Review: Pacific Rim Uprising

I watched this film immediately after Pacific Rim. In hindsight maybe I should have waited a while. I might have been able to enjoy it better if the first one wasn't so fresh in my mind.

Pacific Rim Uprising (sometimes punctuated as Pacific Rim: Uprising) is the 2018 sequel to Pacific Rim. It has a new director and new characters, two things that nine times out of ten mark a decrease in quality.

I only recognised one of the new actors:

John Boyega (Finn in Star Wars) as Jake

The film is set ten years after the first one. The Kaiju are gone, and the Jaegars are going to be replaced by drones. Unfortunately it turns out that (SPOILER!) Newt of all people has become a traitor and is working with the Precursors. Yes, you read that right. No, it doesn't make much more sense in the film. Cue Kaiju going on the rampage and Jaegars fighting them again.

It's a struggle to find anything good to say about this film. The special effects were impressive, but as for the plot...

Everything that made the first film good is sadly missing. No sign of Raleigh, Mako unceremoniously killed off, a collection of uninteresting new characters, far too many subplots, and a dearth of Kaiju-Jaegar battles. I watched the first film precisely because I wanted to see giant robots fighting giant monsters, and this film only has one battle in the whole thing! A fairly long battle, yes, but it's still not enough. As for Mako's aforementioned fate, few fictional deaths have been more pointless or more infuriating 😠

Sequels have a depressing tendency to be underwhelming. This is one of the most underwhelming ones I've ever seen.

Is it available online?: Not as far I know.

Rating: 4/10

Review: Pacific Rim

 Forgot to post on Wednesday, and then I forgot to post yesterday too 😑 

Pacific Rim is a 2013 science fiction film directed by Guillermo del Toro. Although not actually based on an existing work, it's inspired by the plethora of monster movies and anime about giant robots. A sequel was released in 2018, and is currently at the top of my to-watch list.

I only recognised three actors. Weirdly enough, I recognised two from Charles Dickens adaptations -- not exactly the sort of association you'd expect.

Charlie Hunnam (Nicholas in Nicholas Nickleby 2002) as Raleigh

Burn Gorman (Guppy in Bleak House 2005) as Gottlieb

Idris Elba (Heimdall in Thor 2011) as Stacker

Kaiju (giant monsters, in case someone somewhere doesn't know what that means) are invading Earth. Humans build and pilot giant robots called Jaegers to destroy them. Unfortunately some idiots decide to stop building Jaegers, so when the monsters next attack it's up to our heroes and a few old Jaegers to defeat them.

I watched this film solely because I was bored and it looked cool. Giant robots fighting giant monsters are bound to be entertaining, if nothing else. It must be said the plot is predictable. (I guessed what was going to happen in the climax about half-way through.) I had no high expectations for the film. So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be good. Very good. It's like a Marvel film from back when the MCU was made of actual films instead of money-making monstrosities.

As long as you don't expect an original plot and don't mind occasionally cheesy dialogue, this film is thoroughly entertaining and has some great moments. The battles with the Kaiju are among my favourite film scenes ever!

Is it available online?: It probably is somewhere, but I don't know where.

Rating: 7/10

Review: Annihilation (2018)

Every so often you find a film that can't decide what genre it wants to be. Such films are almost always a mess. This one is even more of a mess than I expected.

Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction/horror/goodness-knows-what-else film very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The novel is part of a trilogy, but the film is a standalone.

I only recognised three of the actors:
Natalie Portman (Jane in Thor) as Lena
Oscar Isaac (Poe in Star Wars) as Kane
Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok) as Josie

Early in the film the main problem with it becomes only too apparent. The story keeps jumping around between the past and present. On its own that's not a problem, but the story also makes no sense. It feels like the writer, director, and actors all had different ideas of what the film was about.

Another major problem is the characters. To put it bluntly, they might as well be cardboard cutouts. They're interchangeable, unmemorable, and impossible to care anything for. I fast-forwarded until the main characters go into the Shimmer. Only then does the story become interesting.

The scenes in the Shimmer are really the only part of the film worth watching. They're incredibly eerie, beautiful, and terrifying. (In fact it was through seeing GIFs on Tumblr of the Shimmer that I first learnt of this film's existence. Let's just say I'd rather look at the GIFs than the film itself.) The bear attack is the most memorable, nightmarish thing I've seen for a long time.

Unfortunately, towards the end the film disintegrates into even more chaos. The alien's existence was easy to see coming. Its defeat and apparent death made sense. But then that final scene comes along and turns an underwhelming film into a mind-boggling mess. I wracked my brains trying to figure out what it meant. All I got was a headache.

If you want to watch a science fiction film, there are far better ones out there. (Pun unintentional.) If you decide to watch this film anyway, you're probably better off if you only watch the scenes in the Shimmer and stop the film as soon as the alien dies. That way you'll see the good parts without the boring or incomprehensible.

Is it available online?: I don't think so.

Rating: 4/10.