Why did it fail?
Because it wasn't good.
Because it never bothered to have a sequel
Nobody told them how retarded it was to try to appeal to china AND have a black protagonist.
>>22606299When you started the franchise with a handsome white man and an Asian waifu. Visual effect and Ultraman homage aside, it had an eyecandy cast of characters and features a platonic friendship you can get into, then you made a sequel with fucking John Boyega as protagonist. It just didn't work on the visual appeal level. Killing off both previous protagonists, offscreen and onscreen was also retarded. Trying to make the story too complicated for its own good was also retarded. Pacific was always meant to be a weaboo-fun movie, not a lousy gundam knockoff like Uprising was.
>>22606308AND children which is why they introduced kid pilots, cause apparently kids can only relate to other kids.
>>22606318Uprising was better than the first though, movie 1 had too much pointless talking and everyone was up their own ass on how much they win against Kaiju. I laughed out loud in the theater when Leather paralyzed the Jaegers. Upriyhad more action scenes and Obsidian Fury.
>>22606308>the random chink bitch is literally the reason they win in the end and it still wasn't enough to make this movie succeed in ChinaGranted, from what I understand, even the Chinese have a limit for pandering in Western movies.
>>22606323>movie 1 had too much pointless talkingIt was fun to watch pointless talking. Uprising while had alot of talkings with purposes, it was not interesting because who gives a fuck about those mumbo jumbo that nigga was yapping about.
The weirdest part about Uprising is that the basic framework was del Toro's idea before he left the project. Even Mako dying was his idea, except it was supposed to be Raleigh that failed to save her if I remember right. Still would have been stupid but at least then her death would have felt a little more impactful.
>>22606332No, they followed the whole Precursor storyline + Newton becomes the villain. However, what they got wrong was the Mako part since Del Toro's plan for the second movie was to continue Mako's storyline since she is the protagonist. Uprising turned into the way it did because of the Star Wars sequel at the time and John Boyega was heavily promoted back then. People would have been fine with Uprising if it had continued with the original cast.
>>22606299Because it's American media and Americans as a collective do not really enjoy mecha, it's the realm of niche nerds. The rest of the country just LARPs about liking giant robots. American (or perhaps more accurately Western?) gearhead nerds simply don't seem to focus on giant robots as much as the nips do and the western public absolutely doesn't give that shit the time of day.
I hate how everytime a Disney movie/franchise got popular, the actors stared in those things always infest other franchises like a cancer eating away a healthy body.
>>22606349Yeah Del Toro basically a tokufag and collects bunch of Ultra Q merchandises. First Pacific Rim was a flop, too but it was more or less his passion project instead of something he made with revenue in mind.
>>22606323Beargguy modafocka
>>22606357You say that like anyone but Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver are doing good after the Sequels.
>>22606366Adam Driver switched to drama genre despite the popularity he gained from those shitty Star Wars movies. You rarely see him in high budgeted blockbusters nowadays, probably because he hates those memes clowning on his sub-par acting in Disney Star Wars.
>>22606323Every single thing in your life that you ever liked is substandard. And that's terrible.
>>22606332Mako was killed because the Chinese government has regulations in place that make it illegal to finance media that could be construed as overtly pro-japanese. Uprising was produced after Legendary was acquired by WANDA, and at the height of their retarded "wolf warrior" retard foreign policy nonsense. Hence, Mako Dies, the main shatterdome set is relocated from hong kong to mainland china, and the entire subplot of the Shao corporation with the heroic chinese CEO lady was made a critical aspect of the plot.
The Blacked sucked. It didn't feel like Pacific Rim. There was no, "laugh in the face of death" air to the story from the first movie. Killing the tech nerd and the mom was a stupid idea.
This shit is why I feel no sympathy for Boyega getting a diminished role in Star Wars.
>>22606329Remember how Newt, aka the spineless white beta comic-relief guy, revealed to fem-boss Shao that he was faking the slapstick sycophantry all along and was in-fact manifold smarter than she could ever hope to be thanks to precursor mindmeld fuckery? And he told her off in flawless Mandarin to boot?What are the odds they took it personal?
>>22606329The Chinese are weird in that they WANT the big dumb American shit. They don't want Americans giving them Chinese stuff because they have their own stuff. It's like when Disney tried to make that Mulan reboot all Wuxia as fuck but it still sucked because China is way better at Wuxia.
