Thread:Coolot1/@comment-4327179-20200513194331/@comment-4327179-20200514144637

Well here are some of the stuff on the YMMV page:

Arc Fatigue: Of the Four Lines, All Waiting variety, as it's generally considered by both detractors and defenders that Uprising has just too many subplots stuffed into its screentime. To compare, the first film focused mainly on the characters learning to work out their personal troubles and function as teams of pilots, as well as the PPDC struggling to keep up against increasingly powerful Kaijus. However, aside from these two basic premises, which include the revamping of the latter with Fusion Dance in Uprising, the sequel runs with the additional plots of a younger character trying to cope with her new life in the pilot cadet school, a seemingly evil Mega-Corp building rival Jaegers and leading mysterious attacks, and even an inner human conspiration in favor of the Precursors. It can be safely said that this film carries enough material and ideas to produce several installment or even a full-fledged TV series (which takes a revealing new light when one finds out director Steven S. DeKnight had only worked in TV series before having his film debut with Uprising).

Ass Pull: 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.
 * The revelation that not only are the Kaiju gunning for Mt. Fuji in order to cause an extinction-level event, but that this was the Precursors' intention ever since the first Breach opened. All the data from previous Kaiju attacks somehow matches up with this even though they ventured nowhere near that point. The kicker is that the PPDC is only just discovering this as the last three Kaiju prepare to converge on Tokyo. The other kicker is that the planetary crust's mineral composition won't have changed that much since the time of the dinosaurs when the Precursors invaded the first time, so why didn't they execute this strategy back then already?note Even then, making Kaiju Blood volatile enough to cause a cataclysm calls the necessity of Kaiju themselves into question. If all the Precursors needed was one monster to ignite the whole Ring of Fire, why not just open a Breach right above Mt. Fuji and dump the stuff right in instead? And how sure are the Precursors that their plan actually works when the Anteverse doesn't have any "rare Earth elements" to test with?
 * 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. Sure, it's explained that the Big Bad can allocate resources here and there, but there is zero hint of them anywhere or how exactly they work.

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.

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 pretty much a multi-level mixture 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.

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: They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
 * 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.
 * Even detractors of the movie believe it showcases actually 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.