Pacific Rim: We're making it a franchise
A friend and I decided to watch this after eating dinner with colleagues practically next to the cinema. The first film was good fun, if a little dumb, and we figured that this would be more of the same. I guess it turned out to be just that. The war is over, humanity won despite losing all its giant robots, and the giant monsters are no more. But... why are there still so many giant robots around? They're not exactly useful or practical, and it's never explained in the film.
This film was a lot more upfront with the names and characteristics of both the giant monsters and the giant robots. As an example, a character randomly blurts out "That's Firstname Lastname, and it's the fastest robot in the fleet!" or something to that effect multiple times in the middle of a scene, and I can only picture a pop-up banner with the word "buy action figure here!" appearing when the movie makes it to Netflix.
My biggest gripe with the movie was that they did not manage to capture the same sense of scale as in the previous film. Pacific Rim managed to make it look like the robots were gigantic and heavy. When a robot pulled a rocket-powered punch, you could almost feel the powerful rockets working to accelerate thousands of tons of steel. Rain and seafoam cascaded off the giant robots, and their movements were slow and sluggish, further reinforcing the impression of great size and weight. In the sequel, the robots move like people in suits. Quick movements, sudden acceleration and deceleration, fast punches that send other monsters or robots flying without discernible recoil. The grandness was missing from a lot of scenes, like the background was scaled down instead of the robots scaled up. The way everything moved really broke the suspension of disbelief.
The film also breaks its own logic on many occasions. We're told that the final fight is all about preventing the giant monsters from reaching a certain place. Yet the monsters clearly stay behind to fight the heroes some more after pressing them to retreat. Why not just make a beeline for the destination while the robots regroup? Especially so when the monsters are shown to burrow quickly underground, but only use it to attack the heroes from behind instead of just digging their way to the goal with the heroes none the wiser.
One scene really sums up the logic of the movie: The heroes are told that something shady may be going on at a supposedly abandoned facility on an island off the north coast of Russia. One of them says: "We should investigate that - let's send one of the giant robots and have a look". Clearly, the writers decided that this film universe can't have any problems where the solution doesn't involve a giant robot. Thus, they ship an extremely large, slow-moving, noisy, visible and heavily armed robot halfway across the globe for a short reconnaissance mission, rather than a fast and stealthy drone that could be there and back in a day without any eventual enemies noticing anything. Giant robots are always the solution, and when the giant robots are unavailable the world is doomed because there are no other options. Oh, and ranged attacks are ineffective by default. All combat moves with longer reach than a sword will only tickle the opponent.
All in all, it was enjoyable, though. Watching giant robots punching giant monsters in the middle of a city. Or human-sized robots punching human-sized monsters in a toy city, as it turns out. Still didn't feel like a waste of time, but I won't be rushing to see it again. 2/3.