Pacific Rim sequel falls short on action, monsters

Cailee Spaeny and John Boyega in Pacific Rim: Uprising. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Sequels should very, very, very rarely start off by reusing footage from the original film. It shows the filmmakers have little faith in their audience's ability to keep up with the changes in the sequel while showing a lack of narrative enterprise or ingenuity, lazily rehashing previous efforts. It hurts even more when the previous footage is better than anything the movie has to showcase from its own stock. Which is the case with Pacific Rim: Uprising, a movie that starts off on the wrong foot and is never able, or particularly willing, to steady itself.

What makes the choice strange is how much of the time invested in rehashing old history could be used to improve the sloppy narrative Pacific Rim:Uprising tosses together. At the film's heart is a redemption tale for the very lost Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of a legendary Jaeger pilot who died in the first film. That narrative is more than enough to build out a quality movie, providing a pretty solid actor a showcase to build out a character while interspersing some desirable robot versus monster action. But the filmmakers plug in little bits of additional plot lines to muddy the story up. Inserted into the story are a precocious Jaeger cadet Amara (Cailee Spaeny) and her fellow cadets, an ambitious billionaire business owner Shao (Tian Jing), Jake's old friend and current rival Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood), and a few returning players (Rinko Kikuchi, Burn Gorman, and Charlie Day) engaging in some shenanigans. There's also something that resembles a love triangle between Jake, Nate and a woman named Jules (Adria Arjona), but nothing really comes from it. Pacific Rim: Uprising throws together so many plots and subplots nothing is able to stick. Characters aren't given adequate room to grow and evolve the way the filmmakers (four writers, among them director Steven S. DeKnight) expect. Those stories advance in fits and spurts, with little increments that conclude almost immediately without any actual validation. Amara, for example, has a major crisis caused by a bad memory with the villainous Kaiju that causes a legitimate breakdown that is ripe for character development. Instead of showing her growth, the character moves on with minimal effort made to overcome the obstacle. Everyone effectively has their own version of that problem. Character growth isn't earned in this movie, it's told and shown.

It really is hard though to escape the lack of impetus the writing team has put into Pacific Rim: Uprising. The stakes for most of the movie are surprisingly low, especially given the fate of humanity was in danger in the first movie. This movie de-escalates the danger, hiding the threat until the third act, with acts one and two dedicated to establishing the characters poorly while setting up what resembles a political thriller. Without that stake, that hook for the audience to grab onto, Pacific Rim: Uprising is frightfully dull.

In theory, the hook should be the fights between the Jaegers and Kaiju. It's a really, really simple formula to follow, pitting giant fighting robots against monsters rampaging their way through metropolitan areas. This is the kind of idea that appeals to the inner 7 year old because it is fun and awesome. Even a modicum of good spectacle could easily have redeemed Pacific Rim: Uprising, at least enough to overlook the tremendous story and character flaws. And, yet, the movie skimps on the monster action until the very end of the film, providing less than a handful of monsters to fight against the giant robots. The filmmakers effectively had one job to do, but their push to incorporate so many stories in less than two hours prevented them from supplying an adequate amount of monster time.

It's easy to say the film's problems are connected to the absence of Guillermo del Toro from the creative process. And, yeah, Pacific Rim: Uprising would be a much better movie with del Toro helming it, although that can be said about a lot of movies. But this film shouldn't really need his presence to succeed either. What the new filmmakers had was a fun, interesting premise to build at least a good popcorn flick from. They never found a direction, using the original as a crutch and releasing a boring movie. And a boring monster movie is a damn tragedy. 

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 111 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: People who watched the original Pacific Rim and the growing John Boyega fan club.

Take the whole family?: Kids 10 and older should be fine.

Theater or Netflix?: Just stay at home and enjoy it there.

What is up with that love triangle?: This is the plot that bothered me the most about Pacific Rim: Uprising. The filmmakers added an unnecessary love triangle between Jake, Nate and Jules without any justification or true motivation behind it. Even worse, Jules does little else in the move besides serve as an object of mild affection for Jake and Nate. She’s effectively a reason for Jake and Nate to argue, which is an absolute waste of a character.

