Pacific Rim Uprising 2018

The second I saw the scrappy little girl in her scrappy little robot (called Scrapper - gah), I knew exactly what kind of giant robot movie I was in for. Of course she is brilliant and of course she meets Jon Boyega who is the son of Indris Elba's character from the first film. Of course he is a rebel who is far less charming that he thinks he is who conveniently doesn't follow the rules like her. Of course they don't get along at first but soon see past their differences....yadda yadda yadda. Everything seems written to take us down a road we have travelled a million times before. Such a waste of a sequel. A totally lost opportunity that at less than two hour, feels long.

Jon Boyega is trying to play smooth and cool with a glib line for every situation. He his drifting through life even though he has the skills to pilot the latest Jaegers. But he has no interest in that life. He has no interest in his destiny. Wanna bet that changes about five minutes in? Oh look, for all his protestations, he signed up for duty. Neither Boyega or the script knows how to play this badly written character. Boyega's accent changes throughout the film and his character is carrying a weight that the actor is not talented enough to pull off. There is a lot of over acting going on here by everyone.

Have The Transformers ruined me for any giant robot movies for the rest of my life or will this one put me back on the path? I do like a tale of redemption and sacrifice like The Transformers but the results are nearly unwatchable in that case. The Michael Bay 'style' does not fill the viewer with anything but visual confusion as to who is fighting who at any particular time. Quick film cuts are not the way to show giant machines and creatures doing battle. We want to see them full sized doing the smashing and bashing that they do best. I love all the collateral damage that the cities take during one of these battle and they do take a lot of damage. The insurance costs to run these Jaegers must be enormous.

I really liked Amara (Cailee Spaeny). She is over the top spunky but I can chart you her whole character arc in my head. She is smart and thinks on her feet and actually built her own Jaeger. She is the wide eyed newbie out to prove herself. She has bad memories of her past that hold her back Of course she will fail at first before she finds her courage and helps save the day when she is needed the most. So cliche. I have seen it a hundred times before and I think I started to resent the way all this garbage is deliberately spoiling what could be a good movie. I gave myself a headache with all the eye rolls I did.

I know only 22 minutes into the film that it will not be as fun or interesting as it should be.

Everything here lack subtlety and the conflict is right out of screenwriting 101. There is even a whole man vs machine subplot that is under explored. It's just something else for our heroes to have righteous anger about. Everything feels forced. Even the slow motion scenes hammer home the point that the hero JUST failed to save a person he cared about. Of course the tech they take into the final battle is 'theoretical' and of course may not work but does. The heroes look like they are going to die but don't. Even the love triangle seems tacked on. Do you see what I mean here? Every part of this film is a pale imitation of all the 'End of the World' films you have seen. Even the cliche filled rousing motivational speech is sub par.

Gravity slings filled with junk material like cars is a neat go-to weapon but we only see it in use once. I will also give the film credit for it's robot fights which are so much less frenetic than in a Transformers film. You believe these giant robots actually exist and should only fight each other in Siberia or in the ocean because that is where the fight is the most interesting.  The final battle is a triumph of CGI but it is not enough to make up for all the crap I had to slog through to reach that point. Just watch a compilation of the fight scenes on You Tube and you can say you saw the movie. Overall, while there are a few interesting twists and seconds of fun, I just felt let down in the end by something I should be raving about. It should have been a slam dunk but turned out to more like a lazy dribble.