Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

[ketchuplover]

Gravity Sling. Nuff said.

[BetterButter]

[Bruinsfan]

I couldn't tell for sure, but did anyone else get the impression that the kaiju pull a Voltron and merge themselves together into one even bigger kaiju?

[wanderingstar]

I've been ready for this movie for so long. The trailer has me excited. I hope the actual movie is good. Boyega looks good!

[topanga]

No Idris?

[TrininisaScorp]

I LOVED the first movie so much, but I'm going to struggle with no Idris or Charlie (and his shit accent).  John Boyega looks great though....channeling Striker well.  The jaegers look GREAT though.

[SimoneS]

I didn't think that the first movie did well enough for a sequel, but good to see John Boyega in the lead role. 

[xaxat]

So is that Jaeger on Jaeger violence?

 

On 10/10/2017 at 6:49 AM, SimoneS said:

I didn't think that the first movie did well enough for a sequel, but good to see John Boyega in the lead role. 

China.

[Joe]

I rewatched the first one yesterday, to see if I still liked it. Turns out I did! Good fun. A bit silly in parts, but I've seen worse. And I noticed something odd. All the fight scenes take place at night, sometimes in the rain or underwater. I wonder if that was to disguise any possibly wonky CGI. I'm glad that the sequel will have daytime fights.

[Danny Franks]

No Idris Elba is good for me. He was terrible in the first movie (and he's an actor I find staggeringly overrated anyway). Charlie Hunnam was an uninspiring hero too, so again I'm glad he's not in it. But I do hope that Rinko Kikuchi has a decent sized role, and isn't relegated to a bystander.

The fight scenes in the first movie were mostly really well done. Atmospheric and fraught with real tension, and the city-smashing bits were a lot of fun. But I don't think bigger is necessarily going to improve that.

Also, I hope this movie makes me a believer in Scott Eastwood. Because at the moment, all I think when I see him is that it creeps me out just how much he looks like his dad.

[Joe]

So I saw Uprising. And I think I like it better than PR1. If it wasn't for the one-two punch of Avengers and Star Wars, I might go see it again. Just good fun, I feel.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

John Boyega discusses Pacific Rim Uprising

[wanderingstar]

Just back from seeing this, and it was pretty solid. There was a lot to like about it. John Boyega was his usual charming self. I liked seeing Jake with big sister, Mako - if only for a few fleeting scenes. Speaking of which, I can't believe they killed off Mako. That was my one big disappointment in this film. I wanted more of her - specifically, I wanted to see more of the Mako/Jake relationship. (My other big disappointment was that no one once yelled, "Don't chase the rabbit!")

In other plot twist news, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Newton was overtaken by the Precursors. He was always a little kaiju crazy.

I was meh on the new additions. Amara was an ok character, but I could have done without her if it meant more Mako. The other recruits weren't developed enough for me to get invested in them. I did like Tian Jing's Liwen Shao. Her character actually had a mini-arc that ended up being cool.

As for the action, I enjoyed all the Jaeger-kaiju battles, though I'll always have a special place in my heart for the nighttime fights of the first movie.

Overall, this movie was the kind of dumb fun I needed at the end of a long week.

ETA: NPR's Glen Weldon has written a hilarious review of Pacific Rim Uprising - and maybe one of my all-time favorite film reviews.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Gillian Rosh

[tennisgurl]

So basically this movie could be summed up as: “I cut the breaks! Wildcard bitches!” 

[afterbite]

Boyega saved what little of this movie he could, but otherwise it was just not very good. There was no heart to it. No emotion. People died and I just didn't care, because they were pretty much interchangeable shells. (Not Mako - the new ones.) The girl who built the jaeger - how? Her parents were killed when she was in the 2nd grade, maybe. Explain to me how she moved from that to such a gifted engineer that she could build a huge fighting robot. Explain to me how she assembled it all by herself. Or don't explain it to me and don't give her a ridiculous backstory and razor thin connection to the main character (Boyega) and actually build on the characters I actually have an emotional connection to already (Mako) or shave down on the Space Camp* cadets so I can actually spend enough time with any of them to be able to tell them apart, much less care if they're in danger.

Also, science doesn't work that way. You can't have an idea you've never tried in practice and a) produce it and b) have it work perfectly with a couple of hours of turn-around. This is a story-telling fail. They start out with the nerd with the bad haircut saying that he thinks propulsion might work but that he needs help with it to having the nerd with the bad haircut somehow manage to construct the mechanism and have it perform as anticipated over what seems to be a timespan of a couple of hours. You can make that less patently ridiculous by having him have constructed prototypes or having him have already developed it and have it be ready to be fitted to jaegers just as jaegers are becoming obsolete. FFS, a few small lines changed in the script and it goes from laughable to maybe plausible.

The fighting was fun, but they spent way too much time not having monsters and robots fighting and the movie just wasn't very interesting during the non-fighting bits. Without Boyega to make it palatable, this movie would have been painful to watch for at least half of its runtime (and pretty much all of its non-fighting runtime).

*By that, I mean that just like in the movie Space Camp, it was clear that the kids were going to be thrust into the heart of the action and have to (try to) save the day.

Edited March 25, 2018 by afterbite

[VCRTracking]

Liked the first Pacific Rim but this looks like a "I'll catch it when it's on TNT in a few years." for me.

Edited March 25, 2018 by VCRTracking

[tennisgurl]

The worst thing about this movie was them killing Mako off. Not cool movie. Not cool. What a lame way to off one of the main heroes of the first movie. 

