<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Steven S. DeKnight. Starring John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Tian Jing, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Rinko Kikuchi, Adria Arjona, Zhang Jin

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes

The first one got a lot of fan boys cheering, but Uprising is pretty much the same thing. It looks like Hollywood has a template and even the dialogue is just slapped on without a second thought.

Robots battling monsters takes us back to the days of Giant Robot; remember that one, ‘Giant Robot, finger missiles!’ Those were good days. There was a technique and art used to film those episodes. Now they use tons of CGI and the actors are basically just standing in one place and jogging mouthing dialogue that is so familiar, they probably have it memorised for the next action film; no script necessary.

The Kaiju monsters aren’t the threat in this one, it’s the evil humans that have been ‘taken over’ by ‘Precursors’ and wage war with mutant robots. A new band of young and not-so-young cadets and rangers must battle and, as usual, ‘save the world’! The standard plot line for all Hollywood films, it is fast becoming stale now.

Jake Pentacost (John Boyega), son of the late hero Stacker (Idris Elba, from the first film) is roped in to follow in his father’s footsteps and help the hot Ranger Nate (Scott Eastwood) train a new group of cadets. And so begins the usual American banter and bravado. You’ve heard it a million times before so you’re like, “I’ve watched this movie before.” And you have.

The battles between the Jaegers (‘hunter robots’) and other robots and Kaiju are pretty much standard. I’d have been more excited if they actually had made a ‘connection’ between Boyega and Eastwood! Boyega’s character makes references to Scott’s character being pretty and very sexy a few times. Something more than just a ‘neural handshake’ between these two would at least create some interest in the one-dimensional characters.

Pacific Rim tries to be the UN of films with America, Australia, China, India, Russia, and other South East Asian nations represented. But they all behave and sound very American.

Why Hollywood can’t produce a storyline that’s not linear and formulaic I don’t know. Is it because they lack the creativity and originality or that they think this is exactly what audiences want so let’s give it to them boiler plate time and again.

In that sense, you’ve already watched Pacific Rim 3, so maybe they shouldn’t bother making it.

.