Pacific Rim: Uprising

In Pacific Rim: Uprising, we get giant robots fighting equally towering monsters, and the humans who pilot the robots.  The massive creatures have been brought to life with the finest special effects Hollywood has to offer.  The human characters have been given less care, as they talk solely in the cliches of action movies from the last 40 years.  It's impossible to care about anything or anyone here, and after a while, even the spectacle of watching the robots grapple with the monsters wears thin.

I'm going to say something that my inner 10-year-old is going to hate me for, but I think I have had my fill with movies about giant robots saving the world.  I'm at my limit, and I can't see how Hollywood can breathe new life into the idea.  This movie offers us the sight of big things crashing into buildings, bridges and pretty much anything that isn't nailed down, and then repeats those sights over and over again with little difference.  We also get to see a lot of people fleeing in terror, if you're into that sort of thing.  What we don't get to see is the sight that I really wanted to observe - The clean up job after these battles are over.  The film's extended climax takes place on the streets of Tokyo, where giant robots pretty much level everything in their path in order to stop a monster.  At one point, we see one of the robots shooting at the monster, and as it fires, it drops bullet shells that look to be about the size of a Buick onto the streets below.  I could only ask myself who had the unfortunate job of clearing away all those shells after the battle was over? 

So if all you want to see is a lot of action depicting giant robots (called Jaegers here) fighting monsters (Kaiju), and don't care about the people piloting the massive war mechs, or the people fleeing in terror, then Pacific Rim: Uprising will be right up your alley.  I imagine the Transformers crowd will eat this stuff up, since it's more of the same.  We also get to see Jaegers fighting other Jaegers, and while it's at least a different kind of visual, it gets just as old as all the other images in the film.  The script (credited to four different writers) can't make any of this have an impact, because none of it is important.  Nothing that happens, and nothing that is spoken by the human actors has any bearing on the paper-thin plot.  Oh, the actors are definitely trying.  I won't accuse anyone of phoning it in here.  But the script can't make a single line of dialogue or character interaction seem believable, so it feels like a lot of wasted effort.

The plot: It's been 10 years since the events of 2013's Pacific Rim, and Earth has been Kaiju-free, though the lead scientists are still coming up with ways to fight back just in case they return.  The original film (which was directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who does not return here) was largely about young misfit soldiers learning to work together and become one mind in order to pilot the Jaegers that could fight the monsters that were coming up from a dimensional rift and attacking Earth.  This time, there's less emphasis on the young pilots, who are largely pushed aside, and speak only in Army Recruit movie cliches.  Our hero here is Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), who is the son of Stacker Pengcost, a hero who sacrificed himself to save the world last time.  Jake has no intention of living up to his father's name or legacy, but is more or less forced back into service.  Cue numerous scenes where he argues with a fellow Jaeger pilot (Scott Eastwood) about whether or not he is worthy to his famous last name, and melodramatic dialogue about how Jake doesn't want his father's legacy to define him.

There are some returning characters, such as Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), a former Jaeger pilot who is now a world leader, and the oddball scientists Hermann (Burn Gorman) and Newt (Charlie Day).  Both of these characters exist as comic relief in the film, especially Day, who quips and mugs his way through most of his scenes, while never developing into an interesting personality, despite the movie finding ways to cram him into the plot at every opportunity.  Of the new characters, the only one who matters besides Jake is a young orphan girl named Amara (Cailee Spaney), who has a lot of spunk, but no real personality or character motivation.  We learn early that she is driven by a family tragedy caused by the Kaiju, but this angle doesn't have the gravitas that you would expect.  But hey, at least it's something.  Her fellow young Jaeger pilot recruits are so thinly written, they almost seem to disappear into nothingness right there on the screen.  They're a multicultural bunch with simple personalities, such as the Russian girl with a temper but a good heart underneath, a nice Asian guy, and an Indian boy who is nervous and skittish. 

Yes, Pacific Rim: Uprising looks like it cost a fortune to make, but it's all at the expense of a script that doesn't deserve the time, money and attention that's been lavished upon it.  It's the kind of movie where it seems like the filmmakers knew that the project itself is creatively bankrupt, so they just kept on throwing money at it, hoping that it would cover the overall sense that the movie didn't need to be made in the first place.  They simply throw in more giant robots, more monsters, more massive weapons, and build a soundtrack of wall-to-wall destructive noise, but to no avail.  Even a spectacle such as this needs an emotional foothold, and this has none.  I'm not asking for my robots vs. monsters movie to be deep or intellectual.  I just want to feel like there was an effort at the script level to make this more than the shoveled-out sequel that it is.

The movie will likely "win" at the box office this weekend, then quickly be forgotten by just about anyone who watches it.  The final scene hints at a third film, and judging by what's on display here, I can only view it as hopeless optimism.  Don't stop believing, Pacific Rim: Uprising.

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