Escape to the Movies: Pacific Rim

[HalfTangible]

Hmmm. Ok, the thing is - I know Bob too well now. I know how much he loves giant monster movies. I've seen him gush about crazy Godzilla sequels and King Kong remakes. So while I'm pleased they made a giant monster movie that appeals to him, I don't know how much this says about how much I'll enjoy it. Giant robots punching monsters in the face sounds fun but... well, only up to a point. I mean - if his reference point is Independence Day then that's a big warning to me because I fucking hated that movie.

On the other hand, so far there's scarcely a movie I haven't been basically in agreement with him about, so despite my reservations I think the sheer exuberant joy in his voice is enough to get me over my skepticism. I'll probably give it a go. But it sounds... pretty dumb to me.

The good news is, there's only five or six Kaiju in the entire movie. So... it's probably not going to wear thin on ya. I saw a few flaws (one line about analog signals stands out prominently) but it is ABSOLUTELY wotrh seeing, .

(The advertisement is covering up almost everything i typed above. Fuck you, the SUB)
(it wouldn't be so bad if i could close the stupid thing)

 

[Silly Hats]

Caved in and saw it this morning. For the type of movie that it is, it was well done. As a movie I felt that it was just okay, there were less than 8 people in the theater so it could have just added to my atmosphere. Better than I thought that it would be but didn't really amaze me.


Though, the one thing in my mind during the entire movie was this scene:

Seriously...

 

[MorganL4]

The Guillermo del Toro equasion for Summer Blockbuster epicness:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shinji + Idris Elba + Ron Pearlman^2 = TOTAL EPICNESS

I wish people would stop making comparisons with Eva...this is a GOOD film, not 17 hours and some change of annoying people i hope the monsters kill.

Thats like wishing people would quit comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.... With out one the other CERTAINLY would not exist.

wrong. on so many levels. considering one was made before the other. saying "starwars cant exist without startrek" is bs.

another would be the whole eva thing. this isnt eva. this is just giant robots vs giant monsters. its not based off eva. it goes far back beyond that. think ultraman and original gozilla. mechagodzilla vs godzilla

calling this movie an eva clone is an insult to the movie. they arnt some whiny teenager who is so annoying it ruins the movie. this movie is fun and a much better atmosphere than that manga. i mean com'on. hes a young kid surrounded by women and fights giant monsters in giant robots... and he mopes about daddy issues... really?

1. I never said it was an eva clone, those are entirely your words.


2. George Lucas has stated that without Star Trek, Star Wars would not exist...... So you really have no argument there.

3. If a work of art inspires another work of art, people are going to compare the first to the second.... That is what humans do.


Not everyone that likes Star Trek likes Star Wars, not everyone that likes Star Wars likes Star Trek. (JJ Abrams admitted on The Daily Show that until he got the license for Trek, he didn't really care about it, and that he was more of a Star Wars fan.)

The same goes for Eva and Pacific Rim. (While I have not yet met anyone who likes Eva and doesn't like Pacific Rim, its REALLY early days yet...) And just because you are in the camp of liking Pacific Rim and not Eva doesn't mean you are wrong, that is your personal taste, and that is fine.... But getting angry with people on the internet simply for drawing the comparison is well.... Stupid. So just accept the comparison and draw you own conclusions, then move on, like the rest of us.

 

[Don Reba]

I was sold, but then Bob had to go and remind me that he thinks Avengers were good. Will look for another review first.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

They were thinking about building bigger walls to hide from giant monsters?

Why does that sound so familiar?

Attack onTitan?

 

[knight4light]

snip

ok. i can understand all you said. but the whole "one cannot exist without the other" only works for starwars inspired by startrek. which is why startrek is awesome. it DID exist without starwars. :3

anyways. pr is awesome and you all should watch that spoof. deltoro made an appearance. it is is legit parody made by the company that made pr in colab with maker and the tgs crew. :3

 

[pearcinator]

Its the only movie out right now and its only competition is grown ups 2 and is getting universal praise....box office flop my ass.

There's The Lone Ranger, Man of Steel, The Heat, This is the End, Monsters University and World War Z still out in cinemas over here too. I am just predicting that Pacific Rim will be mostly forgotten. I saw it on launch day and there were only like 30 people in the cinema. I may be wrong but it just feels like it's going to end up a cult movie to me.

That's not a bad thing, some of my favourite movies ever are cult movies (Starship Troopers is near-perfect to me) and even if it does flop at the box office (or make very little profit) it will probably go very well in DVD/Blu-Ray sales much like Dredd (2012) did!

Lone ranger is a bomb
Man of steel has peaked
No one is watching this is the end or heat
Monsters has peaked
WWZ has peaked
Pacific Rim has little to no competition in terms of summer blockbusters

And Dredd suffered from having a bad movie related to it (the 95 version)
and star ship troopers wasn't a bomb, it made its money back plus a little...it wasnt a big hit, but it was big enough to get two sequels.

Pacific Rim is making a killing. 22 million before saturday on a thursday night release is actually pretty damn good.

