Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) wasn’t a groundbreaking film, but for those looking for a stylish giant robot-versus-monster actioner it was certainly a guilty pleasure. Where it stumbled in terms of narrative and performances (except for that of Idris Elba as General Stacker Pentecost), it endeared itself to audiences with gorgeous looking visuals, the fun homage to anime, and some of del Toro’s signature weirdness. Its sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising, is as stereotypically worse as a second installment can be. In fact, it takes the Transformers’ route of mindless action, losing much of the charm its predecessor had. Yet, it’s still amusing enough to be worth a watch.

Despite being an ardent Transformers fan, I detest Michael Bay movies for being unappealing, loud, obnoxious works of heartless cinematic trash. Yet, here I am, admitting I enjoyed the action in Pacific Rim Uprising even though director Steven S. DeKnight and Universal Pictures clearly took a page out of the Transformers cinematic franchise-building book, especially when the robots called Jaegers start fighting other Jaegers.

Unless your inner child is dead, if the special effects are good, you will enjoy watching giant robots fight equally large creatures on the big screen. And the special effects in Pacific Rim Uprising are excellent. The monster fights here occasionally reminded me of anime such as Gundam, Macross, and even Neon Genesis Evangelion. But more importantly, you can tell what’s going on during the money shots. Compare this to any of the five Transformers films, where the lens filters and colour pallets all draw from shades of muddy brown and gray, and the camera shakes as if Michael Bay isn’t shooting a giant robots film but a handheld guerilla war documentary, and you are left with criminally little visual coherence in a genre where that should be the first priority.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a stereotypically worse second installment film

Although Pacific Rim Uprising is more fun for the eyes than any Transformers film, in terms of storytelling, it sadly isn’t much better. It picks up 10 years after the events of its predecessor. Here, we are introduced to the new lead, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), who is the son of the war hero Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), and is himself a former Jaeger pilot. Jake trades in stolen Jaeger parts like the clichéd rogue that he is, before he is convinced to return to the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps to train and lead a new team of pilots in order to defend against a monster attack.

For better or worse, Boyega is central to the film. While his performance is good, the script he has to work with, which shamefully enough was concocted by four writers is, at times, awful. Boyega has some bad lines and painfully lame jokes. To make matters worse, his characterisation is paper-thin, which is more attention than the supporting characters receive.

It wasn’t much, but the original Pacific Rim carried a few shades of self-awareness. This is almost nonexistent in Pacific Rim Uprising. The film just takes itself too seriously. In fact, the only moment of genuine mirth (I’m not going to give it away) comes at the end in a plot turn that comes across as amusingly silly. The entire audience I was watching the film with had a good belly laugh here, but after giving it some thought, I realised that Pacific Rim Uprising wasn’t actually trying to poke fun at itself and rather had tried to pass off something stupid in full earnest. Well, unintentional humour is better than no humour, unless you are the writer who wrote the scene.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence, action and some language

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 1st, 2018