Giant robots vs giant monsters, part 2. Giant robots merely punching giant monsters, part 2. Godzilla rip-off/clone/homage (however you wanna look at it) vs giant robots, part 2. 'Rampage 2' without Dwayne Johnson. Yet another giant monster destroying a city, part 2. CGI onslaught, part 2. Transformers vs giant monsters. There are many ways to describe this movie; but the one way you cannot describe this movie...is it actually being a good movie.
The Plot: Giant monsters (Kaiju, whatever) from dimension X came from the depths of the ocean to destroy mankind in the original, mankind fought back with giant robots (Jaegers, whatever) and won. This time more giant monsters from dimension X come back from the depths of the ocean to destroy mankind again. Spoiler alert, mankind fights back and wins again. Moving on...oh wait this movie also tees up a possible third sequel because of course it does.
So its illegal for people to build their own Jaegers, something I didn't quite understand really because you'd think in this universe it could be useful. Lets think about this, you have the possibility of giant monsters returning to wipe out mankind. The only way to (reasonably) stop them is with giant robots. So if clever innovative people are able to build Jaegers on their own with random bits and pieces, isn't that maybe a good thing? Use that to your advantage. Sure I can understand the issue of rogue Jaegers or 'unlicensed' Jaegers running around, but if that's your only concern in a world where giant monsters could rise from the depths and take a massive dump on your city, well maybe change your priorities.
Anyway its ten years later and the story now focuses on the son of one of the lead characters in the original movie (note, not actually the lead character). Jake Pentecost (John Boyega) is the stereotypically wild card son of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) who steals Jaeger parts and sells them on the black market. Naturally Jake used to be a hot young top gun in the Pan-Pacific Defence Corps but quit because of the burden of expectations of his fathers reputation...blah blah blah. But guess what! Now he's back in the PPDC after getting caught stealing some Jaeger shit and given the choice of that or prison. Luckily his old co-pilot Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood) is still around to help him out and generally look and act all grizzled and tough. Because that's what all military trainers are like, apparently.
Not only do we have those incredibly bland and predictable cliches, we also have the usual team of good looking young recruits for Jake to mould in his own image. Of course this being 2018 the recruits are a hand picked and completely unrealistic diverse bunch of kids; you know just to appease everyone just in case. Its whilst watching all this cringeworthy macho bullshit in the PPDC that you fully understand the influence China has on Hollywood these days (in case you hadn't noticed before). Of course you can't really blame Hollywood seeing as they owe it to China for saving the first movie; so its really no surprise that this movie is virtually dedicated to the East.
Looking at the battles (the entire main crux of this movie), yeah they're mighty impressive with all that glossy CGI, but what did you expect?? But lets be real for a minute here, take the first battle in Melbourne, Australia. Yeah the whole city is pretty much obliterated with, I can only assume, hundreds of thousands of deaths, but this is not touched upon. Then you have the big finale battle in Tokyo which takes up most of the damn movie. Once again the destruction is on a GRAND scale the likes of which I don't think we've witnessed before. Tokyo like Melbourne is (in parts) utterly decimated. Hell the human controlled Jaegers even use the fecking buildings as weapons at one point! Did they even check there were any humans in those buildings??
The monsters and Jaegers throw each other around smashing into various buildings as if for fun! And when either aren't falling into buildings, they're swinging around on them or simply barging them over for fecks sake. I simply cannot convey the amount of carnage in this movie, its literally colossal. Its so unbelievably epic it just becomes a farce; surely a staggering human death toll but who cares eh. Funnily enough despite the inescapable death toll you never actually see any humans on the ground anywhere during these battles. The CGI cities are totally barren of any human life apparently. Oh and what the flip was all that shit with some Jaegers being taken over by Precursor (the aliens that control the monsters) brains! So not only do the Jaegers get their brain/core taken over, the Jaegers actually morph into robot monster hybrids at the same time?? What??
I think the one moment where I completely switched off was the point in which the Jaegers started performing martial arts moves. I mean I guess you've gone this far with this crap you might as well just go the whole hog right. And then they launch Gipsy Avenger into orbit so they can freefall the thing directly onto the last remaining monster (there were three but they all morphed together like a big organic Transformer), oy vey!
In essence this movie is pretty much a mix of Transformers, Voltron, Godzilla...and amazingly for this sequel Power Rangers. The sight of these Jaegers being piloted by these young annoyingly cocky hotshots, each with different skills and abilities, was cringeworthy. Not to mention the cringeworthy performances from Boyega and Eastwood both trying to be stoic funny and ice cool in every scene. Just before the final battle Pentecost turns to his young recruits and claims he can't make rousing speeches in the heat of the moment. He then continues to give a (cringeworthy) rousing speech in the heat of the moment.
For me this comes across as yet another movie that falls under the 'if it had been released in the 90's it probably would have been a big hit' category. Obviously self explanatory and I fully believe this. This isn't a terrible movie per say, its solid sci-fi, its just too late in the day. Overall this movie just feels incredibly dated on every level (except for the effects obviously). But the most heinous crime of all is the fact they totally mullered a pretty decent concept from the original movie. Yes the first movie was big and flashy, but they still managed to somehow go stupidly incoherently overboard here.
4/10
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