Uprising so thoroughly shit all over the series that I doubt we’ll ever see anything Pacific Rim again. Even the Netflix show came and went without much fanfare. Mako’s shitty death and Raleigh’s offscreen death especially just made Uprising feel like such a fraudulent sequel.

I do wonder how that twist with the Precursors would’ve worked with their established motive in the first movie where they tried terraforming millions of years ago only to wait until the atmosphere was more conducive. Perhaps being future humans they would’ve been physically incapable of surviving in such an oxygen-rich state of the world, hence their invasion during “modern” times where the atmosphere is more diluted but the planet isn’t totally barren?

 

I would have loved his version of PR2. What we gat was vaguely entertaining, but only in the "shut off your brain and STFU" way, not at all in the intellectually enjoyable first film. While the first one had it's share of questionable physics, the characters and the action sequences were genuinely fun and sometimes smart. The second was just blah on top of blah, with Charlie sometimes making it worth watching. Killing off your main heroes from #1 right off the bat was one of the dumber things I've ever seen an attempted franchise do. It would have been better to pretend they don't exist and leave the possibility hanging out there that they'd be back later. Or maybe a mention of them in passing. But not death.

So much potential for the universe in that first film, and they squandered it. Fail.

 

I do not remember having to do much thinking when watching Pacific Rim.

 

I honestly don't like that twist. Maybe it would have played out better in execution, but it sounds silly to me on paper, like a bad fan theory. Heck, I think this sort of time-loop theory does pop up for every franchise. I've seen people pitch the idea that the Quintessons were humans who time traveled, and that sort of thing. The Precursor lore doesn't really matter, they work better as a simple persistent alien threat who just want to terraform Earth.

I'm in the camp of people who actually think the sequel was pretty good. The flaws definitely became more apparent when I rewatched it about a year ago, but I generally like the story and twists. I think Newt becoming the villain (while still a bit cliché) was a much better and more shocking twist. I would have been curious to see Del Toro's sequel, but I'm not upset that we got Uprising instead. I had a good time with it in theaters, and still think it's a more than serviceable sequel.

 

If the precursors were future humans, wouldn’t they extinguish their own existence when they wiped out the present humans?

I personally found the first one kinda boring.

The second one was more entertaining, but the screenplay needed another revision or 2.

 

That's not what he said, though. Pacific Rim isn't a movie that requires you to "turn your brain off," if you really want to pick it apart it can be, but it's just a simple, well-told story. The only way Uprising can be enjoyed is through the filter of a minor concussion. (well, for me at least. I don't recommend it though)

Uprising was also just cheap and convoluted. PR1 had a pretty basic, "we have a problem and we have to solve it" conflict and the movie was just that. No stupid betrayal plot, no dumb "Jaegers built with Kaiju parts but nobody noticed" antics that really didn't amount to much, and no absurd "the Kaiju really wanted to go to a volcano all along even though most of them deployed in the wrong direction in the first movie." First movie was just monsters showed up, wanted to kill us, and we fought back. No mental gymnastics needed, just humans working together to solve a problem.

The problem with Uprising is that it took every possible idea Del Toro had and mashed it into one film without really working them out any more than that initial idea, when Del Toro is a far more meticulous creator and likely would've only used one or two of those ideas and then developed them fully. Likewise this time travel plot probably would've been revised and streamlined, rather than be literally what he says now. Uprising made that mistake, and I don't think Del Toro would have. (if you look at the BTS of the first movie a lot of ideas and concepts were scrapped or reworked to fit the rest of the film)

 

I meant more what SPLIT LIP is saying. You could leave your brain engaged for PR1 and still have a heck of a good time. PR2 you definitely have to just stop caring about all those pesky questions to even begin to enjoy it.

PR2 has the vibe of a story that wasn't allowed to stew a bit before the editing process, and/or wasn't passed off to someone else to edit. So many sloppy and questionable plot points. While it CAN be fun, if you're properly chemically dumbed down into oblivion, it's not a film that's fun to watch with an even mildly critical eye on the story telling aspects.

Del Toro is typically much better at fleshing out ideas, then reworking them until they're good enough that the audience doesn't have to say over and over, "but, wait a sec, didn't you?"

 

I should probably just dip out of the conversation. I acknowledge that Pacific Rim has fans, however I'm not one of them and don't really have anything positive to say about any aspect of the movie.