Pacific Rim Uprising

A Full Mess of Retcon

Happy Wednesday, Belles & Beaux!

I finally got to sit and watch this despite its release a year or so ago. In short, it was an absolute disappointment with so much retroactive continuity (retcon from here out) to fit in a new character. I could have honestly figured out a better way to fix most of it the way they wanted it without throwing everything created in the previous movie to the dogs.

Fair warning, some spoilers are going to follow as I can’t fully dive in on the retcon done in the latest movie without covering the previous one. If you haven’t seen either movie, please click the back button now and watch them before joining me here for my rant/review.

The movie starts out ten years after the breach was closed by Raleigh and Mako. Mako has taken over the Pan Pacific Defense Corp (PPDC). In truth, Hercules Hansen (played by Max Martini) from the first Pacific Rim should have taken over as the head of the PPDC after Stacker Pentecost died during the closing of the breach. So unless Herc retired in the last 10 years from the PPDC – which I doubt after Chuck’s sacrifice -, there’s no reason why Mako should be over the PPDC. This is by far the largest plot hole for me in the whole movie. Where the heck has Herc been the last ten years if not working with the PPDC?

And while this is going on, the PPDC has still been building Jaegers – though they are mostly used for show and to keep people out of the jaeger junkyards and away from the kaiju graveyards (so to speak). A company has also been working on making the jaegers like drones so that they can be controlled by one person instead of by two pilots as they were in the first movie and for a great deal of this movie.

Can I also point out the lack of love for Stryker Eureka? We have a new model of Gipsy but no Stryker??? Like come on Guillermo! Give me some slack! There was one jaeger that seemed to have the same head model of Stryker, but it doesn’t count.

Long story short, things happen, Mako gets killed, and let’s just say I fin Newt’s relationship with a Kajiu Brain extremely disturbing. Point one for Charlie Day for freaking me out. Also, they show Stacker and Mako’s memorials but no sign of Chuck??? Yet another thing I’m angry over.

Starting to see a pattern right?

So the movie goes on to Stacker’s biological son and Sam Eastwood’s character fighting this jaeger protected super kaiju. Also, those jaegers have kaiju brains in them. I long for the day when Mothra becomes main again and we get new Mothra movies. Now those are some good kaiju movies. But we’re here to talk about how much this movie let me down.

Basically the idea behind drifting to run the jaegers is built on compatibility. If you’re compatible with your partner, then that’s the perfect idea. However, there are those like Herc and Stacker that are called “universally compatible”. What’s that mean? Well it means they could drift with anyone when it comes to the neural transfer. In this movie, it seems like they’re trying to actually train the cadets to be universally compatible. Great concept, but it defeats the purpose of the lore set up in the first movie. You’re either drift compatible or you aren’t. There is no learning to be, or so we were led to believe.

And even if Herc did retire, I’m pretty sure he’d probably volunteer to help with the drift training of the new cadets. So many flaws with this movie people! So by some miraculous thing, two people who have never drifted before – much like Mako and Raleigh in the first movie – manage to save the earth yet again. Oh and it wasn’t Scott Eastwood if that’s who you think helped John Boyega with this. Nope. It’s a teenager who built a jaeger out of scraps.

So Newt gets thrown in jail and basically John Boyega informs them that the human race is now going to come to them and destroy the Masters of the Kaiju. How do I rate this one? It’s most definitely a 0.5 out of 10 stars. Why? Because of the information that we’ve been given up to this point was pretty much retconned. Would I buy it on dvd? Absolutely not. I told my mom if she wanted to then she could, but I’m not buying it.