K-Science Labs

To start off, it wasn’t a BAD movie. It was a fun, summer blockbuster. It was Transformers with a bit more thought put into it. John Boyega is fucking phenomenal in his role, and I’m really glad he got that lead, because a less charismatic actor would’ve made it otherwise forgettable. The Jaeger cadets? I love every single one of them, and I hope upon hope that they will be built upon in whatever Legendary decides to do with Pacific Rim next.

Jaeger design? Great. Scrapper is a wonderful child and I don’t know why we don’t have 10+ figures of him already. What the heck.

Kaiju design? Ehhhhhh.... Lumpy spiky boys that I really wanted to like, but they are just so... bland. Except for Raijin. I liked him a lot. And those kaiju infected drones? Holy shit, I love them.

There’s a lot of other stuff I felt was fine or otherwise enjoyed, but it’s overshadowed by two things that i just cannot get over and probably won’t get over.

They fridged Mako Mori. You can say “she wrapped up her story in the first film” all you want, but that was wholly unnecessary, and just, no. Why. Why do this. Especially when our new female lead is a teenage girl genius. Not only is Mako fridged to motivate Jake, but is then replaced by Amara.

Everything about Newt. Which is really weird for me to get into, because god knows I’ve explored and loved a kaiju possessed Newt since the first film. I mean, if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know this. So I like the CONCEPT, but the execution here was piss poor and reduced Newt to a comedic relief, kaiju fucking villain. And then let’s pile on him being responsible for the deaths of Mako Mori and countless Jaeger pilots. He has no redemption. There’s no coming back. To the movies (very small) credit, they do try to build an emotional connection with Newt for sympathy, but his sympathetic moments are with Hermann, of which he has, what, only two or three scenes with? There’s nothing there. Even with them both together, the chemistry we get is purely from the actors and my previous knowledge of the first film. So Newt’s just the ass crack of a joke and not the tragic figure that we saw broken down after his first drift in the first movie.

Maybe this will be explored more in a third movie, but I highly doubt it. PacRim2 was a robot fighting movie first, a kaiju movie second, and a character driven narrative a very distant third.

Anyway, I’m mad, but not wholly displeased? It’s a weird place to be in. Newt’s my favorite, and they had so much they could’ve done with him, and they didn’t. He fell flat, the visual design fell flat, it just all fell flat in ways that made my enjoyment lessen. It’s fine. I’m glad it was made, it means the fandom gets to do what it does best, and that’s to get together and make their own shit up.