Pacific Rim: Uprising is Out Now - Discussion

[Paragon Fury]

So Pacific Rim: Uprising is now out in theaters, and I've recently gone to see it. My personal opinion is if the first was a solid 7/7.5 out of 10 for being good overall and having good fights, the second one earns a respectable 6/6.5 out of 10. It's still worth seeing, but it's not quite as good as the original.

BE YE WARNED. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Spoiler

So the basic plot is thus; Jagers are being kept around to use as law enforcement, military etc. against people building their own Jagers, committing crimes, using them in war etc. They're also kept around as a safeguard in case the Kaiju ever return.

All well and good. But the CEO of the Shao Corporation wants to replace all the fancy cool Jagers with mass produced drones that can be control from afar like modern day drones and would be operational 100% of the time, unlike the human piloted Jagers which have to be deployed. Mako Mori and several people are against this, for varying reasons (don't want to replace humans, drones might be hackable etc.) and might want to stop deployment. A rogue Jager attacks the meeting where they're going to decide if Shao is allowed to deploy the drones or not; killing Mako before she can give the "No" vote. The drones are okay'd in order to prevent such an attack from happening again.

The plot twist is that Newt, the guy that helped saved the world by drifting with the Kaiju brain in the first film to find out their plan, has been under their control since the end of the first film because he kept the brain from the first film and has been drifting with it in secret. The aliens sending the Kaiju, known as the "Precursors" now, have used this link to influence Newt in his position at Shao to corrupt the drones - they're not really remote piloted, but rather controlled by Kaiju brains and tissue inserted into them in secret. When they're deployed, the Kaiju tissue mutates, takes control of the drones and attacks Jager bases all over the world while opening new breaches for the Kaiju to come through.

The protagonists have the stop the new drones and the Kaiju that manage to get through before they can finish their ultimate plan which is to set off the Ring of Fire volcano chain in the Pacific.

The movie is entertaining, and the fights between the rogue Jager and the Kaiju at the end are really fun. Unfortunately, it suffers from pacing issues at the start and not knowing what it really wants to do until the big twist midway through. Though once it picks up it's super fun.

Also, non-plot related spoiler.

Spoiler

HOLY SHIT. If you like pretty Asian ladies or high heels, or both at the same time this movie is going to do things to you. Both Mako and the CEO of Shao are dressed to the nines the entire time on screen except for the very end, and spend their ENTIRE screen time wearing exceptionally nice (and high) heels, which the camera makes a notable effort to focus on them and/or the shoes any time those two are on screen.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Eh it looks too much like a Power Rangers movie, the jaegers have lost their cumbersome and slow look. And I really hate the High School kids in robots trope.

I'll wait for it to come to Netflix.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I didn't even know they made a second one. Sure I'm not very ... pop culture intuitive? I don't know ... what do you call people that seem to just know this stuff months in advance when you're moreso the person that does or doesn't impulse buy upon actual release? ... But regardless of what you call the former, I'm not one of those people. Even still this seems to have snuck up AND past me, and I'm the person who would have thrown money at it to see it at release due to how much I liked the first one.

So if they can't bother marketing to idiots like me who only have only a baseline zeitgeist consciousness of this stuff ... they must have had too much faith in the sci-fantasy crowd to spread knowledge of it.

Can I ask as a person who liked the first one, but like it because the big clunky machines that moved as if chronically unfit transformers with asthma were smacking stuff and using cargo ships as bats because (???), and thus likely the same reason all the regular douchebag crowd likes it, how much of this movie channels that 'dumb, unthinking fun moments'?

 

[Paragon Fury]

I don't really have any interest in seeing it, so I spoiled myself on the plot. And I do enjoy the fact that they're just straight up cribbing ideas from neon genesis evangelion

and I feel like I called the twist years ago so thats nice to see

Spoiler

They crib notes from a lot of stuff. There is a long scene right in front of the Gundam statue from Japan towards the end of the movie too.

 

[Natemans]

I love the first one a lot, but I honestly found this film to be a bland letdown. Felt like it missed some of the visual direction that Del Toro had in the original as well as compelling characters.

(I'm probably the only one who liked the characters in the first one.)

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It reminded me a lot of a Transformers movie crossed with the Independence Day sequel from a couple of years ago.

