YMMV / Pacific Rim: Uprising

• Adorkable: Naturally Newt has some but Hermann has taken a level in this along with kindness and kaijuology. He's delighted when he's tasked with finding Newt to talk to him about Shao's drones. He takes it as finally getting an important mission.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Just how much free will does Newt have now that his mind has been taken over by the Precursors? The line about not being strong enough to resist it points to some form of forceful mind control, but the character's decadent personal life and presumably voluntary habit to drift with his Kaiju brain girlfriend hint he might have been tempted or corrupted by capitalizing on his disenchantment towards human society. It might even be that both theories are true and the latter is feeding the former.
  • It has been noted that the Mega Kaiju has a strange tendence to roar powerfully even if it involves stopping the fight and delaying a vital attack in order to do it. Considering the thing is essentially a Body Horror amalgam of living flesh parts sewn together in extremis, could it be that the monster is in a perpetual, excruciating agony and its roars are actually screams of pain? Even worse, keeping in mind that the Mega Kaiju retains all of its forming Kaiju's brains, might the screams be the representation of their conflicting individual consciences mishmashed together in an insane heap?
• Americans Hate Tingle: Despite the increased Chinese elements, many Chinese filmgoers didn't buy it. The film got a 5.5 on China's most popular movie review site, and many found the China-pandering cringeworthy and brain-dead. However, the bulk of the criticism centers on Jing Tian and her character. Jing Tian had caused a massive backlash ever since she got roles in Legendary's movies (namely The Great Wall and Kong: Skull Island), which her detractors claimed are due to her connections instead of her skills to net her star roles. Many Chinese netizens even coined the term "Jing Tian Cinematic Universe" to connect all of her roles into a giant web of mockery.
• Ass Pull: As awesome as the brutal Mega Kaiju is, Newt's contingency plan for the Jaegers overwhelming whatever Kaiju came through really does come out of nowhere.
• Awesome Music: The thematic remix of Tupac Shakur's collaboration with James Brown, Unchained, as used in the cinematic trailers.
• Base-Breaking Character: Amara is either an unwelcome annoyance or a fun Badass Adorable.
• Broken Base: Newt's Big Bad twist: a well-executed surprise or a terrible handling of a beloved character?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Playing the trololo song right before the final battle? Seriously?
• Contested Sequel: Uprising got decisively more mixed critical reception and fan-reaction than to the original. Critics often cite former director Guillermo del Toro's handling of the original, as he was relegated to a producer, with first-time director Steven S. DeKnight taking over. Del Toro spent much of his film on character development and world building, with the Jaegers being majestic and the Kaiju are apocalyptic. Knight doubles down on the action quotient with the Jaegers being awesome and the Kaiju are what they punch, which has its own appeal.
• Continuity Lockout: On a very small scale. Although the major points of the last film are explained, the mention of the Onibaba Attack and Coyote Tango will go right over most viewers heads even if they watched the last film, as Onibaba and Coyote were pictured but never named.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The Reveal that the Kaiju attacks in the first movie were actually them heading to Mt. Fuji to trigger a mass extinction eruption, the cities just being in the way was disliked for contradicting everything we've seen of the attacks and raising more questions (Why did most Kaiju attack cities far away from Mt. Fuji as opposed to going directly there? How did it take so long for the heroes to notice the alleged pattern in their movements?) to answer something so minor fans never cared to ask.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Black Panther, though not by thematic reasons, but because Uprising has the dubious honor of having ended the five week reign at the top of the box office for Black Panther, which naturally led to quite a few accusations that it didn't deserve to be the one to do it.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The Pentecost household makes for decent fuel with the reveal that Stacker had a biological son at the same time as his adoption of Mako Mori and his apparent favoritism for her.
  • The reveal that Newt kept the Kaiju brain from the previous film and has routinely been Drifting with "her", resulting in his possession and detainment at the end of Uprising, will continue to fuel ideas for Newt fans.
  • With Raleigh's lack of appearance in Uprising, one can only imagine how he reacted to Mako's death, given their close bond. Although the novelization revealed he died of cancer a year after the original.
