Sonic Cinema

Sounds, Visions and Insights by Brian Skutle

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Grade : B- Year : 2018 Director : Stephen S. DeKnight Running Time : 1hr 51min Genre : ,
Movie review score
B-

Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” is one of my favorite popcorn films of all-time. Full stop on that statement. His 2013 film about a war between Kaiju from another dimension and humanity fighting them back with giant robots is in that rarefied air for me with “Star Wars,” “Jurassic Park,” “Face/Off,” “The Avengers” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a filmmaker completely in control of his craft, doing a story that resonates with personal flourishes that make it fun as Hell for the audience. Invariably, a sequel without Del Toro involved outside of being a producer is bound to be a let down, but given how intricately he and screenwriter Travis Beacham built the world of the first film, it should still be fun, right?

“Uprising” takes place a decade after the heroes of the first film sealed up the breach, trapping the Kaiju in their dimension, and it’s a very different world we get a glimpse of when we first meet Jake Pentecost, the son of Idris Elba’s character from the first film, played by John Boyega in his natural accent. Jake didn’t take well with the Jaeger program his father was in charge of, so when we meet him, he is as far away from that life as possible, selling scraps from de-commissioned Jaegers to the wrong people. When the authorities come chasing after, he finds himself in the workshop of a young woman named Amara (Cailee Spaeny) who has made her own, single-person Jaeger. This puts her in the crosshairs of the authorities, and Jake as well, and both of them find their way into the current stage of the Jaeger program, where Jake’s former co-pilot, Nate (Scott Eastwood), is training a new generation of cadets for Jaeger piloting, which is about to be taken to a different level by Shao Industries, who has found a way to bring a corporate structure to it with their leading tech master, Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day, reprising his role from the first film). When a rogue Jaeger crashes a conference on Shao’s Jaeger drone program, however, the old ways of dealing with threats may not be going away as easily as one thinks.

All of this, and much more, is the narrative of the first hour of this film, which has some action when Jake and Nate have to pilot Gypsy Avenger against the rogue Jaeger, but the real threat isn’t even established in this time- this is all build-up, and it’s not good for an action-adventure movie to go this long without establishing what its threat is. Given what that ends up being, I understand it, but the screenplay by Steven S. DeKnight (who also directs in place of Del Toro), Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder and T.S. Nowlin feels unfocused in that first hour, and the film suffers, as a result. Once the threat comes into view, the movie gets exponentially better, and I love where this film finds its way back into the Kaiju vs. Jaeger cage-match action sequences that drive the story. We get a hint in one scene, but don’t really know how that hint is going to play itself out as the film kicks into gear, and I kind of enjoy it, because it builds off of ideas from the original film while also adding the gratuitous McGuffin that inspires the threat to act as it does. The second hour plays much better than the first, and I really enjoyed what it does.

It feels weird to be complaining about all the set-up “Uprising” does in the first hour, but I think it’s because of the fact that Del Toro (who made “The Shape of Water” instead) and Beacham handled the exposition so beautifully the first time around. The first hour of this feels as clumsily-written and uninspired as a “Transformers” movie, and it has a hard time engaging, as a result. It also doesn’t help that it lacks a distinct personality and attitude like the original film does- I’m familiar with DeKnight because of his work, back in the day, on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but he doesn’t really show much inspiration or a particular voice here like Del Toro did during the first one, and it’s difficult to sit through that first hour while you’re waiting for the action to get here. (He does deliver the goods on that front, from a superficial standpoint, but he doesn’t have the vision and imagination his predecessor displayed to make it something more.) The score he’s gotten from composer Lorne Balfe does the film no favors, and it’s only when it recycles the kick-ass theme from the original (by Ramin Djawadi) that it really benefits the film.

I’m not going to lie- without Del Toro in the driver’s seat, my expectations were significantly lowered for “Pacific Rim: Uprising,” making any letdown I have minimal, in comparison. It’s a shame, because the cast- from Boyega and Spaeny, in particular, of the newcomers to the team of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the surreal scientists from the original (who aren’t together nearly enough, and don’t end up with as inspired of material as they had before)- is game for as wild a ride as we got from the first one. DeKnight just lacks the magic touch of the Oscar-winner he’s following-up here.

Leave a Reply