Pacific Rim Uprising

I am a HUGE fan of the original Pacific Rim film, I mean, what's not to love?  Giant Mecha battling monstrous Kaiju...

And when the long awaited sequel hit in 2018, I sat back for more of this!

Plot (from Wikipedia)

In 2035, 10 years after the Battle of the Breach (as depicted in 2013 film Pacific Rim), former Jaeger pilot Jake Pentecost – son of Stacker Pentecost – makes a living by stealing and selling Jaeger parts on the black market in the Los Angeles area. After he tracks part of a disabled Jaeger's power core to the secret workshop of fifteen years old Jaeger enthusiast Amara Namani, both are arrested by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps after an altercation between Amara's small, single-pilot Jaeger Scrapper and the Jaeger November Ajax. Jake's adoptive sister and PPDC Secretary General Mako Mori gives Jake a choice between the prison or return to PPDC as an instructor with Amara as his recruit.
Upon arriving at a Shatterdome in China, Jake starts training Jaeger program cadets with his estranged former co-pilot Nate Lambert. Nate and Mako reveal to him that the Jaeger program is threatened by Shao Corporation's drone program, which offers to mass-produce Kaiju-Jaeger hybrid drones developed by Liwen Shao and Dr. Newton Geiszler. Mako is due to deliver a final assessment to determine the authorization of the drones at a PPDC council meeting in Sydney before she can report and prompts the PPDC council to authorize the drone program and order their immediate deployment. Moments before her death, Mako transmitted the location of a defunct Jaeger production facility in Siberia but Jake failed to save her. Jake and Nate travel to the area in their own Jaeger, but Obsidian Fury destroys the complex and engages them in battle. Upon destroying its reactor, they find that Obsidian Fury was controlled by a Kaiju's secondary brain, which testing shows was grown on Earth.

When the drones reach their respective locations, they are taken over by cloned Kaiju brains and simultaneously attack Shatterdomes worldwide, inflicting heavy casualties on the PPDC forces and incapacitating almost all Jaegers. Hermann Gottlieb seeks out Geiszler for help, only to discover that Geiszler is the mastermind behind the attack. Geiszler’s mind has been taken over by the Precursors, the alien race who created the Kaiju, due to his regularly drifting with Kaiju brains. Seeking to destroy the world for the Precursors, Geiszler, who is now the Precursor Emissary, commands the Kaiju-Jaeger hybrids to open new breaches all over the world. Although Shao is able to destroy the drones, three powerful Kaijus named Raijin, Hakuja, and Shrikethorn – emerge from the breaches and unite in Tokyo. The team realizes that the Precursors' goal is to activate the Ring of Fire by detonating Mount Fuji with the Kaiju's chemically reactive blood, spreading toxic gas into the atmosphere and wiping out all life on Earth, terraforming the planet for Precursor colonization.
The cadets are mobilized while Gottlieb and Shao repair the PPDC's four remaining Jaegers; Gottlieb invents powered jet-rockets, which launch the team to Tokyo. Although the Jaegers initially repel the three Kaiju, the Precursor Emissary merges them into a Mega-Kaiju that quickly overpowers the Jaegers, killing Suresh and two cadets, wounding Nate, and destroying all but Gipsy Avenger as the only operational Jaeger. Jake and Amara pilot it against the Mega-Kaiju, with Shao remote piloting Scrapper and aiding them by locating and welding a rocket to Gipsy's right hand and sending the Gipsy into the Mega-Kaiju which kills the kaiju as Jake and Amara survive by transferring into Scrapper prior to the collision. Afterwards, Nate takes the Precursor Emissary into custody.
Meanwhile, the captive Precursor Emissary threatens that Precursors will attack the world over and over again. Jake replies that next time, humanity will be the ones attacking the Precursors.

What I liked about it

* John Boyega puts down a great Pentecost Jr, and his english accent makes him even sound like the magnificent Idris Elba at times

* The new Jaegers are once again of fantastic design

What I didn`t like about it

* Most of the movie, this was a huge disappointment.  The evil Kaiju infiltration arc, rebellious Jaegers, the morphin together big beastie... this is just all to far flung compared to the first movie in the series.
* Scrapper

A shame, but it did groce well at the box office this year, currently standing in 10th place of all the movies released.  It will probably be enough for a third instalment, which I hope will go back to the first movie in style and `darkness`...