A sequel to a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. What was expected? Bigger robots fighting bigger monsters. The same thing with little tweaks - as most sequels do. What we got?

A product. A film generated by an AI. I wasn't there, but I assume it went something like this. The first meeting of the creators of this movie follows.

Ok, Google, what do modern kids like?

1. Robots (Transformers) 2. Scary cool monsters 3. Robots fighting monsters 4. Robots fighting robots 5. Memes from 2009 (Trololo sing) really? + memes from 2017 (the salt). 6. Horribly executed kid rebel subplots (Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Hunger games whatever) 7. Action 8. Forced drama? 9. Bad jokes?

Ok, let's take The Independence Day Resurgence's basic plot and fail miserably at everything. Done.

In other words, there is nothing in this movie besides action scenes. The plot lives on its own, there are no characters, and even their substitutes are completely disconnected from the dead plot. Nothing they do matter, it just follows typical cliches until the end. It even gets confusing at some point, but then you see the light at the end of the tunnel. It rushes the ending knowing that by this point nobody cares.

All the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Most of the actors are just having fun knowing that there's no need to get invested into anything here. Sadly, Scott Eastwood's face is stuck in one emotion and is unable to display anything else.

CGI crews did a good job, I guess. Looks fine. There's even one creative action scene involving buildings. Other than that the action is generic, even IMAX can't make it feel better. Maybe it would've been more impressive but the overabundance of CGI city destruction in modern blockbusters seriously lowers the threshold for getting impressed by CGI.

I'd compare this to a long video game cut-scene, but modern games have more character development and creative visuals in their cut-scenes. For instance, pretty much all Blizzard cut-scenes are visual masterpieces.

Final verdict: not entertaining on the big screen and a total waste of time for home viewing.

Mind-numbing nonsense from fade-in to fadeout, "Pacific Rim Uprising" lacks the stellar cast and the suspenseful Armageddon melodrama of its outlandish but entertaining predecessor. Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost and Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket made "Pacific Rim" more than just a juvenile diversion in collateral damage and urban renewal. Comparatively, neither John Boyega nor Scott Eastwood musters enough magnetism in "Pacific Rim Uprising" to overshadow our heroic memories of Stacker and Raleigh. Everybody knows Stacker died in the original, so he was never coming back. Becket's absence is never adequately explained, though he might reappear in a later sequel. Meantime, "Pacific Rim Uprising" violates the first rule of all good sequels. Never should a heretofore untold character related to a franchise hero be invented to replace him. Meantime, everybody should recognize Boyega from his two recent "Star Wars" spectacles, while Clint Eastwood's son Scott has acquitted himself more than satisfactorily with supporting roles in "Fury" and "Suicide Squad." Boyega and Eastwood represent Hollywood's new blood. Sadly, they are hamstrung playing superficial characters with scarcely any complexity or charisma. The same shortcoming applies to the new breed of Jaeger pilots who comprise a politically-correct, multi-cultural coalition. Unknown actors and actresses all, they constitute a bland bunch with their petty rivalries. Boyega and Eastwood must whip these recruits into shape, so they can maneuver skyscraper-sized Jaegers on a dime. "Pacific Rim" came out in 2013, and five years would slip away before "Pacific Rim Uprising" emerged. Despite the gap in time between the original's release and its uninspired sequel, you'd think the filmmakers could have conjured up something with more imagination than a lame imitation of "Ender's Game" (2013). Basically, all director Steven S. DeKnight of Netflix's "Daredevil," freshman scenarists Emily Carmichael and Kira Snyder, and "Maze Runner" writer T.S. Nowlin do is grant the Kaiju a rematch. Along the way, they disperse the returning original characters, and the last-minute showdown never attains the impressive proportions of "Pacific Rim."

This formulaic follow-up takes place in 2030, ten years after the Kaiju defeat at the Battle of the Breach. Not only has peace and prosperity been restored during the intervening decade, but scientists have also converted the rock 'em, sock 'em Jaegers so they can be deployed like drones. DeKnight and his writers introduce Stacker Pentecost's insubordinate son, Jake (John Boyega of "Attack the Block"), but the son is nothing like his sire. Since the end of the Kaiju wars, dismantled Jaegers have been rusting away in scrap heaps. Some skeptics insist on being prepared for the return of the Kaiju. Thieves have catered to their paranoia by stealing Jaeger parts and selling them to these superstitious souls. Jake acquires his cash from pilfering these parts. Little does he know his principal competitor is an audacious, 15-year old orphan, Amara Namani (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), and she is beating him to those parts. Amara is assembling her own micro-sized Jaeger when Jake catches up with her. No sooner have they met than a real Jaeger thwarts her plans. Cutting a deal, Jake winds up back where he started before the Kaiju wars instead of behind bars. Former Jaeger copilot and old friend Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood of "Diablo") needs Jake to help train the new Jaegar pilots. Instead of calling it "Pacific Rim Uprising," producer Guillermo del Toro and DeKnight should have named it "Pacific Rim: The Next Generation." Since she proved herself a decent pilot, Namani lands in the new cadet class, but not everyone likes her. According to Lambert, teens make better Jaeger pilots. Their youth, it seems, enables them 'to drift' better as co-pilots. If you haven't seen "Pacific Rim," the mind-melding ability to drift is indispensable for pilots to operate these gigantic robots in combat against the supernatural "Godzilla" lizards from another dimension. Drifting might also apply to the audiences' willing suspension of disbelief in matters of such caprice.