Anyway, the rest was actually alright. I admit, it actually managed to throw me for a few loops, and for a pure popcorn movie (even moreso than the first one) thats pretty impressive. I fully bought that Liwen Shao was basically a Bond villain with a fabulous wardrobe, or that her drones would end up becoming self aware and would start killing people, so I was actually pretty surprised that she turned out to be more or less on the up and up (even helping to save the day) and it was actually an alien possessed Newt who was the bad guy. 

John Boyega was as charming as always, and the rest of the cast pretty good, if undeveloped. I wish he had more time with Mako and developed more of their relationship than bringing in the scrappy young girl, but she was fine. The rest of the youngsters were likable enough and sold their comradeship pretty well, considering how little time they spent on them. 

So, not as good as the first one, but I wouldn't call it a waste of time either.

[Joe]

So, is it just me, or should the world be doomed at the end? The giant combining kaiju was killed on the slopes of Mount Fuji. Its blood went everywhere. Surely it would soak into the ground, and some would mix with the rare earths.

Minor disappointment: no fastball special. They had the mini jaeger right there, couldn't one of the big ones pick it up and throw it?

[wanderingstar]

Here's a twist I didn't see coming: ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’ Conquers ‘Black Panther’ at Weekend Box Office

[JessePinkman]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

I fully bought that Liwen Shao was basically a Bond villain with a fabulous wardrobe, or that her drones would end up becoming self aware and would start killing people, so I was actually pretty surprised that she turned out to be more or less on the up and up (even helping to save the day) and it was actually an alien possessed Newt who was the bad guy. 

A few years ago on The Walking Dead a black guy would die and another would pop up a few episodes before his death to replace him. I guess only one Asian lady badass for this series?

John Boyega oozes charm, he's a great actor with a fantastic presence and I hope he's able to be in big budget stuff like this for a long time but this movie was just a lot of noise and light. I just didn't care man. The characters were totally flat. I didn't get that him and Scott Eastwood used to be friends and Scott Eastwood was mad at him for leaving or whatever until the middle of the movie. Amara was just a weird character, there was this...tension between her and Jake that in any other movie would be sexual but she was like 13 (I just looked up the actress, she's 20 but definitely doesn't look it). It felt off.

The academy cadets were far too underdeveloped for me to care about them going into battle. And I don't even know what was up with that random girl that was in 3 scenes that they were kind of sort of trying to build a love triangle around with Jake and Nate. Was she there to remind us that these are two totally straight dudes that are 100% not gay for each other? Well...good job I guess?

Good effects, emotionally vacant movie.

[afterbite]

10 hours ago, JessePinkman said:

The academy cadets were far too underdeveloped for me to care about them going into battle. And I don't even know what was up with that random girl that was in 3 scenes that they were kind of sort of trying to build a love triangle around with Jake and Nate. Was she there to remind us that these are two totally straight dudes that are 100% not gay for each other? Well...good job I guess?

Good effects, emotionally vacant movie.

In re: the hot girl who pops up long enough to be hot and then, later, to remind us that she's hot - I hope there was some sort of story arc for her that got lost in editing. If what we saw was the sum total of what was written for her, I feel the need to smack some folks. She was given the traditional movie cues of 'this is an important character' and then... existed almost solely to be hot? And maybe, like you said, remind viewers that the two male leads were 100% straight dudes even while also writing them with a healthy dose of hoyay? (I quoted the last line of your post simply because it's an excellent summation.)

On a random note, I was really disappointed that Jake's name was Jake. His dad's name was Stacker Pentacost. That's a badass name right there. Jake Pentacost? Not so much.

[shrewd.buddha]

This one did not have as much spark as the first. It did not help that the main character came off like a spoiled rich kid who kept getting second chances. And the dialogue was flat.
Guillermo del Toro has the ability to make cliched material feel fresh - - his directing was sorely missed. 
In fairness, the characters did say that they were not not as heroic as Stacker Pentacost and did not have the ability to give great speeches. They were correct. 

[BetterButter]

[raven]

On 3/25/2018 at 8:42 PM, tennisgurl said:

The worst thing about this movie was them killing Mako off. Not cool movie. Not cool. What a lame way to off one of the main heroes of the first movie. 

Hated that.  They have a potential good story with the sibling relationship and two charismatic actors to pull it off and they kill one of them and stick the other with an annoying kid or the cookie cutter Eastwood.  Ugh.

I really enjoyed the first one and this one was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  I knew I was in trouble when the kid showed up, I didn't want to watch what was essentially a YA video game type of movie.  The first one wasn't great art or anything, but it had heart and was fun.  I didn't realize this one was mostly jaeger on jaeger fighting - to sell toys, I'm sure, since this one seemed aimed at a younger demo. 

John Boyega's likability and charm single-handedly made this watchable for me.   The idea of the precursors taking over the scientist was intriguing and they left the door wide open for another movie; I like JB and hope it happens for him but if it's more like this I definitely won't see it in the theater; I'm glad I didn't spend money to see this one there.

On 3/26/2018 at 9:11 AM, afterbite said:

 And maybe, like you said, remind viewers that the two male leads were 100% straight dudes even while also writing them with a healthy dose of hoyay?

That was so odd!!  At one point Boyega's character even says that Eastwood's character is "handsome and hot" or something.  They actually had some chemistry together.  Why not go there?  Whatever the woman's name was; she was so randomly inserted into their scenes, there must be stuff on the cutting room floor.