PACIFIC RIM UPRISING (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

pacific rim uprising (2018) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   100+ minutes

Released         |   22 March 2018

cast

John Boyega ... Jake Pentecost
Scott Eastwood ... Nate Lambert
Rinko Kikuchi ... Mako Mori
Burn Gorman ... Dr. Gottlieb
Charlie Day ... Dr. Newton Geiszler

director

Steven S. DeKnight ​

writer

Travis Beacham ... (based on the characters created by)
 
Steven S. DeKnight ... (screenplay)
Steven S. DeKnight ... (story)
T.S. Nowlin ... (screenplay)
T.S. Nowlin ... (story by)
Kira Snyder ... (screenplay)
Emily Carmichael ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

​Dan Mindel

music

​John Paesano

film editor

Dylan Highsmith
Josh Schaeffer
Zach Staenberg

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

x

x

x

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PACIFIC RIM UPRISING (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

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PACIFIC RIM UPRISING (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, reunites with Mako Mori to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat.

PACIFIC RIM UPRISING (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 

Pop Movee Rating

Sometimes an unlikely number of contributing factors combine and, at a moment in time, someone with the authority to do so says, “Yes, I will provide the money needed.”

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING is a real-world case of that scenario playing out...

Despite being the brainchild of Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro, UPRISING’s 2013 progenitor was not a run away box office success. The film failed to achieve the mega-success of a “Hollywood Blockbuster” at the US Box Office and was considered a success ONLY because of its appeal in Asian markets, especially China where it generated the most Box Office income of any any market in which it was released. With a production budget of $175 million and probably another $100 million for promotion, PACIFIC RIM’s $411 million global ticket tally was not the sort of financial return that could be considered “easy money”. What really saved PACIFIC RIM was the quality of the finished product. Yes, it was cheesy. Yes, it was none-too-subtle. But, del Toro’s love of the material shone through with the sense of adventure and “Bigger IS Better” approach.

Why PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING made it to the screen is anybody’s guess, but the “packaging” may have a bit to do with it… The film was approved when Thomas Tull was still involved at Legendary Pictures and, there’s no doubt, one of Hollywood’s most influential financiers of the 21st Century was as an advocate to see a follow-up story. The project gained momentum when Legendary was acquired by the Chinese Wanda Group. In the time between the film’s green light and its theatrical release, Tull, along with most of his Legendary people, have moved on, leaving the company a shadow of its Warner Bros heyday where his Christopher Nolan created BATMAN films dominated the global Box Office for nearly a decade.

Of course, del Toro is another factor.

Guillermo del Toro opted to go and make THE SHAPE OF WATER, but remained on board as a Producer for UPRISING. Having his name attached legitimised this venture in the sense that viewers who liked the first movie would - possibly - be inclined to have a look at this new one purely because del Toro’s name is attached. Given he’s just come off the extraordinary critical success of THE SHAPE OF WATER, it will not hurt UPRISING’s Box Office potential one single bit. Many may even be of the belief that del Toro has directed the new movie, as Writer-Director Steven S. DeKnight is not the sort of name or talent that is going to stand-out, whereas del Toro only needs his name somewhere on the poster and people will immediately give UPRISING more credibility than it probably deserves.

There’s also the Boyega factor…

John Boyega is not a star in his own right, but he has broad appeal among viewers who like their Science Fiction and Horror genre films, thanks to his appearance in the new STAR WARS trilogy films and his break-out role in ATTACK THE BLOCK. Boyega isn’t enough to open a movie over the $100 million plus mark in the US, but a $30 million plus opening and a solid theatrical run in North America plus the international box office should see the film have a similar result to the first. This could be the best that the film’s producers could hope for. UPRISING is said to have a smaller budget than the previous film, but it’s been reported by multiple movie resource websites to be around the $150 million mark. Given cost of promotion has increased in the five years between the first and the second movie, it’s hard to imagine anything less than $75 million being spent to make movie-goers aware it’s being released, pushing the overall cost to make, market and distribute the movie well beyond $200 million.

Where PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING could and needs to go big is China. The film’s producers have opted to switch the story’s base of operations to China, necessitating the involvement of Chinese actors to play crucial characters in the film. Actors Tian Jing and Jin Zhang appear throughout the film. Jing plays Liwen Shao, the head of of the Shao Corporation, whose Jaeger drone program is the catalyst for the re-emergence of the Kaiju in the second half of the film. Shao’s company has dedicated itself to making sure that the Pacific Rim can defend itself should the Kaiju return, but there seems to be an underlying intent on the part of the film-makers, given Legendary’s ownership status, to show that Chinese enterprise provides the best world leadership. It’s a very obvious sign of how acute UPRISING’s attention to that country’s movie-goers needs to be in order to achieve commercial success.

In terms of story, UPRISING is very much PACIFIC RIM: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Besides the return of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman, the only other character to make it into the new film is Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori. Boyega plays Jake Pentecost, the son of Idris Elba’s character form the first film, who sacrificed himself to make sure the Kaiju attacks stopped. Jake is something of a cliche. He’s a screw-up. He’s a rebel. He struggles with authority. Despite all of these “Bad Boy” traits, Boyega still manages to make Jake appealing; relying on his natural charisma to transcend the cliches. Boyega’s performance slips when he is called on to deliver the “Winston Churchill” speech, not unlike the one Elba delivered in the first movie, to rally the troops. The fact that he starts off with “I’m not one for big speeches” and then drones on endlessly makes a mockery of everything the character has done in the hour-and-a-bit up to this point in the film!

Other than Boyega, none of the actors exhibit any great charisma or chemistry…

One of the highlights of PACIFIC RIM was the bickering, Frenemy relationship between Charlie Day’s Dr. Newton Geiszler and Burn Gorman’s Dr. Hermann Gottlieb. Sadly, none of this is to be found in UPRISING. The characters are apart for much of the story and serve to function as expository devices and MacGuffins, rather than real people. Steven S. DeKnight is a good television writer, but it seems that he and fellow writers, Emily Carmichael and Kira Snyder, weren’t able to develop the story beyond the formula offered up by the first film. T.S. Nowlin, the film’s other credited writer, worked on the project when it was still being developed by Del Toro and it would have been interesting to see how that version of the story would have progressed, given Nowlin’s greater feature film writing experience.

Like so many franchise films, UPRISING aims to capture the middle ground, targeting movie-goers who like their entertainment easy to understand with minimal thought required.

Or do they?

​Do movie-goers really want films like PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING?

It’s a sequel to a five year old movie that, in the scheme of Box Office returns, barely passed as a success. The people responsible for its production are now gone from the company who produced it, so the likelihood of a third PACIFIC RIM adventure is slim. Despite John Boyega’s efforts to talk the film up during his worldwide press junket that showed the film to the Press well in advance of its street date, there’s no “buzz” for this film at all. At a point in time, when Legendary was still an American-managed company and had a solid distribution deal with Warner Bros, an opportunity existed for the two companies to work on their “Big Monster” franchises, incorporating Godzilla, King Kong and the Kaiju into a cinematic universe that had some sense of purpose about its existence.

That window closed when Legendary moved to Universal.

Without the shared “Big Monster” DNA, PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING looks and feels like a movie without a franchise whose existence is more about maximizing Worldwide Box Office than it is about fresh, original entertainment.

Sadly, it’s not the only piece of Hollywood entertainment guilty of the crime...

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING (2018) USEFUL LINKS

​​Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) - IMDb
​Pacific Rim Uprising - Wikipedia
​Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) - Rotten Tomatoes

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