Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
March 21, 2018 11:44 PM - Subscribe

Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, reunites with Mako Mori to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat. [per IMDB]
posted by cendawanita (19 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
All right, who else has got this movie playing on the screens already?

i thought... it was okay. in a fundamental way, it didn't grok what made the first Pacific Rim fun. still, can't say I didn't appreciate what happened to Newt (ha!), and those kaiju drones are mad cool.

(im just a tiny bit put out that since they'd gone to the lengths of voltron-izing the kaijus, why not the jaegers too??)

visual aesthetics are flat and personality-free though, and it's like the movie has too much and not enough plot at the same time. for all the mentions of the new jaegers, the film didn't linger on their hero shots, so why am I supposed to care?
posted by cendawanita at 11:48 PM on March 21, 2018 [4 favorites]


though you know, tiny jaeger IS cute and steals parts of the movie for me. i want me a tiny jaeger
posted by cendawanita at 12:05 AM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I need to know can everything else in the movie eclipse Scott Eastwoods sucking lack of charisma and acting ability?

Because I really enjoyed the first one, and have been hyped since seeing the trailer for this one, and the story seems like it's good enough to stitch together the giant Mech fighting scenes (which is the minimum I'm asking for), but oh dear Lord I keep forgetting Eastwood is even in it, and then I remember and I'm disappointed and I really want everything else to combat the Eastwood fly in my otherwise (possibly) delicious Giant Mech-fighting soup.
posted by Faintdreams at 5:40 AM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


the movie ain't that good to make the answer an easy YES, but he is sufficiently charisma-free tht it goes without saying. he did amuse me for somehow making the choice to play his chara like he's the jilted ex to Boyega though.
posted by cendawanita at 6:35 AM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


I was really excited to see this before I found out that Mako/Rinko Kikuchi had apparently been demoted to a walk-on cameo. Literally the only returning character I cared about!

(Still probably gonna do a bargain Tuesday admission, but based on the trailers and reviews I feel like the filmmakers may have failed to understand certain aspects of the first film's appeal.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:41 AM on March 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


Literally the only returning character I cared about!

No love for the mad scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman?
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:13 PM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


(im just a tiny bit put out that since they'd gone to the lengths of voltron-izing the kaijus, why not the jaegers too??)

As I said to my wife, they can't form Voltron because there's only 4 of them... ( I had forgotten about Adorable-Bot, which could have worked... )

Obligatory MC Frontalot link

See also: Venture Bros...
posted by mikelieman at 6:21 AM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


No love for the mad scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman?

Burn Goram had very little mad in his scientist, right?
posted by mikelieman at 6:23 AM on March 24, 2018


it's very likely if this was a 100% western-funded production, shao would be revealed as the bad guy (head of corporation; asshole genius), instead it's the scrappy, not-up-to-corporate-code, loner white guy newt. that said, i did enjoy that swerve.

more of my friends finally saw it today so i finally had ppl to talk to, and hashing it out just reminds me tht i find one major flaw is how much the movie robbed its main stars (the kaiju and jaegers) of their requisite hero walk. Del Toro treated the jaegers like luchadors, hence explaining why each got their intro they way they do, but lord, can anyone recall the new jaegers? does anyone care about their pilots? (of course not we're never introduced to them before the attack on the moyulan shatterdome, so we don't even get to feel sorry before the recruits hopped on board). Scrapper was really the only memorable one because it was given the time to have a personality. Hell, on paper the new weaponry is legit cool, but again, i don't care.
posted by cendawanita at 7:30 AM on March 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Burn Goram had very little mad in his scientist, right?

Well, he spent most of the first movie being mad at Newt.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:39 PM on March 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


I enjoyed this, but it was definitely sillier than the first, which didn't exactly shy away from silly.

I agree that not making the Shao Industries head into the bad guy was a good play on Western audience expectations. And I did crack up at the reveal of Newt's significant other.

The plot was kind of nonsensical, and I thought they had too many new characters. If you're going the YA route, focus on the teenagers already. I guess John Boyega's partner served a purpose but the not even love interest lady was definitely unnecessary.

Still, perfectly acceptable robots vs monsters flick.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:55 PM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ranger, uh... Rick? Whatever. The boring guy, "handsome and sexy." Anyway -- that character was not quite the movie's Jar Jar Binks or Wesley Crusher, but he could have been left out entirely.

It kind of felt like two stories, with the second half of one torn off and the first part grafted onto the other story.

It wasn't a bad movie. It was, at least, the second-most fun Giant Punchy Robot movie I've seen. I like John Boyega's character quirks. I liked how it seemed completely predictable and then NOPE, we're going to swerve over here now, and yet some of the predictable stuff still happened.
posted by Foosnark at 6:54 AM on March 26, 2018


I enjoyed it. I wasn't happy with what was done with Mako's character, she was sort of fridged for John Boyega's character, and man, the score was a big let down compared to the "hell yeah, play that music!" work done by Ramin Djawadi. I only noticed his theme for Pacific Rim used ONCE and only during the montage when they were preparing to go to Japan. The movie would have easily earned another star in quality for me if Lorne Balfe had played more with it, or even tried riffing off of it. I probably should listen to it again on its own to give Balfe a fair shake, but it felt kind of forgettable.

