Hey, in Atlantic rim, are all the British Personnel Australians, and their giant robot is piloted by Australians, and there's no British actors in the movie at all? It's only fair.
"Something you don't see in movies..." Spoken over big robots fighting in a city. Like most big scifi movies recently.
"You've never seen anything like it before" spoken over a shot that could have come from any one of 20 movies I've seen in the last ten years.
Get back to me on this one.
Come on now, when was the last time Hollywood got some decent Kaiju action? After Mountains of Madness got shut down Del Toro had to go for something marketable. Despite that he appears to be taking a wider view of things and wants to make the sort of popcorn flick we don't see so often. Hopefully he'll stay true to form and there will be more focus on the monsters and drama than the cheesy YouTube ads suggest.
I don't even know what the word Kaiju means. I have literally no nostalgic connection to any Japanese robot fighting shows, so all I see is exactly the same imagery from Transformers, Cloverfield, Avengers, Battleship, etc, etc, etc.
If "something you don't see in movies" means this one is good, then great. I'm sure I'll enjoy it! But I've seen good monster movies before (I actually really enjoyed Cloverfield) and I've seen good human-controlling-robot movies before too (Real Steel was pretty cute).
I'd like this movie to be good, but so far, from these trailers, I'm seeing nothing new at all. Even the speech is directly from ID4 (although maybe via Morpheus in the Matrix sequels).
My thought from seeing Pacific Rim last night: This is everything it looked like it was going to be. That is 2.5 hours mostly of giant robots punching monsters. Incredibly stupid but also so much fun
Judging it by the standards of an action film, I'd give it a 8/10.
The beginning was weak but I thought the rest of the film held up very well. I was engaged the whole way through. The pacing played a big role in this. It didn't feel like too much was being crammed in and the overall mood was exactly right. Also, I actually cared whether the characters succeeded or failed. Definately better than Superman and Star Trek.
However, I don't for a second believe Del Torro wasn't influenced by Evangelion. My brother (who's not an anime fan and has only watched Eva once) said this like 5 minutes after it had ended. I think the most concrete similarity is how the robots
are piloted (and the fact that they can go crazy from a bad connection.
Having said that, I was much more engaged by PR, than the most recent Eva Rebuild film.
I give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. I had fun watching it, there are logical inconsistencies, and I want to rewrite the ending. But compared to other movies with robots fighting, I cared a lot more. I think the movie knows what it is.
My thought from seeing Pacific Rim last night: This is everything it looked like it was going to be. That is 2.5 hours mostly of giant robots punching monsters. Incredibly stupid but also so much fun
That's more or less how I felt about it. It was everything I'd hoped it would be. 2.5 hours of more or less pure awesome robot vs monsters. I kept getting told by people how some of the plot points didn't hold up well. My response to that? "I can't hear you over the awesomeness a monster getting a rocket punch to the face"
I saw it in imax3D on a real imax, some of the shots were framed pretty well for that format I though. There were a number of times when it felt as if you were standing there next to or underneath these massive robots.
Also, I can't remember the last time I was in the movies and there was an applause when the good guys win a fight.
I think some people who liked this film are selling it way short. This film could have easily been 10x worse than it was if the parts in between the action scenes hadn't been done right. Just think about Michael Bay's Transformers or any of the other 3D Summer movies that have come out in the past 5 years. Like I said already, the pacing was perfect, although I think it definately could have benefited a lot from 20 more minutes for better characterisation of Raleigh, Mako and Stacker.
Apparently those extra character development scenes exist, but they were cut for time and pacing. Sounds like at least some of them make it either on the internet or the boo-ray, at least, so hopefully those will expand a little on what we saw of those three.
Also, saw an interesting take on Raleigh's character come across my Tumblr dash today. I still think he was pretty bland and would have worked out better if he had had a stronger, more obvious course of development and change in his character arc. Still, I didn't hate him, and I think this post helps explain a bit of why that might be:
I would argue that he wasn’t as cliched as people make him out to be because he both worked with a tragic backstory without being brooding and moody, and readily accepted the female lead as an equal and stood up for her without romantic intentions. Both of which are pretty rare for action movie leading men.
If anything he was just kind of underdeveloped compared to what people are usually used to male leads being because they gave so much character development time to Mako, which isn’t exactly a negative point or anything. He was just simplified so she could have more of an arc.
Definitely a lot to be said for a modern protagonist in a major piece of genre media not being broody as all fuck for once. Also for men respectin' the wimminfolk and such. Those aspects probably would have worked even better if Raleigh and Mako shared the role of protagonist more equally from the start, thus making it easier to see that his story is less fleshed out to better share the screen with his co-star, but hey, it's better than a lot of mainstream blockbusters do. I'm hoping stuff like this helps pave the way for even more nuanced and better realized gender relationships in future movies.
