Review of Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) by Shea H — 08 Apr 2018

Pacific rim uprising is a film that suffers from the same issues that a lot of surprise blockbuster sequels seem to have. It has an identity crisis, sometimes trying too hard to be original and other times trying to ride the waves created by the original film through repeated jokes and forced callbacks.

Uprising attempts to create a much deeper world lore for itself surrounding the events that happened in the first one. Characters are flushed out through a lot of exposition and dialogue so thin that it may as well be exposition. Where the first film took the route of minimal background and all action, this movie spends the majority of its time as a campy sci-fi drama. And the action that is there is grander and flashier, with Robots (yagers) that are more mobile and all play to the surprise hits from the first film (people loved the surprise sword? let's give them all swords, some of them two). The pure monster on robot action is satisfying to see, but is eventually ruined by a try-hard villain and what can only be described as a power rangers/transformers-esque combine the monsters attempt.

When the pure action is there, it's good, but there is so much getting in the way of it that it adds a lot of pacing issues and character backgrounds that ultimately fail to make you care about them. For a movie like pacific rim to work, it needs to focus on the action.