Meantime, Dr. Hermann Gottieb (Burn Gorman) and Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), who enlivened the original with their feverish comic relief antics, are no longer friendly. Newt now works for the domineering Liwen Shao (Jing Tian of "The Great Wall") of the Shao Corporation, where he serves as her co-chief of the drone development program. The change in the relationship between Hermann and Newt provides the sole surprise in this mediocre sequel. Remember, these two nerds saved the day for Stacker and Raleigh in "Pacific Rim" because they drifted with a hideous Kaiju's mind. Hermann still suffers nightmares from the ordeal, while nitwit Newt has discovered the love of his life. Yes, he keeps a Kaiju brain preserved in a glass tank at his apartment, refers to her as Alice, and maintains what might be described as a Platonic relationship with it! Preposterous as this all seems, it might have been less bizarre if the filmmakers had brought back Ron Perlman's sinister Kaiju collector Hannibal Chau from the first film whose presence is sorely missed. Newt's infatuation with Alice, and the profit-motive resolve of Liwen Shao to implement drones over drift pilots makes her seem shady when a rogue Jaeger storms out of the ocean and annihilates Sidney, Australia. Apart from Hermann and Newt, the only other returning "Pacific Rim" character is Rinko Kikuchi's Mako Mori. Sadly, Mako has been demoted from piloting Jaegers and is sidelined to the status of a pencil-pushing administrator. Mako must approve Shao's drone pilot proposal before the Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC) will institute it. Meaning, Mori doesn't survive long enough to make a difference.

Predictably, the fearsome alien Kaiju monsters arrive in the second hour to challenge the green Jaeger recruits. DeKnight orchestrates this last minute apocalyptic battle in Tokyo, with the usual collateral damage, while "Terminator Genisys" composer Lorne Balfe's bombastic score does more to heighten this slam-bang smackdown than its staging. Not even an intriguing cliffhanger ending is enough to make "Pacific Rim Uprising" seem more than a 'downsizing' of its far superior predecessor.

I'm not sure there's too many people out there who would call Guillermo Del Toro's 2013 robot/monster infused popcorn event Pacific Rim a classic of any sort but the eye-candy clad and seriously entertaining experience looks like a genuine masterpiece when placed alongside this charmless and trite sequel.

Somehow turning the prospect of giant robots and oversized monsters going at each other in a battle of life and death into an utterly boring and tiresome exercise, Pacific Rim: Uprising is the early death knell to a series that should've been a brand name that became the perfect excuse to turn your brain off and enjoy some big screen spectacle that is home to cheesy one liners, over the top CGI infused carnage and some A-listers hamming it up for good measure.

Taking over directing duties from Del Toro, debut feature film director Steven S. DeKnight brings none of the child like charm or enthusiasm the Mexican auteur brought to the table with his entry as we instead get a lame and tame tale of Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecosts' child Jake (played by a struggling John Boyega) turn from troublemaker to Jager pilot, as the world finds itself once more under threat from the dreaded Kaiju monsters.

The first Pacific Rim had a similarly dumb plot and characters that were more like walking caricatures but there was a sense that everyone involved was having a great time and despite better judgements, you as an audience member did to.

That's completely lost here, there's little fun to be had with the bland and uninteresting action scenes, the main cast are all completely forgettable, while even returning cast members such as Charlie Day's Dr. Newton Geiszler and Burn Gorman's Hermann Gottlieb are more of a tacked on accessory, with Day in particular getting an embarrassing character development that is both lame and totally misguided.

With a pulse-free plot line and thrill-free action there was little chance Uprising ever had at succeeding and there's little mystery as to why this unwanted sequel failed to capture the dollars at the box-office, guaranteeing the Pacific Rim brand is now dead in the water.

Final Say -

Not even the most hardcore of Pacific Rim fans will find much to enjoy in Uprising, an utterly forgettable and disposable new entry into the wannabe franchise that somehow manages to turn it's over the top foundations into a bland, charm-free and tiresome event.

1 child mechanic out of 5