Recently, Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim came out. It beat out Black Panther and was number one during its opening weekend, making 28 million dollars. Much of the cast was new; however, there were some returning cast members. Those being Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori, Burn Gorman as Dr. Gottlieb who is tragically underused despite his great performance, and Charlie Day as Dr. Geiszler. Charlie Day’s Character was written and performed very well in the first movie and in Uprising, his character is expanded upon. However it is not well done; he has a strange arc that is meant to be serious but ends up being hilarious in a cringey way. 

John Boyega and Cailee Spaeny are the leads and both do well. Cailee Spaeny as 15 year old Amari Namani is great and by far the best performance.  Her acting is exceptionally done, especially for a younger actress. John Boyega plays Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost of the original Pacific Rim. His performance is well done as usual; however, he brings with him the cringey humour from the Star Wars sequels. He often makes jokes about how handsome and sexy he and another character played by Scott Eastwood are.  It’s scripted for laughs, but the effect is extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and is made even more so by the fact that many of these comments are made towards a fifteen year old girl.

The story of Pacific Rim: Uprising is pretty dull and boring. It does not build upon the universe established by the first one, and doesn’t really add much. Most of the first act really shows this but the action really picks up towards the end. This is made worse by the awkward dialogue and some cringey jokes. The action is very well done though, and  is actually done better than the first showing Jaegers that are much faster and seem more powerful and advanced. Another downfall of the movie is that it has a lack of Kaiju throughout; however, it is mostly made up for in the 3rd act where there is a great action scene involving a great fight between the Jaegers and Kaiju. This movie is great for people who just want to see robots and monsters fight but anyone looking for a deep story will not be satisfied. An overall rating for this movie would be 6/10