Pacific Rim: Uprising

Reductive or not, there's a lot to be said for eye-candy, and luckily for Steven S. DeKnight he has recruited John Boyega and Scott Eastwood into this CGI-fest that picks up from the, dare I say, far superior enterprise from 2013. It's "Lambert" (Eastwood) who has to knock his new squadron into shape as they prepare to fight an even more deadly army of "Transformers" - nope, sorry, "Kaiju" - as the portal between our world and that occupied by this thing's writers becomes open and extremely dangerous. What now ensues does slightly surprise if only because Boyega already had "The Force Awakens" (2015) under his belt whilst Eastwood had "F&F 8" to pay his manscaping bills. What are they doing here then, you may well ask? At least Cailee Spaeny was still starting out! The story hasn't an original limb in it's shockingly derivative frame, the dialogue is an hybrid of the banal and the gung-ho and the whole look of the film seems aimed at Saturday morning kids television - there's isn't even the obligatory mixed shower scene! It's clearly had some production money thrown at it, and to be fair it does look good - in a repetitive and familiar sort of fashion, but quite why we wanted or needed this is anyone's guess. Straight to streaming, I'd reckon. Streams of what...?

The only thing that went wrong with this movie was Charlie Day turned out to be the surprise villain! But....the none-stop action was very awesome.

Boyega makes for a slightly more engaging lead than Charlie Hunnam did in the original, (co-pilot Eastwood is merely **as** dull as Charlie Hunnam) but _Uprising_ has virtually the exact same ups and down as the first _Pacific Rim_. If you dig that movie, you'll probably dig this. If you hated it, you'll probably hate this. Me? I'm on the lower end of mixed, for both. _Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._