Movie Review: The Apocalypse Is Uncancelled in "Pacific Rim Uprising"

Guillermo del Toro gives a new director—and young cast—a crack in Pacific Rim Uprising.

For better or worse, Guillermo del Toro is too busy with his sexually-explicit fishman movies these days to continue working on the Pacific Rim franchise.

A shame? Only kinda. An auteur like del Toro was always punching down with Pacific Rim. Sure, he has a way with big-screen beasts, but honestly, he seems to prefer projects about ornate staircases and candelabras and, now, buck-naked fishmen. Have at them, Guillermo! You’ve earned it.

He’s better without the series, and the series is better without him. His initial involvement meant Pacific Rim was graded on a curve, depending on the viewer. (Despite being an average movie, some thought it was elevated by his vision; others thought it was a waste of his precious time. The rest felt that spending more than a few seconds critically thinking about it was a criminal use of their own faculties.)

Thankfully, the sequel, Uprising, is unburdened by del Toro’s reputation. (And del Toro, unburdened by Pacific Rim, could finally collect his Oscar.) Under the stewardship of director Steven S. DeKnight (of Marvel’s Daredevil), Pacific Rim Uprising is free to be your standard, dumb, robot-on-monster flick, no grading curve necessary. All it needs to be is better than Transformers to get a pass. Low bar, cleared.

Uprising takes place ten years after the original, which is a convenient way to replace the dead characters and not invite back the previous picture’s blank survivor, Charlie Hunnam. John Boyega (Finn from Star Wars) is ingeniously cast as Jake Pentecost, who has grown up in the shadow of his formidable, deceased dad Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), and his formidable speeches.

A decade after humanity stopped aliens from demolishing the planet (via a rift in the Pacific Rim), Jake’s carved out a living as a black-market junk trader. That is, until he meets criminal teen and unlikely engineer Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who has caught the eye of the authorities, and gets them conscripted into the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, just in time for a new galactic threat to emerge.

Uprising is certainly a kid-friendly sequel, letting a bunch of teens take charge of the giant, robotic "jaegers" tasked with defeating those otherworldly "kaiju" monsters. An enthusiastic Boyega, in a moment that mimics Elba’s iconic "we are cancelling the apocalypse" call to arms, even recites a variation on the "it’s our time" monologue from The Goonies. Credit for that should probably go to the film’s four screenwriters. Actually, you know what? Four screenwriters should do better than crib from The Goonies. Credit, denied.

Though it’s scrubbed of del Toro’s idiosyncrasies, Uprising is a better tribute to Godzilla production house Toho than Pacific Rim ever was. The first film revelled in rainy night-time battles, but it was impossible to see what was going on. Here, DeKnight offers plenty of daytime fights. Yes, that means it largely resembles Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. (One over-the-top actor, who is revealed to be a surprise villain, may have gone so far as to take classes from the Rita Repulsa School of Dramatic Eye-Widening.) However, it gives us a better glimpse at the unique creature designs.

Nonetheless, Uprising fights an uphill battle against the annoying mechanics of the Pacific Rim universe. For those who don’t remember, each "jaeger" requires two pilots, who engage in a "neural handshake" and physically synchronise their actions to move their anthropomorphised robot. It creates the unique challenge of having to yell-act while working an invisible cross-trainer. Combine it with the heavy crunch of the faux-metal soundtrack and the inanity of the dialogue being delivered, Pacific Rim Uprising comes across as a very silly version of an already-pretty-silly product. Finally.

3/5

In Australian cinemas 22 March 2018. Rated M for science fiction violence.