“Pacific Rim: Uprising” (PG-13)
A refreshing idea from five years ago is essentially turned into the latest chapter of the dreadful “Transformers” movie series in “Pacific Rim: Uprising,” an unnecessary sequel to writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s entertaining robots vs. monsters sci-fi action thriller from 2013. Boring and predictable, not even the franchise’s engaging new lead, “Star Wars” star John Boyega, can save this action movie mishmash from being a disappointing misfire.
Boyega stars as Jake Pentecost, the estranged son of the late Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), a dying hero who ultimately sacrificed himself to help save the day in the first movie. With the film’s other big hero, Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam), noticeably out of the picture, Jake, a jaeger pilot who inherited the skills of maneuvering the giant robot like his father, is recruited to serve when a new threat emerges. It seems while the humans have been successfully able to keep the original film’s giant sea monsters (the kaiju) at bay, a shadowy villain has found a way to use the kaiju to turn the robots against one another.
Sadly, it shouldn’t take fans long to realize that “Pacific Rim,” del Toro’s story of monolithic sea creatures emerging from the Pacific Ocean (clearly the man has an affinity for the shape of water), has gone the “Transformers” route, a once-promising film series (the 2007 original was great) that quickly devolved into annoying exercises of crash-boom-bang filmmaking.
The low point for that series came with “Transformers: The Last Knight” last year, where a mechanically gifted streetwise orphan girl (Isabela Moner) enters the fray and joins forces with the film’s lead (Mark Wahlberg). Basically, with “Pacific Rim: Uprising,” the same thing happens, where a mechanically-gifted streetwise orphan girl (Cailee Spaeny) joins forces with Jake, leading to a predictable ending that becomes obvious 10 minutes into the movie. That’s not to say that aren’t impressive new kaiju creatures to marvel at; it’s just that it takes too long to get to them, and in-between, the film seems intent with trying to entertain its audience with a series of robot clashes.
Apart from retreaded plotlines, another huge factor that plagues “Pacific Rim: Uprising” is the film’s lack of interesting characters. True, unlike his turns in the “Star Wars” chapters “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi,” Boyega gets to sport some of his natural charm (and his original British accent), but it’s not nearly enough to carry the film.
Ron Perlman, Elba and Hunnam gave the original quite a bit of weight with their charisma, as did Rinko Kikuchi (who only reprises her character for a few brief scenes), but in their stead, Scott Eastwood seems to have been given a mandate by director Stephen S. DeKnight to mimic his famous dad as much as possible. The always great Burn Gorman is about the only returning cast member who turns in an entertaining performance, while Charlie Day reprises his character with a twist, but is out of his depth considering the burden the sequel assigns his already quirky character. Unless somehow del Toro, Pearlman and Hunnam miraculously return to right the shit, it’s time to set “Pacific Rim” franchise adrift.
Lammometer: 4 (out of 10)
Tim Lammers reviews movies weekly for The KQ92 Morning Show,” “KARE 11 News at 11” (NBC), WCCO Radio, WJON-AM, KLZZ-FM, “The Tom Barnard Podcast” and “The BS Show” with Bob Sansevere.
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