Pacific Rim: Uprising

While the original Pacific Rim had some definite problems, its sequel, is a big, stupid, worthless, son-of-a-bitching waste of time. Uprising takes an original idea—big Kaiju monsters fighting man-made robots—from director/creator Guillermo del Toro. That Del Toro idea resulted in an OK first movie in Pacific Rim, with great elements but troublesome issues (robots/monsters, good … people, bad). Uprising takes that original idea and turns it into something akin to, or perhaps even worse than, the average Transformers movie. It’s a watered-down, cheap joke of a film that obliterates anything good del Toro started. Without del Toro directing—he dumped out a few years back to assume a producer’s role—the film loses all sense of style and artistic direction. Steven S. DeKnight, who has directed such TV shows as Smallville and Daredevil, makes his feature-film-directing debut with something that screams “Maybe I should’ve stuck with the TV gigs!” Replacing Charlie Hunnam as the original franchise star, John Boyega jumps headlong into this mess as Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba in the first movie. Jake is a former Jaeger (Giant Robot) pilot who, after the death of his dad and a bad Jaeger experience, has taken to partying and trading black market hot sauce in a post-Kaiju world. While Elba’s character supposedly closed off the monsters from our world, they find a way back (of course). This results in subpar CGI battles and lousy performances all around.