Pacific Rim: Uprising – Junior mechs

I was a massive fan of the first ‘Pacific Rim’ film.  It was loud, dumb and yet strangely well-shot for an out and out B-movie (something to do with its very-talented director, Guillermo Del Toro).  It had its flaws, but it was still enormous fun.  So my hopes were high for ‘part II.’ However, the reviews came in and they weren’t overly-positive.  And yet, my hopes remained high.  I shouldn’t have got excited.

The original told the tale of a breach in the ocean floor which allowed giant monsters to enter our world.  The humans’ response was to – believe it or not – create giant robots to beat them into submission (please ignore the fact that our military apparently couldn’t defeat the monsters on their own, but never mind).  Part II starts showing the devastation caused by the battles along coastal cities.  A young girl (no more than 13?) has lived all her life among the ruins and has – somehow – managed to scavenge enough parts to build herself a fully-functional giant robot.  She can pilot this on her own and out manoeuvre full-trained soldiers in their own mechs.

This all occurs within about the first ten minutes and I found this whole situation just a little hard to suspend my disbelief for.  Unfortunately, this small nugget of the plot basically sums up the entire film.  I could spend quite a long time listing one totally unbelievable plot point after the next.  I know the whole story is over-the-top, but the fact that it turns out that soldiers are no longer used to pilot the robots; instead a bunch of kids are trained up.  Why?  Who knows.  You just have a teen-kid movie where they fight in robots and has one unbelievable story element after the next.

It’s not all bad.  John Boyega is very watchable as the lead.  It’s just who’s around him that brings the whole thing down.  The film does its best to expand on the original idea and, for that, it succeeds.  Plus the battles are as fun (and the final fight is truly awesome!).  However, my main gripe is that just this film is probably going to be appreciated more by youngsters than hardened cynical cinema veterans such as myself.  I’m sure I’d have loved this if I was a twelve-year-old boy and then gone out and bought the toy.  Oh, yeah, that girl’s ‘build-your-own-robot’ is annoyingly cute and looks a bit like ‘Bumblebee’ from the ‘Transformers’ franchise.  I think they want you to not just watch the film, but also buy the toys.  I won’t be doing that.  And, if Part III does get made (maybe) I’ll wait for this one to appear on Netflix.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights