Pacific Rim: Uprising

Dir: Steven S. DeKnight

2018

***

I enjoyed 2013’s Pacific Rim but I always thought that it took itself a little too seriously but as entertaining as it was, and to be brutally honest, I thought it was a waste of Guillermo del Toro’s talents. However, as big-budget b-movies go, it was popcorn-tastic. It really didn’t need a sequel but after watching 2018’s Pacific Rim Uprising I’m not at all upset that they made one as it was just as fun and entertaining as the first. The concept is nothing particularly original and there were times when I thought it got dangerously close to Transformers and Power Rangers territory but it manages to hold its own for most of the film and it’s a great tribute of classic Kaiju films of yesteryear. It was a shame Charlie Hunnam wasn’t back from the previous film and a little strange how his character was never mentioned but it was good to have Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman reprise their roles (they were easily the more interesting characters from the first film) and John Boyega is quite impressive in what is his first lead role. Boyega’s likability is a big part of what makes Pacific Rim Uprising an entertaining watch, he is the exact opposite of Scott Eastwood with whom I’m afraid the film could have done without. Young Cailee Spaeny is also impressive in her first big feature performance. The story takes place in 2035 – ten years after the Battle of the Breach where humanity was saved from the onslaught of the interdimensional travelling Kaiju. Former Jaeger pilot Jake Pentecost (Boyega) – son of Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba in the first film) – makes a living by stealing and selling Jaeger parts on the black market in the Los Angeles area. He squats in abandoned luxury homes and trades cars, electrical equipment and other treasures for the things that really matter – Oreos and hot sauce. He’s living the dream in a post-war world. After he tracks part of a disabled Jaeger's power core to the secret workshop of fifteen year-old Jaeger enthusiast Amara Namani (Spaeny), both are arrested by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps after an altercation between Amara's small, single-pilot Jaeger Scrapper and the Police Jaeger November Ajax. Jake's adoptive sister and PPDC Secretary General Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) gives Jake a choice between prison or returning to PPDC as an instructor with young Amara as his recruit. Jake is not his father and dislikes living in his shadow but he has little choice. Upon arriving at a Shatterdome in China, Jake starts training Jaeger program cadets with his estranged former co-pilot Nate Lambert (Eastwood). Nate and Mako reveal to him that the Jaeger program is threatened by Shao Corporation's drone program, which offers to mass-produce Jaeger drones developed by Liwen Shao (Jing Tian) and Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day). Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman), still working at the PPDC, is working to develop a power source gained from Kaiju blood – a sub-plot that isn’t mentioned again but is one to look out for in future installments. He and Geiszler cross paths and reminisce, agreeing that they should have dinner some time, Geiszler adding that it was about time he met his wife. Jake and Nate are asked to take a Jaeger to Sydney to escort Mako who is due to deliver a final assessment to determine the authorization of the drones at a PPDC council meeting but a rogue Jaeger called Obsidian Fury starts destroying the City and goes after Mako’s helicopter. Jake and Nate do their best to try and save as many civilians as possible but Mako’s helicopter is knocked out of the sky by Obsidian Fury and explodes on impact. Her death prompts the PPDC council to authorize the drone program and order their immediate deployment. Moments before her death, Mako transmitted the location of a defunct Jaeger production facility in Siberia before Jake failed to save her. Jake and Nate travel to the area in their own Jaeger, but Obsidian Fury destroys the complex and engages them in battle. Upon destroying its reactor, they find that Obsidian Fury was controlled by a Kaiju's secondary brain, which testing shows was grown on Earth. We then see a rather wonderful ‘Hi honey, I’m home!” scene where Geiszler comes home, starts speaking to his wife who is out of shot, where it is revealed she is in fact a Kaiju brain floating in a jar in the corner of the bedroom. The Kaiju clearly got to him in the first film without anyone noticing and his mind has been taken over by the Precursors, the alien race who created the Kaiju, due to his regularly drifting with Kaiju brains. Much like Charlie Day’s character in It’s Always Sunny in California, he plays the lovable good guy/bad guy rather well. When the drones reach their respective locations, they are taken over by cloned Kaiju brains and simultaneously attack Shatterdomes worldwide, inflicting heavy casualties on the PPDC forces and incapacitating almost all Jaegers. Hermann Gottlieb seeks out Geiszler for help, only to discover that Geiszler is the mastermind behind the attack (and possibly Mako's assassination). Seeking to destroy the world for the Precursors, Geiszler, now their emissary, commands the Kaiju-Jaeger hybrids to open new breaches all over the world. Although Shao is able to destroy the drones, three powerful Kaijus named Raijin, Hakuja, and Shrikethorn – emerge from the breaches and unite in Tokyo. The team realizes that the Precursors' goal is to activate the Ring of Fire (around the Pacific Rim) by detonating Mount Fuji with the Kaiju's chemically reactive blood, spreading toxic gas into the atmosphere and wiping out all life on Earth, terraforming the planet for Precursor colonization. A brilliant nod to all the Kaiju films of yesteryear, finally answering why they always seem to be stomping through Tokyo. The cadets are mobilized while Gottlieb and Shao repair the PPDC's four remaining Jaegers; Gottlieb invents Kaiju-blood-powered rockets, which launch the team to Tokyo. Although the Jaegers initially repel the three Kaiju, Geiszler merges them into a Mega-Kaiju using robotic parasites from one of Shao's factories that quickly overpowers the Jaegers, injures Nate, kills Suresh, and destroys three of the four Jaegers, leaving Gipsy Avenger as the only operational Jaeger. Jake and Amara pilot it against the Mega-Kaiju, with Shao remote piloting Scrapper and aiding them by locating a rocket and welding it to Gipsy's right hand and sending the Jaeger into the atmosphere and allowing to freefall back to Earth, colliding into the Mega-Kaiju and killing it as Jake and Amara survive by ejecting into Scrapper and crashing down a mountainside. Geiszler, angered by the Mega-Kaiju's failure, tries to flee, but is subdued by Nate. Some time later, Geiszler, now in the custody of the PPDC, threatens that Precursors will attack the world over and over again. Jake replies that next time, humanity will be the ones attacking the Precursors. A great finish, however it really felt like business as usual towards the start. I felt like a cheap cash-in of the first after an initially exciting opening credits sequence and I feared the worst. Then the twist regarding Charlie Day’s character happened and the Kaiju attacked and Pacific Rim was exactly where it should be – in cheesy b-movie territory and owning it like a boss. The story got more and more silly and got better as it did. Guillermo del Toro said early on that he had the most fun writing for Burn Gorman’s  Dr. Hermann Gottlieb and Charlie Day’s Dr. Newton Geiszler and that’s where his focus was going to be and it was definitely the right decision. The big fights weren’t really the exciting bit – that was covered in the first film – the the follow up concentrates on everything else. As stupid as it was, I really loved the final match on Mount Fuji. I also thought it refreshingly brave to kill off one of the young cadets – one of the younger, sweeter ones at that. Again, it’s no masterpiece but any dumb action film that has a man on brain romance and is prepared to kill the nice kid is okay by me.