Pacific Rim / Uprising / The Black

Kaiju versus giant robot action!

Pacific Rim

Aliens are conducting a slow invasion of Earth, sending in a giant monster every few months to wreck the place up. To combat this the humans have developed massive robots called Jaegers that require two pilots to be mentally in-sync to battle these giants and while the robots have the occasional weapon it usually comes down to fisticuffs without a care about collateral damage! A decent plot backed by great CGI makes this a pretty good movie. I quite appreciate that the robots are also not super-agile "Transformers" type and are more janky as robots are meant to be. Thumbs up!

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Years after the first movie where humanity won the war, a new threat appears (or there wouldn't be a movie right?) with new pilots to face them. While I appreciate that there's more humor injected here the plot makes a farce established elements in the first movie, like - now there are agile Transformer type robots that don't need two pilots because... they (incorrectly) thought it was cooler? Still an entertaining spectacle but not as good as the first one. Surprisingly while the fully CGI bits are nice, the blue screen segments are particularly bad.

Pacific Rim: The Black

In this two season animated series, Kaijus have taken over Australia and some survivors who have been living in hiding come across a functional training Jaeger that gives them a shot at escaping to the shore. I'm quite happy that the janky robotness is back and that the 3D animation is very good. The monsters look especially great! The mind melding drifting (two pilot thing) is also used to greater effect here, as the plot continues threads established from the previous two films. It's a decent offering and one Pacific Rim fans will enjoy.