Ahhh I don't know where you get your sources from but it's not going so well in the USA either...

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni55918822/?ref_=hm_nw_tp_t1

You said its only competition was Grown Ups 2...well it's losing to it. Don't get me wrong, I REALLY want to see Pacific Rim do well and was hoping my prediction was wrong but it seems (at the present time) destined for failure.

 

[GeeksUtopia]

Seen the movie earlier today. Got to say it really is like an anime made real done right. Monsters are awesome, giant robots are awesome, humanities adaptation to the kaiju are awesome, and the character development is done right with out the long journey to "finding oneself" sketch that is done in just about every movie.

 

[Frozengale]

I have to agree that was a great movie. While I wish they would have had a few more scenes explaining a few of the decisions and details everything was pretty solid and pretty awesome. It even got me to shed a tear. It also got me to laugh hysterically, when no one else in the (sparsely populated) theater was laughing.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

They were thinking about building bigger walls to hide from giant monsters?

Why does that sound so familiar?

Attack onTitan?

Exactly what I though.

 

[knight4light]

snip

first off what makes you think i'm a dbz fan? i've watched it when i was little but i would hardly call myself a fan. its not even that good an anime.

secondly. i understood all the underlying things going on in eva. what annoyed me to the point of hating the series is that no matter how long things went. how much i hoped he would finaly reach that mature stage and whatnot. it never came. It went to the point where i just got fed up with his crying. maybe i stopped reading too soon. i dont know. but dont you ever assume someone doesnt know the main things in a story. also i'm not japanese.

and third.... you think to much. its a movie where 30 story tall robots fight 30 story tall monsters. live a little. tbh.. i think aside from the macrosses these are kinda the biggest robots in any anime/manga/scifi story. i may be mistaken but even gundams and transformers arnt that big. just by the fact that two people pilot from in the head with plenty of room to spare compared to the one person cramped chest compartments of conventional mecha.. *w*

we need to make a list.. find out where gipsy danger lands in the scale of mechas.


edit: aww. gypsy isnt as big as i thought. 79m.

http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Gipsy_Danger

about on par with eva in terms of this chart at least. still awesome though :3


http://1-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/a/image/1366/50/1366501090755.jpg

also.. i thought big o was bigger as well ;.;

 

[The Ubermensch]

I was hearing everyone as I walked out, they all seemed dissapointed. I think it was the camp acting.

I was very tempted to yell "Alright guys, if you really want a show about giant mechs fighting giant monsters with Edgy themes and character development

But trust me, you guys aren't ready for this."

I went for robots punching monsters in the face

I got robots punching monsters in the face, and bonus, I didn't have to deal with another ***** like Shinji Ikari.

 

[Jegsimmons]

The Guillermo del Toro equasion for Summer Blockbuster epicness:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shinji + Idris Elba + Ron Pearlman^2 = TOTAL EPICNESS

I wish people would stop making comparisons with Eva...this is a GOOD film, not 17 hours and some change of annoying people i hope the monsters kill.

Thats like wishing people would quit comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.... With out one the other CERTAINLY would not exist.

Are you implying Eva is the only reason Pacific Rim exist as opposed to every other Mech and Monster movie/anime out there?

I refuse to believe Eva is that damn influential.

 

[The Ubermensch]

The Guillermo del Toro equasion for Summer Blockbuster epicness:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shinji + Idris Elba + Ron Pearlman^2 = TOTAL EPICNESS

I wish people would stop making comparisons with Eva...this is a GOOD film, not 17 hours and some change of annoying people i hope the monsters kill.

Thats like wishing people would quit comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.... With out one the other CERTAINLY would not exist.

wrong. on so many levels. considering one was made before the other. saying "starwars cant exist without startrek" is bs.

another would be the whole eva thing. this isnt eva. this is just giant robots vs giant monsters. its not based off eva. it goes far back beyond that. think ultraman and original gozilla. mechagodzilla vs godzilla

calling this movie an eva clone is an insult to the movie. they arnt some whiny teenager who is so annoying it ruins the movie. this movie is fun and a much better atmosphere than that manga. i mean com'on. hes a young kid surrounded by women and fights giant monsters in giant robots... and he mopes about daddy issues... really?

Are you Japanese? If not, then I don't expect you to understand.

Evangelion was full of symbolism relating to a large amount of topics, one of them being acceptance of roles in society and maturity. Subtle things like that that an audience addicted to Dragonball Z would never come close to understanding.

And I would say this movie is a child of Pilot Candidate and Transformers. The action shots carry almost no impact, and the in-universe explanation of how things work is broken a half dozen times.

