Okay so in the first movie the Jaeger leitmotif is used and reinforced pretty much to the point of being obnoxious. It's EVERYWHERE in the soundtrack. And. y'know, I think it's strong and effective. And, as a whole, the score is really cohesive.

Then in Uprising, it's not in the soundtrack at all through the top half of the movie, even at times when dropping it would have been perfect. I couldn't see any substantive musical link between Uprising and the first movie.

Until the "rebuild the Shatterdome" scene when suddenly the Jaeger theme is blasted out, thrown in without having had any development beforehand. It's gunning for association with the coolness of the first film without having done any of the work to get there. I think the music for that scene might actually have been a straight lift from Pacific Rim.

What could have been an awesome montage ended up feeling like a shallow imitation.