>>22606308Didn't they appeal to China in the first one by placing it in Hong Kong?
The first movie for whatever faults it might have was sincere. It was made by people who wanted it to exist so they could enjoy it and share it with like minded people. The sequel was a produced-by-committee piece of ""content"" mean to fill a box office slot and nothing else. It really is that simple. Also, despite only being in a couple frames Tacit Ronin best Jaeger.
>>22606308Most of Pacific Rim 1’s revenue came from overseas, that ratio is even higher for the sequel. Pandering to China worked, if nothing else.
>>22606761It did. Basically all of the movie takes place in Chink territory. If anything, it was weird to think they’d ever agree to be playing second fiddle in their own home turf in-universe.
>>22606908Basically, Hollywood wore the pants in the relationship. We were serving them dog meat hamburgers, but it was still hamburgers. These days China is not relying on Hollywood anymore, so they can call the shots on their own movies. It's what I read, anyway.
I liked it better when it was called Godannar.
>>22606906First movie made over 400 mil. Uprising made barely 300 mil. And both movies had around similar budget. The japanese wank worked better than Chinese/nigger wank.
For a movie universe that clearly emulates cues from Japanese monster media and mecha fiction, they sure as hell disrespected Japan by not depicting a team of Japanese pilots and their own Jaeger; not a fucking hand me down. Stringer was a based guy but why was he piloting Japan's mecha? Every other country had its own nationals in their respective Jaegers. And Mako was nothing but token Asian girl (at least they didn't make her the love interest).
>>22609398In the original script the super advanced mech was Tacit Ronin and was the Japanese team. It solo defends the shatter dome in the climax against 3 cat5 kaiju while Gypsy is fighting in the breach. No idea why they swapped that for Striker in the final script.
>>22609571>was Tacit Ronin and was the Japanese team>At an undetermined point in time, Kaori and Duc Jessop are assigned to the Jaeger as its pilots.[7]https://pacificrim.fandom.com/wiki/Tacit_Ronin>Duc was born in Australia and is the son of Darwin Jessop, an Australian citizen.[6]>Kaori is born and raised on the island of Yakushia, Japan by her father. Okay they couldn't even have a Japanese male pilot? This is actually even worse because it's blatant yellow fever like Shogun. And why would Japan allow an Aussie to pilot their own mech? It'd be like a Japanese dude piloting a US, Canadian or Aussie Jaeger?
Lmao, even PacRim did the nigga pander better than uprising>The commander is an unyielding badass with a soft spot>his "son" is an absolute waste of screen and a meme
>>22606318I think the real problem is something much more fundamental and hard to describe. Though obviously changing up the cast and killing off the old is a big negative.But the bigger problem is just the original Pacific Rim oozed a sense of style and passion in a way that's hard to put into words. If you just wrote out literally a summary of the characters and plot of Pacific Rim, it sounds like any dime a dozen mech or generic CGI action movie story. And yet when I rewatched it right around when the sequel came out, there was a night and day difference between the feeling of both. The original manages to feel oddly fresh, in a way as if someone had just reinvented the standard mecha template instead of just riffing off of the already established industry. Not in a way where it came up with something that was wholly unique, but it gave off the feeling like the people who made it followed the same path as the original luminaries of the industry. Recreating the kind of themes and tones of those stories on their own.There's none of that emotion in Uprising, which IS the standard, generic action movie that Pacific Rim avoided becoming. To be clear, that's still a lot of other important things to shit on Uprising for besides Boyega and the lack of proper tone. The designs of the Jaegers, the lack of true pathos between the pilots, the bigger, stupider plot, etc. It's just this is what feels like the biggest loss, cause it's such a hard thing to get anywhere.
>>22609897spot on. Beacham's script was cool but lacked a lot of flair and had too many sub plots and characters. When Del Toro came on, he cut the fat out big time, and focused the movie in on the things he does best, fantastic visual direction, and really crowd pleasing simple interpersonal drama. Uprising is completely heartless by comparison. Like not many directors could have continued PR1's style, but Uprising makes no attempt to even try to understand why PR1 worked.
>>22606703chink market want big bombastic action without the preachy shit. It's the whole reason why Fast and Furious made mad bank there and why Boyega's bullshit didn't fly
>>22609575Nobody wants to watch male Japanese in Hollywood; it's qt Japanese female love interests
>>22609897The original movie was made by guys who knew and liked mecha. The second one was by guys who probably only knew anime from dragon ball.>We wuz like ballerinas and shit.Fuck off Boyega.
