While the 2013 film Pacific Rim stood on a solid story and character-driven plot, The sequel Pacific Rim Uprising hold parts of the previous movie that don't complete the story. The movie has done an incredible job at what it best for the CGI, the Kaiju's, the Jaeger's their fights and incredible sound, what it fails to do is give any of it a purpose. 

 

Uprising does not look at any serious story elements like issues with drifting, its physiological effects on the characters but is solely driven to kill the Kaiju's that don't even appear till the second half. 

 

When you have no more story to pull, use the cliche human's make everything worse. The story is maintained secondary to the fights, huge robots fighting and leaving devastation behind. They have tried to show that the people in the city evacuate underground in capsules while the Jaeger's fight it out, in the same scene you can see thousands of people dying, missing the capsule and running for their lives while the Jaeger begins the fight. They are even given a command that the city has been evacuated when it's clearly not.

 

It took more than 3-4 decades for people trained to track every Kaiju moments to figure out their only plan —to attack mount Fuji. The Kaiju's have been appearing in the same place for decades and the still hadn't figured it out on their own. A teen manages to build an entire Jaeger herself called Scraper, without a prior education and only with stolen parts, though it is cute, makes the cutest sounds ever (reminds me of BB-8) but unfortunately has a very small amount of screen time. Reasons like these make it hard to take the story seriously, and these are just the obvious ones.

 

The screenplay struggles between general conversations, comic relief, character relationships and to answer questions about everything they literally whip out of thin air without a reason. 

 

Still, the movie is worth a watch for the mere destruction of huge skyscrapers, crowded cities, Jaegers, and Kaijus.

 

Verdict: watch it, its fun. Just don't question anything.

*** 

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