Pacific Rim is about a near future where monstrous aliens have come from the pacific ocean, and the only way to combat this threat? Giant robots, that’s right, THE ONLY way is with giant robots.
The good; everything looks great. The closest thing I can remember to live action giant robots is Robot Jox, and that was a hot mess of a movie. Here we get massive machines and they’re all CG, but there’s a weight to the way they move, with every punch and step I could feel all that metal moving. The ILM peeps did a great job.
The action is clear and in focus! I can actually see what’s going on, it’s clear that a robot is throwing a punch and hitting a monster. Every other movie today, please take note of how to cover action sequences here…
Hong Kong looks amazing in this movie, so much color, like a more vivid version of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles.
Not really a spoiler, but there’s a little girl in this movie (you see this from the trailer), and she is amazing. George Lucas needs to take a page from del Toro on how to direct actors in a green screen environment. Bravo little girl!
The bad; what bad? If anything, I only have minor things, so here goes.
The film doesn’t feel like a del Toro movie to me, I mean yes, it does have Ron Perlman. But there are story points that I would’ve liked to be fleshed out a little more. I won’t go into them, they’d be spoilers for those who haven’t seen the movie.
More robots, I wanted more Jaegers fighting, they covered the action so well that it felt like a breath of fresh air and I wanted more and more.
*SEMI-SPOILER* the ending was too happy for a del Toro movie, there’s some logic reasoning that I thought of afterwards. Mainly, why did those pilots have to die? When in the next scene we see that there’s an ejection pod system? *END SEMI-SPOILERS*
Overall, go see this marvel in the theatre. Cloverfield was supposed to be the new monster movie, nope, it’s Pacific Rim by far. This film knows what it is and goes with it. People complain that most of the action takes place at night, in the rain, or underwater… so? Despite all of that, I can see what’s going on, the shots are in focus and on a tri-pod. What novelty these ideas are. I’ll take an underwater fight scene where I can clearly see everything over a Michael Bay sunset silhouetted shot that’s hand held and in extreme closeup. As soon as Pacific Rim ended, I wanted it to start all over again!
