[yasr_overall_rating]
Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, reunites with Mako Mori to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat.
It has been ten years since the events in the first movie and former Jaeger pilot, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), the man who gave his life to save all humanity during the Battle of the Breach, is not doing too well. After having left the academy because he felt he couldn’t live up to his father’s name, he is reduced to stealing scrap metal to sell on the black market just to get by. While trying to retrieve a power adapter from an abandoned Jaeger factory, he comes across a young girl, Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who has built her own Jaeger called Scrapper, but no sooner have they both met than they are arrested by the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps. Jake’s adoptive sister Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who works for the company, and who is sick and tired of constantly bailing him out of trouble, gives him two options: either go to jail or re-enlist in the academy. Naturally, he doesn’t want jail time so he very reluctantly agrees to go back to the academy.
With Amara in tow as a new recruit, Jake meets Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood), his estranged former co-pilot and while there is still some animosity between them for Jake having left the academy with so much promise, they quickly put that aside in order to make a good example on the new recruits. They quickly learn that the Shao Corporation, headed by Liwen Shao (Tian Jing), is working on a new drone program that could make the Jaegers and all of its pilots obsolete. With a live practice exercise scheduled to take place in Sydney, Australia, with the press and public in attendance, the trial run is interrupted by a rogue Jaeger, Obsidian Fury, who demolishes half the city and in the ensuing chaos, kills Mako. Hellbent on revenge, Jake and Nate, on an old lead, head to an obsolete Jaeger production facility in Siberia where they are taken down by Obsidian Fury. After a fierce battle, Jake and Nate manage to neutralize Obsidian but when they open the pilot chambers, instead of finding two humans, they discover a Kaiju secondary brain.
Once back at the lab, the Shao Corporation’s drones go haywire, destroying all but four remaining Jaegers. When Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) tries reaching out to his old friend, Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) for help, he quickly realizes that he is behind all the attacks, with the Kaiju having corrupted his brain. Now under the control of the Precursors, the alien race who created the Kaiju, several of the drones begin to open a new breach so the Kaiju can cross over to our realm once more, and try to wipe out all mankind. Before Gottlieb successfully manages to take down the drone program, three Kaiju manage to make it through the breach to earth and with four remaining Jaegers left, Jake, Nate, and the rest of their young cadets power up and prepare for battle. After a lengthy fight throughout Hong Kong, and prospects for mankind looking good with the Jaegers seemingly on the verge of beating the Kaiju, Geiszler has a backup plan, one that infuses the three creatures together, creating one gigantic monster, incapable of being stopped. When they realize that the Precursors’ goal is to trigger the Ring of Fire by having the monster fall into Mount Fuji, whereupon contact, it will wipe out the entire planet, Jake, Nate, Amara, and Dr. Gottlieb must pull all their resources before it’s too late.
I never quite took to the original movie, it felt more like a “Transformers” knockoff than an original monsters vs. robots feature, even with recent Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro at the helm. There was way too much testosterone and inflated egos, where here, everybody works together in order to get the job done. Of course, by the end of the movie, Jake transforms into the pilot his father and teammates always knew he could be and watching the metamorphosis transpire over the course of the film, is well worth the price of admission alone. John Boyega has come into his own, after the success of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Detroit,” he has proven himself a very competent and charismatic actor, capable of both action and drama, a double threat in Hollywood. Scott Eastwood, the absolute spitting image of his father, continues to pop up in almost every franchise, from “Texas Chainsaw 3D” to “The Fate of the Furious,” and now “Pacific Rim,” the man certainly knows how to keep busy. Both he and Boyega share wonderful onscreen chemistry and the rest of the supporting cast do well with their respective roles. The movie is big, brash, loud, and fun, everything you could possibly want from a summer blockbuster.
In theaters Friday, March 23rd
