One my favorite film directors is Guillermo del Toro, and I thoroughly enjoyed Pacific Rim and his vision for that film, so when I heard that a sequel was coming out I was looking forward to it. However, when I heard that my favorite director would not be returning, and after looking at the trailers I was a little less than eager to watch Pacific Rim: Uprising. So after the previous film the aliens and Kaiju were gone and rebuilding the earth became the new priority, and protecting it as well given what was left over from all of the previous carnage. Marshal Pentecost's son, who is thief and loser gets forced into helping train the young Jaeger pilots, one of which is quite a rebel like he is. Together they confront a new threat from a horizon that they didn't expect it to come from. John Boyega (fresh off of The Last Jedi) leads the charge as Marshal Pentecost's son Jake, who essentially was running from his father's legacy, but eventually decides to fight the good fight. Mr. Boyega is a fine actor with great talent, and his character showed great potential, but due to poor writing he wasn't given an opportunity to really shine in this film. For the most part though, what is there with him in it is pretty good. Scott Eastwood (yes that is Clint Eastwood's son) had a tremendous amount of potential as Nate, who was one of the commanding Jaeger corp officers, and quite a good pilot, but once again as with Mr. Boyega, the writers didn't give him much to work with which is real shame because there was something quite good there. Cailee Spaeny playing as Amari led the charge for the teenage children that destroyed the film through and through with their whining and bickering that is common in junior high, and is not something that I wanted to watch as an adult. Needless to say that is all I have to say about her and her fellow teenage co-stars; this was perhaps the single greatest writing disaster of the entire film. Fortunately Burn Gorman and Charlie Day returned as their perspective characters Dr. Gotlieb and Newt, and even though they weren't as good as they were in the previous film, it was an added bonus to have them in this film. Lastly, Rinko Kikuchi returned as Mako Mori which was a great save for the film, but her presence or character were not used effectively whatsoever. The rest of the cast ranged from okay to flat; they definitely had some casting problems, but that could have been easily fixed if the writing had been solid from the get go.
To say outright that it was director Steven DeKnight's fault that the film was terrible and tanked might be a bit extreme, but at the same time I think it's a fair assessment of the matter; I doubt there will be a third film shall we say. Since he was also one of the writers is why I make that point but he had help from three other people, so I don't know what was going on in that department, but it certainly didn't end up helping. The cinematography by Dan Mindel was pretty dull and simplistic, and I didn't really care for Lorne Balfe's score for the film either. Even the action was boring, and nowhere near as cool as the first film. Let's just say that I was most thrilled when the film finally ended, especially given the really dreadful closing line. Also, when I mentioned how much I didn't like the movie, my father looked at me and told me "well as least you didn't buy the DVD," which is true and now my father is stuck with it. So I will be frank; this film was terrible. The writing was very poor, the characters were written poorly, and it was like they were attempting to appeal to the Disney teenage audience (FYI one of the actors was literally from a Disney television show) and the script certainly showed that. I wouldn't suggest the film at all. If you haven't seen it, save yourself from a black hole of time and watch something else, or better yet play a board game with someone or read a good book.Pacific Rim Uprising clip
Pacific Rim cast interviews
