Sequels are never going to be truly original-canonical consistency is the entire point-but any subsequent installments in a franchise should at least try to further the lore, and I’m fairly certain the only new thing I learned in Uprising was that tapping into kaiju brains can get you so high you’ll want to marry a kaiju brain.
(Also, isn’t that Rey’s introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens?) The same goes for Uprising’s talk of the strange scientific properties of kaiju blood and the importance of banding together at the end of the world, which can feel like a strong case for un-canceling the apocalypse. Having teenaged Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) introduced in the sequel as a potential hero who pilfers fallen jaegers doesn’t have the same impact, despite Spaeny's charisma. Having Ron Perlman show up as a black market kaiju parts dealer in Pac Rim because Perlman makes a great bad guy. Concepts like the “drift compatibility” and “neural handshakes” that let jaeger pilots sync to control their mechs seemed ludicrous the first time around, but they were forgivable because, hey man, cool story. Frankly, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly del Toro did to make it work-but those things become obvious when set next to *Uprising'*s shortcomings. Yes, that ending was cornier than Iowa in the summertime. And without the skill of del Toro and original screenwriter Travis Beacham, Uprising is nothing more than the wedding-band cover version of Pacific Rim. While it monster-robot fights are just as fun the second time around, it seems content simply to play the same notes as the original. DeKnight’s 10-years-later sequel-it could’ve been a much worse mecha-wreck than it is-but it’s clearly playing in someone else’s sandbox, tooling around with another kid’s toys.
Pacific Rim Uprising is what that movie would’ve been without Guillermo del Toro. Without that, it would’ve just been Transformers-all rock-‘em-sock-‘em, no heart. The film he was planning was a playground toy battle writ large, imagined by a guy with the exuberance and resources necessary to build his own toys. But he was also steeped in its antecedents: Toho monster films, Voltron, decades of sci-fi.
Back in 2011, when Guillermo del Toro was first starting to hype his forthcoming movie Pacific Rim, he gleefully described it as “giant fucking monsters against giant fucking robots.” That’s how he always talked about it, with childlike glee.
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