Moments of mech punching greatness
When going to see a movie like Pacific Rim, I feel like some expectations must be left at the door. I like Del Toro as a director, but I didn’t love the original movie, so when I heard there was a sequel from a random non-stylised (in comparison) director, my expectations plummeted. I don’t think I would’ve rushed out to see this movie unless I went with a certain friend, and we go see movies we think they’ll be terrible on purpose. So, I guess in summary, when I walked into Pacific Rim: Uprising, I expected nothing but robots punching monsters with a super minimal story and you know what? That’s exactly what I got.
The story opened with John Boyega character (Idris Elba’s son) being disillusioned with the world and meets Cailee Spaenys young mechanic character ala the newest Transformers and they form a strange union just like the newest transformers and they have shenanigans with giant robots… just like the newest transformers. The story has more comedy than you would think (THANKS, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!) and because of that, has a few problems with tone. From scene to scene the movie doesn’t know what it is and skips from drama to robot violence, to dumb quips intermingled with “story”.
Most of the internets complaints with the movie, it seems, is the story and from what I can tell, that’s not really the issue. Besides a random side mission that they undertake with literally no payoff, the story isn’t that bad… again, for what the movie is. I had no problem suspending disbelief the whole way through the film, except for the final fight towards the end. Again, my only real problem was that it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. There was a super cheesy badly shot, one shot montage and it made me physically cringe. Which I guess is more on the script than it is on the story. The script is cliché-ridden and quite hard to listen in points but kept itself pretty close to the original which made it feel like a legitimate sequel, even though the great Del Toro was nowhere to be seen.
The last thing I need to mentio, is the CGI. I asked the person I went with after the movie if the CGI was really good, or terrible/ too cartoony. I couldn’t tell. I want to say it was great but I think we’ve come to the consensus that; the robots looked fantastic, so much so that the live action people looked fake next to them, but everything else… looked just okay. I’m not sure why, but I guess if you make a movie about giant robots and monsters, they have to look great?
This movie is an enigma to me. I feel like it suffers from an identity crisis, but also knows exactly what it was aiming to be. So I guess, at some points its goofy and won’t take itself too seriously but then in the next scene it borders trying to be an actual drama and it’s jarring. Did it make the movie bad? A little. Did I not enjoy the film? No, I liked it and I think it’s because I knew exactly what it was. So, if you want to see this, don’t expect greatness; expect giant robots punching giant aliens. Then the winner in that fight isn’t them, it’s you.