Pacific Rim was a great dumb movie, but Pacific Rim 2 gives the franchise a chance to go back and become a great movie, period. Here’s what needs to happen, though.
Don’t Try To Replace Stacker Pentecost
It ain’t happening, so don’t try. Yeah, Idris Elba was easily the best actor in the movie, and his rousing speech about canceling the apocalypse was undeniably one of the highlights of the movie. But it’s lightning in a bottle, and it’s only meant to be captured once. And on that note:
Better Characters
While I’ve argued that Pacific Rim‘s characters have the virtue of doing things, they aren’t exactly dynamic. To be fair, the real stars of the movie are the giant robots and the monsters they hit with boats, but if we’re going to have humans, let’s make them a little more dynamic and interesting. The stick fights are a good start, now how about some hobbies?
More Personality To The Monsters
None of the monsters really have names, and part of the fun of a kaiju movie is to know who it is you’re rooting to take a building to the face. Charlie Day’s running around, let’s have him give out a few names. Even if he just dubs one Melvin or something, it’ll be an improvement.
Let’s See More Of What The Jaegers Can Do
One of the big problems Pacific Rim had was that we just didn’t see what the Jaegers, most of them, could pull off; the movie was more concerned with wiping them out to raise the stakes. True, it had it where it counted:
But we’d like to see more. Yes, this is a subtle way of hinting we want even more monster fights out of the next movie.
Don’t Get Serious On Us
What many people loved about Pacific Rim was that it was the rare movie that did not expect you to take it very, very seriously. So let’s not change that: The most important thing is that monsters get punched, after all.