Watch this instead?: It's cheesy as all heck, but Independence Day is still a pretty fun blockbuster that's worth a trip through memory lane. And you can’t go wrong with the original Godzilla.

Shape of Water an odd twist to a classic story

Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

 

In less capable hands, The Shape of Water could come dangerously close to being unwatchable. A blend of four genres telling an utterly bizarre love story with many grotesque details, the movie lives right along a number of thin lines that would tip it into being completely unwatchable, a pretentious art house movie that fails to blend the works of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch. Director Guillermo del Toro, who wrote the movie with Vanessa Taylor, is brilliant enough to use the oddity of his premise as a means of telling a basic love story between two fragile beings. What results is one of the sweetest, most charming love stories of the past decade.

There has always been something strangely benign about the supernatural beings that lurk just outside the real world in del Toro's movies. Ghosts are tragic creatures whose intents are benevolent to heroes and malevolent to the villains, and mythological gods provide aid and assistance for the protagonist's quest toward self discovery. The Shape of Water inserts the supernatural being into the center of the story, having a strange merman creature (played by Doug Jones) start an odd relationship with mute cleaner Elisa (Sally Hawkins). Elisa and the creature grow more and more in love and who receive aid from gay copy artist Giles (Richard Jenkins), Elisa's very reliable and understanding friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and Michael Stuhlbarg's mysterious scientist Dr. Robert Hoffstetler, as they fend off the very dangerous Strickland (a typically intense Michael Shannon). The cross between the fantastical and the normal is much more direct in this movie than some of del Toro's older, non-action movie titles, but the concept of a surprisingly ordinary abnormal supernatural presence fits with his modus operandi. Yet even those other movies come nowhere close to being quite as brazenly weird as The Shape of Water. It remains difficult to reconcile the romance between Elisa and the merman given the physiological differences and just how intimate their love becomes. It's not entirely unusual for a movie to create an emotional bond that toes the line at a physical relationship, but The Shape of Water goes right over that line and shows how close their relationship has become.

Their relationship might not be the strangest part of The Shape of Water. What's really disconcerting, aside the unfortunate fate of an unlucky cat, is the multitude of genres thrown together for this film. The Shape of Water is a fantastical love story, with elements of a Cold War spy movie and an era piece that digs under the artificial happiness of the early 1960s. As characters, Zelda and Giles could fit in just as well, if not better, in supporting roles in a romantic comedy, there to support the female lead as she pines for the dreamy captain of the high school swim team. Del Toro and Taylor even toss in elements of musicals, including a lovely and heartbreaking musical number that shines through Elisa's imagination.

None of it is overly distracting though because The Shape of Water's attention is focused on the relationship between Elisa and the merman. It's a beautiful romance, told quietly through kind acts and courageous feats. Everything between Elisa and the merman is driven by love and devotion, an unspoken romance that never strays into being sappy or saccharine. Every tender look, every embrace is earned because of how well Hawkins and Jones connect their characters. The other elements are there to elevate the romance, adding the necessary complications to move the story forward while adding a dreamy, nostalgia-tinged element to the film.

Nothing about tale told by The Shape of Water is overly complicated. To quote another movie about a woman and a beast falling in love, this is a tale as old as time about two beings who are exactly right for each other despite the circumstances around them. What's different is the lens used by del Toro and Taylor to tell this tale, to provide their unique take at how far true love can stretch physical impossibilities. Del Toro and Taylor have taken a banal plot and turned it into an indelible, beautiful love story about two incomplete beings completing each other and finding love in an otherwise hopeless place.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 123 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away
Target audience: Romantics with a sense of the macabre, so anyone who likes Guillermo del Toro movies.

Take the whole family?: No for several reasons.

Theater or Netflix?: This would make for a pretty interesting date night event.

Academy Award odds?: I hope this gets a Best Picture nomination, although it wouldn't be too surprising if this was snubbed because of how weird it is. At the least Sally Hawkins deserves a nomination for her quiet brilliance.

Watch this as well?: Guillermo del Toro's backlog is unique and often excellent, highlighted by The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. The Shape of Water also has hints of Pedro Almodóvar, so check out the very fun but slightly supernatural Volver.