Blu-Ray (4k) Review – Pacific Rim: Uprising

Blu-ray Reviews, Film, Reviews, Top Story

How do you make a sequel to a film that flopped hard in America without most of the original cast? That’s what was the puzzling thing about Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel to the Guillermo del Toro “giant robots vs. monsters” flop. With the star of the first film (Charlie Hunnam) not returning, and the biggest name from the original cast (Idris Elba) killed off, finding a place to go with the sequel was an interesting one.

Enter John Boyeha as the son of the legendary Stacker Pentecost. He’s our guide into this world where the events of the first film apparently happened a lot differently than they actually did. We’re ten years after the Breach was closed and what transpires is a long, boring film that moves past the idea of “giant robots vs. monsters” aspect of the original with a sort of sci-fi, interdimensional war starter pack fastened onto the original film.

It’s a sequel that doesn’t do much with the original and is such a departure that the joy of the first film is nowhere to be found. The original didn’t take itself too seriously and felt like a live action anime in so many ways; it only had one promise, to deliver giant robots and giant monsters fighting in massive cities with massive damages and delivered that in spades.

This one tries to expand upon the mythos of the original, et al, while trying to remake the original in its image. It wants us to think of the Jaegers and the final fight of humanity as something more than the desperate act of a few trying to do more than build a wall and pray it’d work.

Uprising is the sort of sequel that sounds instantly forgettable and should be. In a couple years it’ll wind up on a clickbait list of “Ten movie flops you didn’t realize had sequels.”

There’s a ton of features on the 4K that helps bring you up to speed as well as seeing the reasoning behind some of their decisions, story wise,

Universal Pictures presents Pacific Rim: Uprising. Directed by Steven S. DeKnight. Written by Steven S. DeKnight & Emily Carmichael & Kira Snyder and T.S. Nowlin, based on characters created by Travis Beacham. Starring John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Burn Gorman, Charlie Day, Rinko Kikuchi, Jing Tian, Max Zhang. Run Time: minutes. Rated PG-13. Released on: 6.19.18