-film son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, seen only in photos), is recruited to train a new generation of pilots (or, as they’re referred to, “Rangers”). He does so reluctantly, and only after discovering a kid (Cailee Spaeny) has put together her own Jaeger out of junk parts (its name is Scrapper). Additional intrigue arrives in the form of a rogue Jaeger and mystery surrounding the launch of a new drone program that will overtake the need for piloted Jaegers.

Now, if that sounds like a lot of plot, well, it is. There is a never-ending succession of subplots that jockey for control of the main narrative without ever making a thoughtful case for why we should care about them. The stuff with the little girl feels like a discarded element of one of the last “Transformers” movies, Jake’s rivalry with a fellow ranger (a typically wooden Scott Eastwood) feels like reheated “Top Gun” and doesn’t even go anywhere interesting, and the fact that a movie that’s supposed to be about giant robots fighting giant monsters, doesn’t even have a giant robots-versus-giant monsters battle until well into the third act. Yeah … all those brightly lit glory shots from the trailer are from one sequence. That’s it.

The first “Pacific Rim” was far from a blockbuster, but it developed fans after it hit home video, where you could properly appreciate the movie’s insane intricateness, both in its action sequences (the extended Hong Kong battle is still a jaw-dropper) and its overall visual design, which spoke to metaphor, character development, and theme. There was also something uplifting about the first film, how people from various nations and backgrounds could come together to fight a common enemy and conquer. Sure, there were interpersonal skirmishes but the central theme was downright utopian.

With the sequel, the filmmaking team (led by Joss Whedon confederate Steven S. DeKnight, who co-wrote and directs) decides to make the drama almost entirely about a human villain, although which one of the paper-thin characters turns out to be evil isn’t revealed until later in the movie. But don’t worry, it’s not just the thematic content of the first film that the new movie perverts; it’s also the entire look and feel of the movie.

“Pacific Rim” was all about believing that these robots and monsters were huge. If you re-watch the first film, there’s an inordinate amount of time devoted to establishing the scope and scale of everything, the way the robots are readied and airlifted to locations, how a giant monster rises up out of the water, and what a city looks like after this kind of devastation visits it. The way Guillermo sold this idea was by giving the movie some very tactile, practical embellishments – the way that the rangers get into the jaegers, the push and pull of pilot and robot – emphasizing this further in post production with the addition of heavy atmospherics (rain, wind, ocean water).

Everything looks visually cheap in “Pacific Rim Uprising” and the action comes across as weightless. Those visual hallmarks of the first film, like the atmospherics, are totally gone. Every action sequence takes place in broad daylight, with the sun beating down on the jaegers. There aren’t thematic concerns (much of the first film is about PTSD and coming back from that), as much as there are ideas that are momentarily toyed with and then discarded, like so much else. (It’s telling that Charlie Hunnam doesn’t return and those who do make it back from the first film feel like caricatured variations on the characters.) And everything looks tossed-together and unfinished; from the costumes and the sets, it feels more like a bad fan film than an officially recognized sequel.

Sure, the first movie was pretty open about its references, but it still felt, in a landscape littered with threadbare franchises, genuinely newand exciting. The sequel, on the other hand, just feels like a defeat. There was so much promise and potential, established by the original, that is squandered here. At its best, “Pacific Rim Uprising” is tedious and mildly diverting, but at its worst it feels like an out-and-out treachery. By the time a mid-credits sting introduces a concept that they seem ready to run with should a third installment roll around, the “Pacific Rim” concept has come full circle. What was once a refreshing alternative to the countless big-budget sequels has become a franchise as crass, unimaginative and unrelenting as everything else. [D]