  • What were the PPDC doing while the Kaiju were gone? We know people were making rogue Jaegers and the Kaiju worshippers were also a threat (albeit a small one), but what other troubles are they dealing with post-war?
• Fanon Discontinuity: A large portion of the original film's fans like to pretend the followup doesn't exist, due to its massive Happy Ending Override, numerous unpopular changes to tone, story, and characters, and the lack of any involvement from Guillermo del Toro (who, in turn, also ignores the sequel's existence).
• Foe Yay Shipping: Newt and Hermann's Ho Yay becomes this now that Newt is the Precursor Emissary.
• Franchise Original Sin: The first Pacific Rim movie sparked both interest and fire due to what some perceived as an excessive inspiration of Neon Genesis Evangelion, although this controversy mostly died out thanks to the acceptance of its elements as homages and the presence of many other references to mecha anime in the film. Uprising, however, has been noted to rest a bit more excessively on said series: not only its plot is basically a mix of the arcs of Bardiel, the Jet Alone, the Mass Produced EVA and Ritsuko's brief rebellion, but its climax reveals the Kaijus were trying to reach Tokyo to cause a disaster that would terminate humanity, just like the Third Impact plot point.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The scenes in the trailer where Newt looks to be rooting on the Jaegers in their big fight is 100% this when you see the film and realise that as the film's Big Bad, Newt's not only actually rooting for the Kaiju, but is responsible for their combination into the Mega-Kaiju in the final battle. (even if the "That's What I'm Talking About!" line got cut).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • After the first film was pointed out to take a lot from Neon Genesis Evangelion, with people comparing Pentecost to Gendo Ikari and Mako to Rei Ayanami, this film introduces a son of his who was neglected in favor of Mako and is now in charge of piloting the mechas needed to save humanity, adding a counterpart of Shinji Ikari to the equation. Even more hilarious is how the Shao Drone Jaegers are designed to resemble and fill a very similar role to the Mass Produced Eva Units, to the point that it may not be coincidence and they fully decided to crib some notes off of the series. To make the similarities even more blatant, in this film's final battle, the Jaegers' pilots (excluding Gipsy Avenger) are actually teenagers barely out of their training not unlike the protagonists of NGE and many other Japanese mecha animes, with them essentially Falling into the Cockpit after all the original pilots are killed in the raid on the Shatterdome. It also has Tokyo hiding from monsters via underground elevator bunkers, albeit not the size of buildings like in Tokyo-3
  • With this film and the Star Wars sequel trilogy, John Boyega has now played characters named Finn and Jake, something that hasn't been lost on him.
  • This is not the first time that John Boyega is leading a group of kids to battle aliens with bioluminescent blue mouths.
  • Given the above Fandom Rivalry with Black Panther, it is rather ironic that there is a kaiju that can absorb and reflect kinetic energy in a manner similar to T'challa's super suit.
  • The appearance of the Unicorn Gundam in the film is a prelude to Legendary striking a deal with Sunrise to produce a live-action Gundam film.
• Ho Yay: Jake has a quite interesting relationship with Nate. They're constantly snarking at each other, but Jake at one point openly admits Nate is attractive and sexy. When Jules kisses them both goodbye before the Final Battle, he shares a glance with Nate and calls the situation confusing.
• Narm:
  • The playing of the memetic Trololo song just as the Jaegers are dramatically taking off is way too much Mood Whiplash and borders on Cringe Comedy.
  • Amara's flashback where her family gets crushed by a Kaiju foot. It's just so sudden that it almost comes off as a parody, and more than a couple of critics has compared the moment to the opening titles of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • Shrikethorn's roar is best described as sounding somewhat like Chewbacca crossed with a seal. Meanwhile, Raijin's roar sounds more like a bored yawn.
  • Raijin's... vague resemblance to a vagina with teeth may either be Body Horror levels of disturbing or just inappropriately hilarious, depending on the viewer.
• Narm Charm:
  • There is a split on the music used for the trailer. Some find it terrible while a number of people started letting it grow on them. The overall added cheesiness started charming people.
