Review: "Pacific Rim: Uprising"

Holy shit!

So it's no secret that I love giant robots and giant monsters. I loved the original Pacific Rim. It was a movie that pleased me. There might have been some attempt at plot and acting in it, but I can't remember. It was a glorious slug-fest of robots and monsters kicking the shit out of one another in cities as people scrambled to get out of the way.

In short, it was perfect.



I just saw Pacific Rim: Uprising and I gotta say, the sequel may well be better!!!!



Set ten years after the first movie, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of Stacker Pentecost of the first film, is living as a thief and hustler who deals in Jaeger salvage tech. After a job goes awry, he meets young Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny), a young prodigy who is building her own tiny Jaeger.

They manage to get arrested and are drafted into the Jaeger program - Amara as a cadet and Jake as a trainer. Turns out old Jake was a Ranger in the program but walked away.

Blah-blah character development blah-blah.

Meanwhile, there's a plan by the brilliant Liwen Shao (Tian Jing), assisted by Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) to replace the piloted Jaeger mechs with drone mechs.

Then everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Next thing you know, there's renegade Jaeger robots killing people (someone from the first movie bites it, much to my dismay) and treachery followed by the obligatory Kaiju attack. Then it's all Jaeger vs Kaiju action in an orgy of glorious destructive violence set in Tokyo.

Because of course, Tokyo.

There's other characters in the movie and subplots and such but that's all incidental.

Pacific Rim: Uprising is everything one wants and needs from a movie containing giant robot mechs and giant monsters. It's pure awesome bliss. Let no one tell you otherwise. It's currently holding the top spot as my favorite movie in the last couple of years. Fucking genius!