Pacific Rim: Uprising

Transformers with some thought actually put into it! Plus, the always scrumptious Scott Eastwood always welcome. Yowza!

This movie is, to me, a quite nice special effects extravaganza. In some ways I actually liked this movie more than the first one.

Sure, the underlying story is totally ludicrous. Come one, fighting giant monster with big clumsy robots that requires two people in some strange mind melt to maneuver is just ridiculous. Just send in a couple of fighter jets with some suitable devices that go boom and be done with it. But then, the purpose of these movies are to show off giant robot special effects and on that note they certainly deliver.

This installment in the franchise seems to be more geared towards the younger audience as far as the story and the cast goes. Some people like it, some don’t. Personally I’m fairly neutral.

As with the previous movie the story is not really that much to write home about. It has plot holes big enough to drive I giant robot through. I just had to say that didn’t I? Still, there are some parts of this story that I liked better than the first one. It is a quite straightforward story with clear heroes, clear bad guys.

It does not really have any of that lazy stupid plot twist where some dumb ass politicians are trying to shut down the program to save money. Sure the program is in some danger but this time it is due to a new program that actually sounds reasonable and could improve things. Of course said program gets sabotaged but hey, we, the audience, want our big silly robots right?

The story is also mostly devoid of any stupid SJW crap or silly green preaching. The ridiculous crap about Dinosaurs being the first invasion and that we had terraformed the planet (global warming and all that stuff) so a second invasion was more likely to succeed was just an insult to the more intelligent among the audience and took off a star or two from the first movie for me.

On the whole I quite enjoyed the movie. It delivered where it counts, that is in the special effects department. Loads and loads of special effects mostly involving giant robots and Kaijus slugging it out with massive property damage as a result. They are literally beating each other up with skyscrapers for Christ sake!

The story, acting and everything else is adequate. Nothing more and nothing less. I do miss some colorful characters like Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) from the first movie. The characters in this one was more bland that has to be said.

It seems like a lot of people on IMDb and elsewhere have their pants in a twist over this movie and rates it one or two stars out of ten. That’s just nonsense. A one star rating is for a movie that is truly awful in all aspects. The special effects alone elevates this movie above one star. You might not like the turn towards the younger audience or something else in the movie but it still does not make it a one star movie.

Sure if you are not a science fiction or fantasy fan and do not care about special effects then I guess you could feel this is an awful movie but then why did you watch it in the first place? It is the second installment in the franchise so it should come as no surprise that the movie lives and dies by it’s special effects.

I would say that if you like giant robots, monsters and special effects and don’t mind a fairly thin story aimed for the slightly younger audience then there is a fair change that you will find this movie entertaining.

Boyega makes for a slightly more engaging lead than Charlie Hunnam did in the original, (co-pilot Eastwood is merely as dull as Charlie Hunnam) but Uprising has virtually the exact same ups and down as the first Pacific Rim. If you dig that movie, you'll probably dig this. If you hated it, you'll probably hate this. Me? I'm on the lower end of mixed, for both.

Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.

The only thing that went wrong with this movie was Charlie Day turned out to be the surprise villain!

But....the none-stop action was very awesome.

Reductive or not, there's a lot to be said for eye-candy, and luckily for Steven S. DeKnight he has recruited John Boyega and Scott Eastwood into this CGI-fest that picks up from the, dare I say, far superior enterprise from 2013. It's "Lambert" (Eastwood) who has to knock his new squadron into shape as they prepare to fight an even more deadly army of "Transformers" - nope, sorry, "Kaiju" - as the portal between our world and that occupied by this thing's writers becomes open and extremely dangerous. What now ensues does slightly surprise if only because Boyega already had "The Force Awakens" (2015) under his belt whilst Eastwood had "F&F 8" to pay his manscaping bills. What are they doing here then, you may well ask? At least Cailee Spaeny was still starting out! The story hasn't an original limb in it's shockingly derivative frame, the dialogue is an hybrid of the banal and the gung-ho and the whole look of the film seems aimed at Saturday morning kids television - there's isn't even the obligatory mixed shower scene! It's clearly had some production money thrown at it, and to be fair it does look good - in a repetitive and familiar sort of fashion, but quite why we wanted or needed this is anyone's guess. Straight to streaming, I'd reckon. Streams of what...?