Review of Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) by Donald L — 22 Mar 2018

I just finished watching Pacific Rim Uprising with my adult daughter, and we both enjoyed the movie. I may be a bit biased in this review as I am a big fan of monster versus mecha movies going back to the original Godzilla, etc. In fact I have seen Pacific Rim 40 times already, and enjoy it every time. In Pacific Rim Uprising, I will give the good and the not so good without giving away spoilers if possible. The good points are as follows:

1. The introduction by John Boyega's character, Jake Pentecost briefly reviewing what has happened in the past 10 years was satisfactory. It was enough to give anybody who has not seen the first movie an idea of what occurred.

2. There are more action scenes, than the first movie, mostly with Jaegers fighting Jaegers, but there is some good action when the real monsters appear and put up a fight.

3. John Boyega as Jake Pentecost and Cailee Spaeny as Amara Namani had some good scenes as the main characters. They worked well on this one, I thought.

4. There is more interaction with the Jaeger pilot cadets. The first movie had very little dialogue of the veteran Russian and Chinese Jaeger pilots.

5. The fight scenes were mostly in the day light hours, which is fine by me. Battles do not always take place at night, but I know why they did it in the first movie.

6. There is a plot in the movie, and it is sci fi, So if you are a die hard monster and mecha fan you may appreciate it. If not, you may have a hard time accepting it. I gladly welcomed the plot for what it was. It made sense considering the circumstances in the last 10 years since the Breach was closed.

7. The interaction between Charlie Day's Newt Geiszler and Burn Gorman's Dr. Gottleib were toned down and not so manic crazy like the first movie. It also made sense to me how they evolved as characters.

Now for the not so good points:

1. First and foremost, when I watch action movies I like a good soundtrack. Some movies can provide a good soundtrack that fits the theme of the movie. I thought Pacific Rim had a pretty good soundtrack throughout. But watching Pacific Rim Uprising, the soundtrack was meh. There was only one part that paid tribute to the first movie that got me going, then that was it.

2. There could have been some more interaction with the other veteran Jaeger pilots. If you see the movie you will see what I mean.

3. If the third act had a better soundtrack to it, to give that pending sense of doom, I would have appreciated it better how it ended.

Overall I would give the movie an 8 out of 10, for action, character interaction, and special effects. It loses 2 points for the soundtrack.