2013’s Pacific Rim saw visionary director, and now Academy Award winner, Guillermo Del Toro set his sights on the ultimate clash between robots and monsters. The film was a technical feast for the eyes and ears and has gained a fairly large following just five years removed from it’s Summer release date. 2018 now sees Steven DeKnight (Season 1 showrunner of Netflix’s Daredevil) take over the director’s chair in the follow up to Pacific Rim, with Pacific Rim: Uprising. Set 10 years after the events of the first film, Jake Pentecost has a tough time shaking his father’s shadow hovering over him since his heroic sacrifice. We follow Jake throughout this supposed high-octane tale where the Jaegers and Kaiju are set to meet once more in an epic showdown to save humanity. Unfortunately, the adventure is less than satisfying in every way imaginable. Where the first film succeeds, Uprising fails in virtually every department. Where Uprising wants “fun”, “beat ‘em up”, “rock ‘em sock ‘em robots” filling up their frames, it lacks in heart, sincerity, and honesty that was brought to the Del Toro directed first entry. There’s a hinge of self-awareness but it’s done in an uninspired, predictable, and lazy way. Characters take note of ridiculous things, ham up intentionally cheesy lines, but it all feels forced and not organic. The biggest issue that stands out within Uprising, is the film’s sheer stupidity. Again, the world that Del Toro built is ridiculously silly, but at least it pays homage to the classic cheesy monster movies of old. It even includes a heavy downpour in it’s sensational finale mirroring the many Japanese films that used a heavy amount of precipitation during it’s fight sequences for dramatic effect. Uprising lacks any and all of that clever nuance that was brought before, and is even more telling due to Steven DeKnight’s inability to tap into what makes this world so creatively interesting. He instead chooses to dial it up to 150 and toss aside the joy that comes in seeing larger than life mechs fighting surreal monsters. Trying to explain the level of “dumb” it achieves would mean having to spoil many of the absurd moments that you have to see to believe. To put it bluntly, Pacific Rim: Uprising is basically the offspring of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Independence Day Resurgence. On a positive note; even though Uprising is chalked full of truly terrible film-making, John Boyega brings his insta-charisma to the table and makes his utterly annoying character tolerable. The sound design, visual effects, and fight choreography dazzle even if the decision to make the Jaegers faster, larger, and more ridiculous wasn’t a welcome surprise. It makes a lot of sense why the VFX is the biggest takeaway in this film considering Guillermo was the supervisor in that department. Other than these minor aspects, Uprising is somehow worse than you might have expected as mentioned previously. If you go in expecting what you got with the first film’s self aware shlock with wholly intentional cheesiness you’ll leave disappointed. This one fails to encapsulate the awareness at its absurdity in every single facet of film-making imaginable. The first film made us believe in the lore and mythos, this entry just makes story up as it goes along. It presented subplots and then submerged them under their dazzling special effects. The crew behind the film somehow convinced themselves that they could get away with cheap fun by saying “people like robots punching each other” but have no clue how to make it entertaining. The robots move faster, act faster, are bigger and larger, which completely pulverizes the imagination, scale, and larger than life spectacle of the first film. It has no clue how to accomplish what Guillermo did because they simply didn’t care how he achieved such grandiose charm. Maybe we should have expected a first time director, less than stellar marketing campaign to deliver a bad film, but that doesn’t excuse the brain crushing boredom displayed on the largest screen at your nearest theater. Trying to take in every inch of each frame is an exhausting experience and will leave you sludging out of your theater rather than re-enacting the fight sequences. Before Pacific Rim: Uprising begins to rise up, it completely melts down. Pacific Rim: Uprising gets a: 24/100