In 2013, director Guillermo del Toro took his reverence for Japanese monsters _ "kaiju" _ and giant robots, such as Ultraman and Johnny Sokko's, and created a thrilling homage to a genre in "Pacific Rim."
Five years later, with a different studio and a different director, Steven S. DeKnight, the reverence of a genre is still there in "Pacific Rim: Uprising." But it's reverence more for the entire genre of Japanese film, and it goes incredibly off the rails with respect to narrative and sanity as silliness dominates.
Not that its predecessor can be accused of being Shakespeare, but it did provide its share of fun.
At its best, "Uprising" is able to rely upon Jon Boyega of "Star Wars" fame and his British accent, along with Scott Eastwood _ yes, Clint's son _ and the plucky, spunky Cailee Spaeny as a hotshot pilot, to provide the occasional moments to savor, but there is little joy to be had.
We meet Jake Pentecost (Boyega), son of the giant robot (Jaeger) pilot who sacrificed his life to save the planet in the original film. He's got daddy issues, of course, and he's little more than a scavenger now, living off ill-gotten gains from some of those castoff robots, which is illegal.
He meets Amara (Spaeny) during one of those reclamation adventures and they end up getting nabbed in the process. Jake's forced back to the agency responsible for the robots and training their pilots, and Amara is now a recruit.
Of course, it doesn't take too long for new conflicts to arise.
The agency in charge of the Jaegers finds itself facing the possibility of being thrown into mothballs when a mega corporation assembles its own contingent of drone-operated robots. It doesn't help that the person in charge of the division goes into mad scientist mode unleashing the drones' full power, which allows kaiju to return to Earth and wreak mayhem.
No one could ever think that a movie about giant robots could ever beat the past three Transformers films for sheer awfulness. Think again.
DeKnight has a willing cast, but a story that doesn't hold together, and thus they and the audience suffer.
The audacity of all this: wiggle room is left for a sequel.
