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.

Fate of the Furious doesn't mess with success

Charlize Theron and Vin Diesel in The Fate of the Furious. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

My adoration for much of the Fast and the Furious franchise entries is hypocritical given my overarching loathing for movies similar to Fast and the Furious. This franchise commits all the sins I rant and rail against committed by other franchises. They big and bloated movies with empty plots and little going for them aside from spectacle and frequent speeches about family. Some of this will be an attempt to explain why I love a series of movies with little connection to reality, because all of those reasons explain my joy of the most recent entry in the series, the fairly awesome The Fate of the Furious.

There isn't anything overly different with Fate of the Furious compared with the rest of the franchise, the exception being the absences of Jordana Brewster and the late Paul Walker. The rest of the main cast is back (Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson) along with a few additions from the last film (Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jason Statham) and two new players (villain Charlize Theron and agent Scott Eastwood). Ridiculous heists are pulled in locales across the world; the word “family” is referenced ad nauseam; Johnson and Statham drop a few quips; beautiful cars get totaled; beautiful people get ogled; and a whole host of other similar shenanigans ensue. It’s the same as every film in this franchise since Fast Five, the one where the series shifted toward the globetrotting model it currently follows to enormous box office returns and at least two more entries in this series through 2021.

Looking at this film and the rest of the series critically little of it really holds up. The plots are thin and lack general logic. The movies always run on the long side despite the thin plots, with the less engaging entries losing steam in between the grandiose action sequences (a problem that plagues Fate of the Furious). Diesel, the face and de facto heart of the franchise, continues his tradition of not putting that much effort into his performance as Dominic Toretto. The amount of time the camera spends on certain female body parts remains a little disconcerting. And the films are generally hesitant to try to engage viewers in too many intellectual challenges.

Yet I still leave the theater pumped after watching these ludicrous movies. For all the flaws the series has, the positives have outweighed the negatives as a whole since Fast Five. Diesel's acting remains an issue, but he's surrounded by enough personality from the likes of Rodriguez, Johnson, Russell, Statham, Gibson, Russell and Ludacris to make his inherent lack of emotional range sort of work in his favor. Adding in Theron as the Fate of the Furious’ big bad is a boon as well; her iciness and scenery nibbling make her an unpredictable and surprisingly vicious femme fatale. Movies like this don't necessarily need great acting to work; a surplus of personality is often just as effective.

Besides, the real selling point for this franchise and Fate of the Furious is the spectacle. There's a simple level of joy to be taken solely from watching Vin Diesel race someone while driving backwards in a car that's on fire, or watching the main cast somehow avoid a freaking submarine while driving on ice covered water in Russia. There's the sequence where Theron makes it rain with cars, a helicopter getting taken out by an EMP, Johnson using his arm to divert a torpedo, and a pretty solid prison riot highlighted by stompings put on by Johnson and Statham. Just writing those things down is ridiculous enough, but the fact the film commits to these feats with a level of normality is fascinating in its own right. Whatever reaction the characters have to all of this insanity is a few steps below how it should play out in real life.

But this series is based in fantasy, a point the various directors who have come and gone have generally agreed upon. Anything can happen in the Fast and the Furious universe, and the only thing the filmmakers can do from one film to the next is stretch what anything means. It's fun to watch them get more and more creative without quite hitting the point of desperation. And while Fate of the Furious never hits the level of absurdity that makes Fast Five and Furious 7 so entertaining, it's still a damn fun film.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 136 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Folks who've lined up to watch the last seven movies.

Take the whole family?: This one gets a little bloodier than some of the previous ones, so stick within a year or two of the PG-13 rating.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater is good, but maybe avoid the IMAX if it isn’t a matinee.

What do they do about Paul Walker?: Even though the actor died before the release of Furious 7, his character Brian is referenced in this one as being alive but retired, just as he was at the end of the previous film. It was kind of nice to see the filmmakers avoid overly inserting Walker (sadly at the expense of Jordana Brewster), but a scene at the end makes for a strange coda given the circumstances.

Watch this as well?: Fast Five remains the glorious, bonkers highlight of this franchise. I'm also a very enthusiastic fan of Furious 7 even with the reduced Dwayne Johnson presence; adding in Kurt Russell and Jason Statham proved to be nice touches.