>>22609398Del Toro is a hack who passes off jap shit as his own ideas, so of course he doesn't want to give the japs their due
>>22609897This, it's easy to shit on Boyega and the China pandering, but those were all symptoms of the root cause, which is that nobody working on Uprising had the same sincere passion for mecha that Del Toro did. Pacific Rim isn't a perfect work, but it makes committed decisions with a strong vision about the kind of setting and mecha it portrays. For example, the jaegers are slow, it gives them a sense of impact and purpose every time they act. This inherently precludes you from a lot of possible things you can do with them, but Del Toro understood that and leaned further into the qualities you get when you make your mecha like that. When Striker Eureka and Crimson Typhoon pull off those surprising moments of speed and acrobatics, it matters because of the context of what jaegers are. Uprising jettisons basically all of that identity in favor of becoming the most genericized kind of hollywood slop. And that same mentality is also what leads to baffling casting decisions and blatant pandering. That actually reminds me, I talked to a couple of Chinese PR fans while visiting Singapore about 5 years ago. They basically said Chinese mecha fans didn't like Uprising's way of pandering, they just want their rep to do cool shit. Both of them actually liked Crimson Typhoon and their only slight complaint was how quickly it jobbed, which is understandable, I think everyone agrees that every jaeger not named Gipsy Danger didn't really do much in that movie.
>>22610401The cast and crew of 2 may have killed Pacific Rim but they were hired guns, not the people who ordered the hit.You're right, basically. The real underlying cause was that it shouldn't have been made without either Del Toro or someone that could match his passion at the helm, it's squarely with the studio for insisting it happen. Same shit happened with the live-action Ghost in the Shell. I don't doubt for a second that there's directors that would've loved to be on that project and nailed it, and a decent chunk of the production team were probably trying their best. But they hired a working director to do largely what the studio wanted, make a Scarjo vehicle.
>>22606308>have a black protagonist.Not even close to being a problem
>>22610455Not if you're making a better movie, with a far more likable lead actor.
>>22610478>likable lead actor.Are you implying Boyega?
>>22610482You're an idiot.
>>22606510It felt like it was inspired by everything else except pacific rim.
>>22610575Racists are irrational. Please understand.
>>22609897The most important aesthetic aspects of mecha are really difficult to communicate. The proportions and geometry of the mecha, how they move, the scenes in the cockpit, these all make or break a mecha show/movie. These are all difficult to express, mecha fans may have a feeling of when these are done well or poorly, but to the avg person PR1 was no better or worse than a Bayformers movie (some of which had redeeming qualities)PR1 nailed all of them. Particularly the piloting system, the idea of pair piloting and the drift was such an amazing vehicle for interpersonal drama (and PR1 didnt even really make full use of it)You can tell just by comparing the designs of Gipsy Danger to Gipsy Avenger that the film was headed by people without the requisite taste level to make good mecha
>>22611695Pacific Rim 1 makes every motion of the machines an event. Gypsy Danger's got so many moving parts, and so much care and thought put into it's design that every time it does anything it's visually and audibly exciting. There's all of these wonderful little flourishes to its movements. A really good example is during the Knifehead fight, when it does the two fisted smash. You hear this sound like a winch or cable being pulled taught, and as the sound reaches it's highest pitch, and the arms lock back, the forearm guards lock down to the elbows, signifying that it's locking it's joints down to withstand the impact. That stuffs almost completely absent in Uprising.
>>22606299For me, it was mecha design and the way they moved being worse in the second movie.For one, Jaegers in Uprising were too mobile. Yeah you had Red Typhoon in the first that was super mobile, and the Australian one could run with a turbo booster, but still everything had weight to it. They remembered these are literal walking skyscrapers that weigh thousands of tons. Meanwhile Uprising had them pull acrobatic maneuvers, everything felt weightless and free of inertia and less special. There's "tech advanced ahead" and then there's bs. Boyega is a less charismatic actor overall, killing off both heroes of the first movie shot them in the foot.
You'd think Pacific Rim would actually be able to make cool robot designs, but once they figured out people only cared about Striker and Gypsy, it was all recolors from thereOr like 343 era Halo armor where it's just a visual mess where everyone looks like they're wearing techno football armor
>>22615125i thought the russian mecha looked really cool
