January has always been catch-up month for me. There’s a lot of stuff that I miss during the calendar year and I like to take an extra month to try and fill in those gaps before coming up with my personal best-of list. There is not a snowball’s chance in Hell that Pacific Rim 2 is ever finding its way on that list, but I’ve had the disc sitting around since Black Friday and found myself in a big dumb action mood last night.
Depending on who you ask, Guillermo Del Toro’s 2013 original is an action epic, a modern classic of AAA Hollywood monster mashes. I don’t think so, personally, but mostly because certain story beats don’t entirely land for me. It’s a fascinating piece of work, to be sure. The way Del Toro stages his kaiju fights to make you feel every robot punch, every monster howl, is pretty spectacular. So what if Idris Elba’s “cancel the apocalypse” speech lands like a wet fart? The jaegers look badass and they do sweet rocket punches! I may not love it, but I respect the effort. So the prospect of a sequel was already a tough sell, but one neither written nor directed by Del Toro? Yeesh, why even bother, right?
Pacific Rim: Uprising‘s problems start right from the word ‘Uprising’. That word always feels like a placeholder subtitle until someone thinks of a better one. ‘Uprising’ is the kind of word a ninth-grader uses to title their Batman fanfic. But personal prejudice aside, it’s a pretty poor descriptor of the film. The kaiju already sprang up from a hole at the bottom of the ocean the first time around, so what exactly has changed? The main plot involves Charlie Day’s Dr. Newt playing turncoat and engineering a new kaiju assault upon Tokyo. That’s about as ‘uprising’ as this movie gets.
So much of the stuff surrounding the first film felt iconic. All of the names were given a certain gravitas, and were delivered with such reverence that you’d think people were talking about Hercules. Words like kaiju. Jaeger. Stacker Pentecost. Gipsy Danger. THE SHATTERDOME. All of these clicked together to create a universe of people and robots and places that felt tangible, even if they were very visibly put together in a computer. When characters talked about their jaegers, you really felt like they meant it. Uprising has none of that. Gipsy Danger is remade into Gipsy Avenger, but beyond that I honestly could not tell you the names of one full-sized jaeger in this film.* I have to qualify that, because Scrapper is an adorable little mini-jaeger built and piloted by a kid named Amara (Cailee Spaeny) with more pluck and personality that all the other jaegers put together.
The story picks up five years after the events of the first Pacific Rim, where we meet Jake Pentecost (a mostly bored John Boyega), son of Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost, who sacrificed himself to save the world in the last movie. Jake is an ex-jaeger pilot, scavenging for parts and selling them to the highest bidder. When the police finally nab him, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) shows up to bail him out if he’ll agree to re-enlist. This happens not a moment too soon, as a mysterious jaeger saunters up out of the sea, attacks Tokyo, summons a whole new gaggle of kaiju and threatens to end the world by sucking up precious rare-earth minerals from the top of Mt. Fuji (now apparently an active volcano with lava bubbling right near the rim).
That’s pretty much the whole movie. You got the Newt plot going on in there too, where it’s revealed that ever since drifting with a kaiju brain in the last movie, Newt’s been living with it, talking to it like they’re married, and drifting with it, possibly for sex reasons. Charlie spends most of his time mugging and being a goofus, mostly in the presence of Burn Gorman’s Dr. Gottleib, who once again kinda steals the show. Charlie does get one really great moment where his inevitable heel turn finally happens, and he looks deadass right into the camera and says “I’m going to end the world.” It’s chilling.
This Pacific Rim definitely feels like it was geared more toward younger viewers. Whereas the original was more about adults indulging their most primal childhood fantasies of beating up on nasty monsters in big, mechanical robot suits, this one features a team of teenage cadets stepping up to prove themselves, and it’s got more of a Power Rangers sort of vibe to it. Now that I’m thinking about it, I guess ‘uprising’ could refer to the younger generation getting their chance to save the world?
The common complaint I’ve seen surrounding this film is that none of the CG has any weight to it. That’s perfectly valid, but go too far in the other direction and you get giant CGI robots that look like they can barely move under their own weight. I’m willing to cut them some slack on this point, because the cool thing about giant robots is watching them do shit. It still looks ridiculous to have jaegers airlifted in by six helicopters tethered together. That’s a good way to lose six helicopters if you ask me.
My favorite sequence in the movie is where the last kaiju is making its way up Mt. Fuji, and Gipsy Avenger needs to get up there FAST. A character pops out of nowhere piloting Scrapper to weld a rocket engine to Gipsy’s hand. The rocket goes off and drags Gipsy Avenger into space so it can deliver a flying elbow drop on the kaiju from 50,000 feet. It’s exactly the kind of logic you’d expect a kid playing with action figures to use, and it looks every bit as silly as it sounds. And if I’m being honest? I kinda loved it.
I guess my only real complaint with Pacific Rim 2 is that it’s not quite as majestic as the original? That’s a weird thing to say about a movie where Charlie Day mind-melds with an alien lizard brain, but there it is. This one takes the silly and amplifies it to the point where you know exactly what you’re getting just by looking at the cover. I found myself giggling like an asshole at some of the big kaiju fights, but anytime we’re not being assaulted with stupid, we get some truly tiresome bonding shtick. You can see John Boyega falling asleep during some of these scenes. It’s unreal.
If you wanna see giant robots have a giant flaming chainsaw fight, Pacific Rim 2 delivers. If you want literally anything else out of a giant monster movie, you’re better off waiting for the next Godzilla which apparently most people did anyway.
*The Pacific Rim wiki couldn’t even be bothered to list the jaegers featured in the sequel, if that tells you how little you should care.
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