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.

Last Jedi an unpredictable adventure

Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Image courtesy Disney.

Star Wars as a franchise has always worked best when hope is challenged by impending darkness. Hope without challenge is meaningless; hope needs to be earned through tribulation to be worth a damn, the bleakness countered by faith in one's friends, allies, and one's cause. Star Wars: The Last Jedi favors that ambiguity, putting its heroes in a desperate situation, with only their hope and faith in one another and their cause to lean on. The film rarely provides assurances that the hope they have is justified, that it will result in a happy ending for all involved. It's also why this movie is the first Star Wars entry in three decades to feel unpredictable.
This is a very good thing. The new Star Wars needs to separate itself from 40 years of cinematic history to be worth anything going forward. The only way to continue producing interesting stories is to take risks, through a few curveballs into the very well-established formula and keep the audience guessing on how the fate of the Star Wars galaxy will go. The nostalgia that carried The Force Awakens (which earns justifiable criticism for aping A New Hope) and influences Rogue One won't last forever; younger audiences need their own characters to like. Instead of recreating what worked before, writer/director Rian Johnson takes a few chances with Last Jedi to take some ownership of the material and ensure this isn't a carbon copy of Empire Strikes Back.
Last Jedi shares a few traits with Empire Strikes Back, notably by showing the rebels in their darkest moment. Hope is really the only thing Resistance members Leia (Carrie Fisher, RIP), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega), Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo (Laura Dern) have as they try to escape the evil First Order led by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Hope is what pushes Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the ends of the galaxy to recruit the bitter Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to the Resistance cause. Hope comes despite the Resistance being hopelessly outgunned by an impending force of destruction and despite little evidence that the soul of Kylo Ren can be saved from the dark side.
As the film makes clear, hope is a tough thing to hold onto. As the Resistance gets closer and closer to its destruction, its members have to be reminded frequently to maintain their hope and faith, to not succumb to the daunting odds mounting against them. Last Jedi is the rare Star Wars film to not adhere blindly to that sense of hope though; even for characters from a galaxy far, far away that aren’t technically human, it remains natural and vital even to question one's faith. Hope is put on trial, the characters weigh the faith they have in themselves, their friends, and their cause, and the process to a verdict is painful and dangerous.
Johnson does a lot of house cleaning in the two and a half hours of Star Wars time he has to work with. The puzzle box concept J.J. Abrams crammed into The Force Awakens is stripped away, to the great benefit of the franchise and for audiences frustrated by the that movie’s unnecessary ambiguity. The key mystery in that movie is granted a simple resolution that serves as a reminder of how greatness can come from even the humblest of beginnings. The victories earned by the Resistance are always Pyrrhic, good enough to render hope from but still damaging for a cause that can't afford to lose that much. The Last Jedi fights against the supposed goodness of the Jedi as well, doing more to question the wisdom of the Jedi Order than the prequels did in three movies. The Last Jedi makes a very convincing argument for ending the Jedi line; it's only Rey's hope in what the Jedi could accomplish that makes the Jedi Order possibly worth redeeming.
There remains some value in the old ways for Rey and the Star Wars franchise. Last Jedi posits a need for legends and heroes to inspire faith and hope to spur a rebellion against an unrelenting evil. The past is there to serve as a guiding light for the present, to give the new characters a path forward in the darkness as they find their own way toward salvation. As it is for the franchise too, which slowly but surely will separate itself from the past and find some hope of its own.

Review: Four out of Five Stars



Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13
Run time: 153 minutes
Genre: Science Fiction

Ask Away

Target audience: The legions upon legions of Star Wars fans who will make Disney a whole ton of money this month.

Take the whole family?: Families will bring their kids regardless because Star Wars, but this could bother some of the really young kids. The length might also turn them away.

Theater or Netflix?: The effects are more than good enough to deserve a cinema trip. Whether it's worth paying for the 3D and IMAX is up for debate.

Where does this rank on the Star Wars pantheon?: Last Jedi still doesn't hit the mark of either Empire Strikes Back or A New Hope. I do put it ahead of the prequels, The Force Awakens, and the very good Rogue One, and as an adult I find Last Jedi to be more interesting and complex than Return of the Jedi.

Watch this as well?: Enough of the Star Wars franchise is good enough to merit another watch, especially Empire Strikes Back. Also check out a couple of writer/director Rian Johnson's previous works, Brick and Looper.