Does anyone else think that the movie made two grave mistakes at the beginning?
1. They have a really good opening saying how the Jaegers were developed and fought the Kaiju...only to have the movie start saying that they whole idea of using giant robots to fight is being shoved out. 2. Having the UN destroy the purpose of the Jaegers just so...a giant wall can keep all of the monsters out. Not only is that incredibly dumb, but it also probably is what made most of the plot-points with the main character so predictable and flat.
Yeah, the Jaeger program didn't need to be characterized as the scrappy upstarts proving their worth to humanity. They're already up against enough of a wall fighting the increasingly more powerful Kaiju.
Pacific Rim. I want to be able to say that it was a perfect movie, but it wasn't. There were week spots, especially in regards to the politicians and seawall subplot from the beginning. The use of stock stereotypes for the secondary characters was a little distasteful, but I can understand the necessity. Pacific Rim manages to fit a lot of movie into it's run time and stereotyping is quicker than character development.
Despite the movies flaws, I still loved it. I've seen it twice now and the second viewing was better than the first. Like i heard somebody else say "any thing worth saying, is worth saying with giant Kaiju and elbow rockets."
Final judgement: Objective quality score : 7 out of 10 Subjective enjoyment score 8.5 out of 10
Also, I can't remember the last time I was in the movies and there was an applause when the good guys win a fight.
+1 to that. Both times I saw it the audience was a lot more invested in what was going on than they were in any of the other movies I've seen in a theater recently. Certainly more so than Star Trek or Man of Steel.
Comments
If "something you don't see in movies" means this one is good, then great. I'm sure I'll enjoy it! But I've seen good monster movies before (I actually really enjoyed Cloverfield) and I've seen good human-controlling-robot movies before too (Real Steel was pretty cute).
I'd like this movie to be good, but so far, from these trailers, I'm seeing nothing new at all. Even the speech is directly from ID4 (although maybe via Morpheus in the Matrix sequels).
Judging it by the standards of an action film, I'd give it a 8/10.
The beginning was weak but I thought the rest of the film held up very well. I was engaged the whole way through. The pacing played a big role in this. It didn't feel like too much was being crammed in and the overall mood was exactly right. Also, I actually cared whether the characters succeeded or failed. Definately better than Superman and Star Trek.
However, I don't for a second believe Del Torro wasn't influenced by Evangelion. My brother (who's not an anime fan and has only watched Eva once) said this like 5 minutes after it had ended. I think the most concrete similarity is how the robots
Having said that, I was much more engaged by PR, than the most recent Eva Rebuild film.
I saw it in imax3D on a real imax, some of the shots were framed pretty well for that format I though. There were a number of times when it felt as if you were standing there next to or underneath these massive robots.
Also, I can't remember the last time I was in the movies and there was an applause when the good guys win a fight.
Also, saw an interesting take on Raleigh's character come across my Tumblr dash today. I still think he was pretty bland and would have worked out better if he had had a stronger, more obvious course of development and change in his character arc. Still, I didn't hate him, and I think this post helps explain a bit of why that might be: Definitely a lot to be said for a modern protagonist in a major piece of genre media not being broody as all fuck for once. Also for men respectin' the wimminfolk and such. Those aspects probably would have worked even better if Raleigh and Mako shared the role of protagonist more equally from the start, thus making it easier to see that his story is less fleshed out to better share the screen with his co-star, but hey, it's better than a lot of mainstream blockbusters do. I'm hoping stuff like this helps pave the way for even more nuanced and better realized gender relationships in future movies.
1. They have a really good opening saying how the Jaegers were developed and fought the Kaiju...only to have the movie start saying that they whole idea of using giant robots to fight is being shoved out.
2. Having the UN destroy the purpose of the Jaegers just so...a giant wall can keep all of the monsters out. Not only is that incredibly dumb, but it also probably is what made most of the plot-points with the main character so predictable and flat.
I want to be able to say that it was a perfect movie, but it wasn't. There were week spots, especially in regards to the politicians and seawall subplot from the beginning. The use of stock stereotypes for the secondary characters was a little distasteful, but I can understand the necessity. Pacific Rim manages to fit a lot of movie into it's run time and stereotyping is quicker than character development.
Despite the movies flaws, I still loved it. I've seen it twice now and the second viewing was better than the first. Like i heard somebody else say "any thing worth saying, is worth saying with giant Kaiju and elbow rockets."
Final judgement:
Objective quality score : 7 out of 10
Subjective enjoyment score 8.5 out of 10 +1 to that. Both times I saw it the audience was a lot more invested in what was going on than they were in any of the other movies I've seen in a theater recently. Certainly more so than Star Trek or Man of Steel.