Those are actually my two biggest complaints. I liked that there was a visible effort for more inclusion and diversity in the casting (in part due to the Chinese funding), but the head of Shao didn't have to be a woman, for example, so I loved that aspect and that she was a tech whiz at that (Go STEM!).

Whereas Del Toro had his Del Toro touch of darkness, and vision of giant robots and kaiju, in nod to the Japanese tradition, this felt much more attuned to the anime version of that - what with the inclusion of the teen cadets as the fighters in the giant robots. Especially when they started running around in bright and sunny Tokyo - it very much felt like an anime adaptation. I was cool with that.

I agree with the above, there was drop in eyeballing the jaegers like in the first film. I don't know if this was because DeKnight's previous fighting experience was from his Spartacus days or what. The fight scenes themselves were fine, but not as exciting or dramatic as PR. I'd go even so far to say with the exception of perhaps the big finale felt a little rushed in terms of the fighting, the film wanted to setup the big crisis of the mega kaiju making its way to the peak of Mt. Fuji uninterrupted more than taking its time with the Tokyo brawl.

I warmed up to Boyega as the film progressed. Eastwood was fine. He was just fine and was a nice balance to Boyega's super charm. I can't wait to see more of Boyega in the future. Evil Charlie? Sure, why not have consequences to touching an alien mind?

Pacific Rim 3: WE GONNA COME TO YOUR HOUSE, I dunno how that'll go. I expect this film will make its budget back and more in Asia, which is the market that saved the first film.
posted by Atreides at 1:06 PM on March 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I saw Pacific Rim: Jaeger Babies last night, and I thought it was great.

I really don't see much of a difference between this one and the first in terms of plotting or characterization.

There were a few things... yeah, they should have found a different name for the main Jaeger. And they shouldn't have fridge Mako Mori. They should have slowed the robots down - the speed of their movements failed to create the sense of mass they needed (particularly Scrapper, who seemed to weigh about as much as an empty soda can). And it did lack Del Toro's distinctive visual style, although I thought this one was perfectly adequate. I'm really not getting the comparisons to Transformers, I mean those films are visually incomprehensible.

I didn't even hate Eastwood as much as I expected to given the reviews. He was doing like six extra unnecessary things with his face every time he had a line, but other than that he didn't bug me.

I thought it was really entertaining and fun!
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 2:39 AM on March 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


he did amuse me for somehow making the choice to play his chara like he's the jilted ex to Boyega though.

Some background to that apparently comes from the novel. The mysterious "record" that gets mentioned and dropped when Jake and Amara arrive at the Shatterdome? Presumably there is an exam in the pilots' training where you and your partner pilot have to maintain a Drift Link for at least 20 minutes. Jake and Nate went 4 hours.
posted by radwolf76 at 10:19 AM on April 4, 2018


> this felt much more attuned to the anime version of that - what with the inclusion of the teen cadets as the fighters in the giant robots. Especially when they started running around in bright and sunny Tokyo - it very much felt like an anime adaptation.

I was laughing really hard at all the mecha anime tropes they hit, including the teen cadets who suddenly have to pilot the robots in actual combat. I about lost my shit when the kaiju headed towards Tokyo - of course Tokyo has to be destroyed by giant monsters! And then I totally lost it at the shot of the Gundam statue.

Overall, I had a fun time!
posted by needled at 4:32 PM on April 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was laughing really hard at all the mecha anime tropes they hit, including the teen cadets who suddenly have to pilot the robots in actual combat. I about lost my shit when the kaiju headed towards Tokyo - of course Tokyo has to be destroyed by giant monsters! And then I totally lost it at the shot of the Gundam statue.

Same. Unpopular opinion time - I didn't think the first PacRim was the best Mecha/Kaiju movie. It felt dark and hidden and often times too complicated for its own good. It was OK, and I enjoyed watching it, but I really expected more like the sequel here. Teen cadets! Weightless mecha! Pointless super moves! A storyline that you mostly can see coming a mile away, so you can sit back in the chair and enjoy your popcorn!

I mean sure you could say those are _negatives_, but sometimes you just want to sit back and chomp popcorn without all the weight of the world looming over you.
posted by Kyol at 6:27 PM on July 8, 2018


This movie had the same weird disease so many big budget actioners have these days.

Finding a way to turn something silly and dumb into something bewilderingly complex. Like this film has like 4 opening acts and does so much hot potato world building, introducing a neat idea only to immediately drop it. (party-squatters, jager black market, rogue jagers, Kiju cults, etc) So so many subplots and complexity just to put 3 kiaju and 4 jagers in tokyo to fight...

Also we don't get an honest to goodness jager vs kiaju fight until like 75% of the way into the movie.
posted by French Fry at 9:44 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Also we don't get an honest to goodness jager vs kiaju fight until like 75% of the way into the movie.

This was one of my biggest complaints (other than fridging Mako's character), to be honest.
posted by Atreides at 1:32 PM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


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