  • The Jaegers and Kaiju now look more like the Zords and monsters from Power Rangers, but given how the movie is an homage to goofy Toku media, it all works out.
• One True Threesome: Naturally the only way to solve Jake and Lambert's confusion when Jules gives both a kiss on the cheek before the finale.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Cailee Spaeny as Amara Namani before both Bad Times at the El Royale later that year and Priscilla—which she got a Golden Globe nomination for—five years after that.
  • Adria Arjona as Jules Reyes four years before she had Morbius (2022), Father of the Bride (2022) and Andor.
• Squick: Newt's girlfriend. It's a Kaiju brain he regularly drifts with and talks to.
• Tainted by the Preview: Some viewers were more turned off by the speed of the Jaegers and Kaiju than their designs. Others pointed out these scenes might have been sped up, as is typical of most trailers. Luckily, it seems that the new Jaegers do have scenes where they're lumbering giants, but other scenes really punch up the fact these Mark VI's have the benefit of being sleek and agile leagues beyond the old Jaegers.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Kaiju and Jaeger's don't have the same weight from the first movie, with less shots emphasising their enormity, and the fight scenes have a lot more speed and manoeuvrability. Some may not be bothered by this, while others may argue it was a critical part of the first movie's style.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The film is stuffed of so many characters and their own character arcs that it was a safe bet that many of them would be perceived as underutilized, despite the limited running time of the film wouldn't have probably allowed it without altering substantially its development. The interquel novel Pacific Rim: Ascension attempts to remedy this, filling in some gaps as well as providing more backstory and characterization for Mako, Jules, Nate, Jinhai and Viktoria.
  • Marshal Mako Mori. Already a beloved lead of the first film who was praised for having a character arc all her own, she only has so many minutes' worth of Uprising's screen time before Obsidian Fury cuts her down. We never do get to see why she retired as a Jaeger pilot, what changes she, herself, brought to the PPDC after Stacker's death, whether she and Newt are on speaking terms since he went to work for Shao, how she intends to deal with Shao's Jaeger drones (or even the Kaiju controlling them), or even what her current status with Raleigh is.
  • Nate Lambert is established to be Jake's equal and has a history with him, yet he never really has a meaningful impact on the main story aside from being Jake's co-pilot up until the climax, where he is injured and has to be replaced by Amara, the true deuteragonist of the film.
  • Also, the new Mission Control Jules, who's implied to have a past relationship with both Jake and Nate, which is only referenced to in two separate scenes and never comes up again, and she's basically Out of Focus in the latter half of the movie.
  • The new Kaiju themselves. While the monsters from the previous movie could carry whole scenes themselves, Raijin, Shrikethorn and Hakuja serve very little purpose other than combining into the Mega Kaiju, who itself only has about as much screen presence as a single Kaiju from the first movie.
  • The rhino-like Kaiju that emerges from the breach and is immediately and unceremoniously killed when the portal collapses once Shao disables Newt's drones. Given that it had an interesting design and was easily twice the size of Slattern, it definitely could have used more screentime.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Even the worst detractors of the movie believe it actually showcases several great ideas for the franchise - it's just that they are too many for a single film, which effectively impedes any of them from developing into its full potential.
  • Shao Industries. That Liwen Shao and Newt have spent all this time developing remotely-piloted drones (which Mako explicitly fears can be hacked) to replace the PPDC's traditional Jaegers looks like it's going to set up a story about corporate greed and the dangers thereof, especially when such a conflict revolves around Humongous Mecha. Instead, Newt reveals his Face–Heel Turn and Shao immediately joins the PPDC. (Though Mako is right about the hacking on account of Newt's sabotaging them.)
  • After Newt's Face–Heel Turn is revealed, Hermann still insists that Newt is a good man who is simply being controlled by the Precursors, even going so far as to refuse to let Liwen Shao shoot him. This could have led to a really interesting plot about Hermann trying to find a way to save Newt, but instead, Hermann is basically relegated to acting as tech support for the Jaeger pilots for the rest of the movie and his relationship with Newt is never touched on again.

---