Review: 'Pacific Rim: Uprising'

While the first Pacific Rim film had over-the-top characters and was very silly in tone, it had great action, stunning visual effects, and was really fun. That was mainly thanks to Guillermo Del Toro being director.

But with a new director at the helm, and the trailers suggesting more of a Transformers film, I was second guessing myself whether to give this a chance or not.

From the start, you can tell that Del Toro's touches and style is more than gone from this sequel. However, the opening action sequence is pretty cool and slightly put me at ease thinking we are least going to have a fun time no matter how ridiculous, which is what the first film essentially was.

It gave us a decent introduction to a couple of sub-plots. But in the end, it just seemed to not care about developing it into something interesting.

Even the with the story becoming more flawed and ridiculous, the fun continued. I was enjoying the fight scenes, which still remind me of every finale of a Power Rangers episode.

It did sadly end on a sour note, as the very final scene reminded me too much of Independence Day: Resurgence, which is never ever a good thing.

Instead of Idris Elba, it is John Boyega being front and centre of this story. I think this was a good performance by him. It is certainly up there with his efforts in Detroit and Attack the Block. You can really feel his charisma throughout this. Sadly, his comedic moments did not work at all, and almost felt awkward at times.

It was a respectable performance by youngster Cailee Spaeny. She felt more than capable of playing this strong female character and showed great potential in being used in many future projects. I would be on the look-out for more of Spaeny's upcoming roles. However, I was surprised as to how under-used she was in the second half, especially when the first half suggests that she is going to be the main character.

Charlie Day was ridiculous and unintentionally funny in his role. I don't think it was entirely his fault as the stuff he was given to do just did not feel right for someone of Day's style.

As a fan of the TV series Torchwood, it was nice to see Burn Gorman reprise his role from the first one.

As you may expect, the visual effects is its biggest strength. What I liked the most is that a lot of the fights take place in the day-time, which is such a nice refreshing change. So many big action scenes take place at night, and can be tough to tell what is actually going on as the filtering for some reason wants to make it even darker.

I was very happy to see everything happening clearly, and I'm sure many people will echo that statement.

So like I said, it may be stupid and it may be silly, but it is a lot of fun. So much of it is over-the-top. But there is an air of charisma coming from each department that makes it into solid entertainment.

It did have the action, but none of the style and creativity that Del Toro did to make this more than just robots fighting monsters. But I think if you go into this knowing that it will not surpass Guillermo Del Toro's original, then I think you can have a good time.

Outside of the action, there's not much else to write home about sadly. The characters have small or basic development and it does not have any interesting topics to cover or explore. It is purely action based, and thankfully they make it perfectly watchable. But none of it was jaw-dropping enough to compete with its predecessor.

Rating: 7/10