Pacific Rim 2: The Search for More Money
I was unexpectedly pleased with 2013’s Pacific Rim. Whenever you have huge monsters fighting huge robots, we all win. Seeing the robots – or Jaegers – take on Kaiju made the little kid in me freak out. But that was pretty much the best part of the movie. The rest of the movie was average. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. But I didn’t think it merited a sequel.
Well, Universal and Legendary Pictures thought otherwise. The first trailer for Pacific Rim: Uprising was debuted at NYCC. I don’t know how I feel about it.
First off, I’ll get this outta the way. Anytime you trade Idris Elba for John Boyega, you lose something. John Boyega is awesome; Idris Elba is more awesome. Here, Boyega plays Jake Pentecost, son of Elba’s Stacker. So all is forgiven.
Guillermo del Toro is not directing this movie. The baton has been passed to Steven S. DeKnight. That’s a peculiar choice since he’s only worked on TV shows prior to this. But his previous stints include the first season of Daredevil on Netflix, so maybe he’ll do well here.
After that, everything I saw in the trailer was simply more of the first movie, for good or ill. There are still lots of Jaeger pilots, although most of them look pretty young. The Jaegers still require two pilots, one for each side of the Jaeger’s brain. And the Jaegers look phenomenal. The kaiju look menacing enough, and their fights with the Jaegers still make the little kid in me smile a bit. Essentially, this is Transformers vs Godzilla with wicked dance moves by the pilots.
As is typical with a first trailer, not much is fleshed out. There is a clip of two Jaegers fighting each other, and there’s a kaiju that seems to reform itself. The rest consists of John Boyega yelling an inspirational speech and lots action. All of this while a sample from 2Pac’s Untouchable is repeated over dramatic music. That’s pretty much it.
Pacific Rim: Uprising is slated to release on March 23, 2018. I hope that in the months leading up to that day, something convinces me that the little kid inside isn’t wrong for being excited.
