Two things before we get into this Pacific Rim: Uprising RuView. One, GLaDOS from the Portal games is in this movie and she is HIGHLY underutilized (raise your hand if you heard her too). I want more GLaDOS!!! Second, if John Boyega is not cast in Beverly Hills Cop 4 after this then there is something seriously wrong in this world (but more on that later). Pacific Rim: Uprising opens 10 years after the events of the original and follows Jake Pentecost (Boyega), the son of Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost, as he is forced back into the Jaeger Academy after one too many run-ins with the law. He joins his former co-pilot Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) to train a new generation of Jaeger pilots against a new Kaiju threat.
Uprising is exactly what you thought it would be going into it: a stupidly entertaining experience. The stupid encompasses about 51% of the film. Everything about the movie is familiar. It is a familiar plot, almost as if it was trying to be Transformers 6. Familiar one-liners, more often stupid than not. Familiar dialogue, which didn’t help the stupid. Familiar characters, making familiar stupid decisions. Familiar antagonists, though this one did come as a small surprise (stupidity to be explained later). Familiar heroes, again… decisions. Familiar motivational speeches, but I won’t call much of anything by Boyega or Elba (whom John’s monologue was modeled after) stupid. Familiar plot twists. I admit that I didn’t see the big twist coming, but many will predict it because it is set up earlier in the film. yet, the setup is probably the stupidest scene in the entire movie. Truthfully, Pacific Rim: Uprising had a lot of good overarching aspects to it, but the stupidity of all its parts overwhelmed its potential. It had good bones, but bad execution.
That bad execution includes a lot of the performances. One day we may get a Scott Eastwood performance that is more than the stereotypical, soldier eye-candy. That day is not today. Cailee Spaeny as the young Amara Namani is very charismatic and has great chemistry with Boyega, but her emotional delivery needed work. Charlie Day and the rest of the supporting cast were just cheesy versions of action movie archetypes. Really, if you cut the movie down to just the action sequences and John Boyega’s dialogue, the movie would be as good as it is now.
That takes us to the 49% of Uprising that is entertaining. The plot of the movie may be as dull as Transformers, but the action is what Transformers' dreams are made of. Fighting Jaegers are popcorn popping fodder for “shut my brain off for 2 hours” movie goers. The interactions of the co-pilots mixed with the varying tech and fighting moves make for a lot of great robot choreography. Even better is the tense atmosphere created by every single action scene in the movie. They aren’t just a collection of manned robot battles. They are heart-pounding, fear-inducing, and thrill-producing to the point that you actually wonder whether the heroes will pull through. However, *slight spoiler coming so if you plan on seeing this and want to avoid even the slightest spoilers, one is coming right about
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too bad most of the last big action sequence was already seen in the international trailer released about a month ago. *spoiler done*
What wasn’t spoiled by trailers is the most entertaining aspect of Pacific Rim: Uprising, John Boyega. He had all the charisma, all the comedic timing, and all the chops to be the leading man in all the action-comedy films for years to come. Give this man all the roles! If he is not the leading man in at least 5 action-comedies in the next 10 years, it will be a travesty of all travesties. Cast him in Bad Boys 3, The Next 48 Hours, Rush Hour 4, and any other films that would have been given to Will Smith or Eddie Murphy in the 80s and 90s. Star Wars' Finn may have introduced the world to Boyega after Attack the Block, but Pacific Rim: Uprising proved he can carry even the most mundane of franchises.
You want a kinda fun couple of hours at the movies at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday? (I just did!) Then go see this. I'm giving Pacific Rim: Uprising 5.5/10 Buzzfeed name generators for your Jaeger (Obsidian Fury, Gypsy Blaze, Mammoth Rogue… try to guess which were in the movie and which I just created in the actual Jaeger Name Generator online. You can’t can ya?)