by Aaron Schweitzer, Editor
Welcome to Another Person’s Treasure. In this series, we discuss films that aren’t considered great by critic or audience scores, but are considered great by the author. I think this film deserves a second glance, so let’s get into why.
Pacific Rim: Uprising holds a 5.6 on IMDb, a 42% critics score and a 37% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, 44 on Metacritic, and a 2.2 average on Letterboxd. A sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim, Uprising takes place 10 years after the initial victory of the human race — who were armed with large mechanized robots called Jaegers — over the Kaiju. While the threat was seemingly over, the humans continued to build and train in case the Kaiju were to come back. We meet Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), son of Idris Elba’s Stacker from the original film, who was once kicked out of the Jaeger training program, but is now tasked with leading and training the new generation of fighters.
Going into the first Pacific Rim, I was expecting giant monsters versus giant robots. While I certainly got that, the movie wound up having those awesome touches that Guillermo del Toro adds, which made it special to me. Due to scheduling conflicts with The Shape of Water, del Toro did not return to direct, but passed it along to Steven S. DeKnight, who was a known writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, Spartacus, and Daredevil. This was his chance to leap to the big screen and become a more full-time director. Naturally, there was a lot of hesitation from myself and other fans leading into Uprising, and the early reviews did not help matters much. But maybe it was my affinity for the first film, or maybe it was because I had MoviePass (back when it was in its heyday), but I saw it twice opening weekend.
Let me start defending this movie by saying that I do not think it is great or anywhere near as good as its predecessor, but there is a lot to love about it, especially a lot more than the scores up top reflect. I picked this film to in particular partially because we are in the middle of the hype for Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, but also because it came up on my friend Shane’s interview on his YouTube channel. He asked me which movie I would love a sequel for, and my response was explaining my go-to answer is The Nice Guys, but since you all saw that coming, I pitched Pacific Rim: Uprising. Surprise was the appropriate response, since the movie was not well received and, being five years old without any acknowledgement of the franchise from Universal or Legendary since release, this franchise seems dead in the water. There are apparently rumors that it might merge with the Legendary Monsters universe, and while it is a stupid idea, it is not like those franchises are putting out better ideas at this point.
Pacific Rim: Uprising lost fans at three key points, and enough time has passed to heal these wounds. Heck, five years passed between the first two films, and that even felt like enough time to get over whatever you had to, and just be happy we were getting more fighting robots and monsters. The three points in question are casting changes, director and story changes, and a remarkably bizarre story turn.
Replacing Charlie Hunnam as the leading man is John Boyega, and while it is jarring for a sequel, it’s not like the first film lived or died on Hunnam’s performance. Boyega is somewhere between his Star Wars performances and They Cloned Tyrone. You can tell he actually cared about this project, but he just shines on lower profile films. Scott Eastwood joins the cast and gets about as good as Scott Eastwood gets; he’s certainly more enjoyable here than in the Fast & Furious franchise. Some of the new recruits are a lot of fun as well. Ivanna Sakhno stands out — it honestly surprises me that she has not had too big of a splash yet. Meanwhile, the film also stars Cailee Spaeny, who starred in this year’s Priscilla as the titular character. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman return, and that is a huge plus, because they were the only surviving characters I would have really missed. While I definitely would have loved to see more of the original cast return, we kind of did this to ourselves by not supporting the first film at the box office, forcing the studio to make budget cuts for the sequel. Furthermore, it could have been a much worse cast, like so many recast sequels we get, such as Batman & Robin, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Independence Day: Resurgence, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Jaws 2, or even Sidney Prescott’s absence from Scream VI. It’s one of those best-of-a-bad-situation kind of things.
Regarding the director and story changes, there is certainly a lot to be desired, but I think we all expected as much. Going from del Toro to an unproven director was always a bit of a red flag, but DeKnight gave us some pretty good action sequences. He also directly addressed the first film’s biggest criticism of only nighttime fights to give us nearly all daytime fights! I do not fault DeKnight’s efforts with this project at all — I even thank him for making it look like the original, while also keeping it interesting. There is a big change from the main threat not being Kaiju for most of the movie, but instead hacked Jaeger drones; and while it doesn’t quite work, we do get to see different kinds of action. I could watch robots versus monsters all day long, but it is refreshing to see the damage that these things can do compared to different beasts.
Where the movie really goes off the rails is with a remarkably bizarre plot twist which really feels like the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia writers’ room joked about it, then Charlie Day jokingly mentioned it near the writers of Uprising, and they worked it in the script overnight. You know what? I love the twist. Let’s not think we were in a different franchise, and instead remember that we came to this movie to see robots fight monsters, and we thought we knew what we were getting into. So what that moment happened and it caught me off guard, I laughed out loud, but almost in respect. Franchises need to take big swings, otherwise they start to feel stale, and this film takes some of the biggest swings I have seen! Killing off returning characters, bizarre plot twists, and decimating the good guys, leaving the climax to the newbs keeps me on my feet and just in on this franchise.
While not as great as the first film in nearly any regard, I genuinely think Pacific Rim: Uprising is worth a second look. It’s a bit of a mess, but it is a hell of a lot of fun along the way if you let it do its thing! If you’re a first timer or are revisiting your theater experience, lighten up and prepare for an insane ride, and maybe you’ll love it too! I’m still hoping for a sequel that I do not believe will ever come, but I guarantee you I will be there opening weekend; maybe even twice if MoviePass is still a thing.
You can read more from Aaron Schweitzer, and follow him on Twitter, Bluesky, and Letterboxd