United Kingdom, China, Japan · 2018
Rated PG-13 · 1h 51m
Director Steven S. DeKnight
Starring John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian
Genre Action, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure
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It has been ten years since The Battle of the Breach and the oceans are still, but restless. Vindicated by the victory at the Breach, the Jaeger program has evolved into the most powerful global defense force in human history. The PPDC now calls upon the best and brightest to rise up and become the next generation of heroes when the Kaiju threat returns.
There’s a directness and swift pace to the first hour or so that works on an elemental level, and the final act is a delirious sugar rush of city-smashing spectacle (in Tokyo, of course, which has been evacuated to avoid any pesky collateral damage), delivering precisely the goods the movie promises.
It might drift out of the memory just as easily as it drifted in, but there’s a goofy likability to Pacific Rim: Uprising, a primal thrill to be had, and a confident slickness behind it that means, despite a nearly two-hour running time, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Pacific Rim Uprising has zero emotional pull.
A generic and diverting sequel that corrects some of the original’s biggest mistakes while also highlighting some of its more eccentric charms, “Uprising” drops us into a world that’s much richer than what the previous film left behind.
New York Daily News by Ethan Sacks
DeKnight shows he can pilot a CGI fight sequence as well as his predecessor, Guillermo Del Toro (“The Shape of Water”). These movies can be fun once the colossal foes start grappling. They’re even more fun with fewer explanations and more explosions. A movie about massive monster-fighting robots doesn’t need so much engineering.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Lacking the stylistic flair provided by del Toro in the original, this sequel directed by Steven S. DeKnight (TV's Daredevil and Spartacus) becomes increasingly tiresome in its cliched plotting and characterizations, hackneyed dialogue and numbingly repetitive, visually incoherent action sequences.
Respectable. Boyega adds real bounce and DeKnight delivers spectacle, even if the plot doesn’t strain too far from the original’s crash-bang formula.
Pacific Rim Uprising is a dumb movie that knows it’s a dumb movie and just tries to show you a good time and doesn’t needlessly bog us down with too much character development or exposition because it knows we don’t really care.
Pacific Rim Uprising delivers plentiful CG mayhem.... What it lacks, though, is both del Toro’s trademark Lovecraftian imagery (all slick tentacles and dank subterranean locales) and the sense of thunderous heft that the Mexican auteur bestowed upon his titans.