 

[McElroy]

From the trailer: The visuals are nice, but it looks terrible anyway. I can't take Boyega seriously.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

I was never that into the idea of a sequel in the first place, and seeing the trailer makes me wish that they'd kept del Toro around to make it, because this just looks like freakin' Transformers.

Which is like, okay, yeah, giant robots, but come on. We've got like...five Transformers films? Six? What are they even up to now?

 

[BrawlMan]

I was never that into the idea of a sequel in the first place, and seeing the trailer makes me wish that they'd kept del Toro around to make it, because this just looks like freakin' Transformers.

Which is like, okay, yeah, giant robots, but come on. We've got like...five Transformers films? Six? What are they even up to now?

There are five Transformer movies now. And yet Uprising is way better than all of them. I stopped caring for Transformers after the 4th. Uprising is a decent movie. It's almost as good as the first one. But if fix some issues I had with the action scenes in the first movie. The action in the first one was a bit to samey and it didn't help that all them took place at night. At least with Uprising there is some variety. The Jeagers in this one, while a bit more swift still have weight to them. It's not like they're flying around like Gundams, so that is a relief. If you can catch this movie for $5, you are in good hands.

 

[BaronVonVaderHam]

I feel this movie falls into a similar zone as the Matrix: Reloaded or Highlander 2. Not necessarily in terms of quality, but more in that the first one works well as a One-and-Done film that a sequel almost needs to retcon or contradict the first in some way. And that's what happened here.

What was disappointing most for me, was the kaiju in this film-and for Pacific Rim, that's a problem. First off, there's actually very little of them in the film. Their saved for a third act fight.

And I really did not like the design of them. I have one of those behind the scenes books about the first PAcific Rim, and a cool little design Easter Egg is that Guillermo del Toro did not want his monsters to look "cool". He likened them unto a lion. A lion can look majestic and powerful one moment if say its sitting on a rock at sun set. Or it could look horrifying if its hunting you. This lead to each kaiju being unique and more interesting.

The kaiju in uprising were meant to look "cool". They weren't distinct and lacked a lot of the fun of the original.

As for they story, I found it somewhat satisfactory, but like I said it retcons and contradicts aspects of the first. It almost works better if you haven't seen the first.

I'll say this, I liked the movie just fine. But could have waited for a matinee.

 

[Natemans]

I was never that into the idea of a sequel in the first place, and seeing the trailer makes me wish that they'd kept del Toro around to make it, because this just looks like freakin' Transformers.

Which is like, okay, yeah, giant robots, but come on. We've got like...five Transformers films? Six? What are they even up to now?

5 Transformers films. I saw Uprising and yeah, it was like a lite version of Transformers. Incredibly lackluster and took away some of the visual charm to the previous one.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I wasn't even a fan of the first one. It was way too ridiculous in my mind in so many ways. I'd just very much rather have a Mechwarrior movie.

 

[Kae]

It was really dumb, not much else to say if you like action especially destruction you'll like it, however, if you like consistency over the senseless action you'll think it's dumb.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I'd say it was good. Not really any WOW! factor on account of it being a sequel and thus not so new anymore, but good. Not that the idea of giant robots fighting giant monsters was new to begin with, but I think first Pacific Rim really brought it into the public consciousness. I like that the Jaegers and Kaiju were faster and more mobile in general in this movie and that most of the action took place during the daytime this time as opposed to nighttime in the first movie so it was a lot easier to keep track of everything.

As for the plot I don't care about the inconsistencies and retcons since the plot was never was and never should be anything more than an excuse for giant robots and giant monsters to be fighting each other. Of course I'd prefer it if there weren't any but I learned a long time ago that that's really unrealistic and self-defeating to expect in all of fiction much less a movie like this one. Both movies run entirely off the Rule of Cool and thus if one looks very deeply into it and care you're going to find inconsistencies and stupidity all over the place. The idea of giant robots and giant monsters fighting each other run into countless impracticalities and impossibilities with the whole concept that you have to just let it slide off if you're going to enjoy a movie like this.

 

[COMaestro]

Saw it last night. I actually liked it better than the first one overall, just a little bit. I felt the main characters were better fleshed out than in the original. However, I do feel the original had more epic feeling fights. The ones in Uprising were still good, but I think due to lacking Del Toro's cinematography, lost a bit of majesty.