I wouldn't say it ripped off NGE, but it did reference NGE and japanese mecha... A LOT

Spoiler: Synchronization to make the mech work

Spoiler: Blue blood of the monsters

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077281/

Spoiler: Japanese Girl, Convinced the blue streak was a reference to Dandere archetype

(Standard Issue Soviet Bikini not included with all models)

New weapon Deus Ex Machina

Spoiler: Terrible engagement strategy (Xeno sucm far more effective in water than on land... ENGAUGE ON LAND should be SOP, they should have a 50KM exclusion zone near pacific beaches)

Spoiler: Plug Suits

It didn't rip off Eva, like ST into the darkness ripped of Wrath Of Kahn

But it did make some strong references, lets not deny that. It was still a sick movie.

I came for monster punching, I got monster punching, and terrible aussie accents, but I'm used to that by now...

Plus we had the coolest mech

 

[4Aces]

To IMAX not to IMAX, that appears to be the question with this movie. I have noticed a significantly higher rating from those that went to see it at IMAX. My working theory is that the increased audio/visual experience, combined with the unconscious need to justify the expense (not only money, but time and effort), results in a better experience. They seem to have missed the continuity errors and plot holes, do not seem to care about the crude characterizations, or bad directing of (some of) the human elements, or the 'diet version' of a story. Sure, we all knew it was to be rock 'em sock 'em Giants, but del Toro has been known to mix a little story into previous movies. For $200M and all the hype, I was expecting more. For all the advertising with Ron, I was also expecting more than 5 lousy minutes of campy acting due to the bad script (thanks Travis ?Clash of the Titans? Beacham).

Good SciFi? Not even close. A wormhole is a doorway. If monsters can come in, water can go out. Since all oceans are connected it would be a global catastrophe. Then there is a drift with a giant monster's brain that just did not die? That is like suddenly showing up at Microsoft's HQ and being asked to take over executing their PR department, when you have no PR experience or prep-time. Far too alien to make heads or tails out of it, yet somehow it works. The multiple levels of convenience in this one major plot device really shows the care that went into this script. Then there is the glaring discontinuity between high-tech robots and relatively low-tech everything else. Not as bad as Bad Robot turning a very high-tech starship into a flying low-tech refinery. That many pressurized pipes exposed to the vacuum of space would destroy the Enterprise with *one* hull breach. But surely someone had to point out the helicopters used in PR should have been upgraded visually to match the fact that they can apparently carry about 5X their normal capacity in perfect synchronization, without drifting.

7/10 for first viewing, 6.5 thereafter (pure CG movies degrade over time). Apparently IMAX is worth about +1.5 to +2.0, so if you are going to see it and there is an IMAX within a reasonable distance, I suggest making the effort (if the ticket price does not offend you too much, that is). If you do not see it in IMAX, then try to avoid the 3D versions. The glasses are well known to kill the color range of movies, and this is 85% CG, and the 3D is more of an afterthought than a selling feature (just like most 3D movies). Check this out for a more in-depth analysis of the poor 3D experience with PR. [http://www.cinemablend.com/new/3D-Or-3D-Buy-Right-Pacific-Rim-Ticket-38471.html]

Edit - ROFL, I just found out that Travis Beacham wrote the prequel comic to PR where he had the monsters killed with nukes, but in the movie says they were killed with conventional weapons. Way to go Travis! Your sith master, lord Lindelof must be very pleased (and getting ready to strike you down).

 

[Olas]

Why the hell is everyone acting like something fresh? Isn't there a huge budget movie about robots playing fisticuffs like every summer? (Transformers, Real Steel etc.) This is supposed to be a creative new idea for a movie because this time the robots are punching lizards instead of other robots? I'll probably end up renting it because I like Del Toro, but the premise seems boring to me.

I honestly don't get the hype for this movie.

Dude, the Reel Steel robots were like 10 feet tall, and really it was a boxing movie with an otherwise down to earth setting and characters. It's not even comparable to this on any level. And Transformers isn't even an original IP. This seems fresh because it's increasingly rare to find movies this unabashedly outlandish, with original IPs, and that don't use gritty realism.

If you're saying it's like every other movie because it has robots in it you're missing the point.

 

[MorganL4]

The Guillermo del Toro equasion for Summer Blockbuster epicness:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shinji + Idris Elba + Ron Pearlman^2 = TOTAL EPICNESS

I wish people would stop making comparisons with Eva...this is a GOOD film, not 17 hours and some change of annoying people i hope the monsters kill.

Thats like wishing people would quit comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.... With out one the other CERTAINLY would not exist.

Are you implying Eva is the only reason Pacific Rim exist as opposed to every other Mech and Monster movie/anime out there?

I refuse to believe Eva is that damn influential.

The Guillermo del Toro equasion for Summer Blockbuster epicness:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - Shinji + Idris Elba + Ron Pearlman^2 = TOTAL EPICNESS

I wish people would stop making comparisons with Eva...this is a GOOD film, not 17 hours and some change of annoying people i hope the monsters kill.

Thats like wishing people would quit comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.... With out one the other CERTAINLY would not exist.

Are you implying Eva is the only reason Pacific Rim exist as opposed to every other Mech and Monster movie/anime out there?

I refuse to believe Eva is that damn influential.

Look, I am not going to have this conversation twice.... It is pointless.... If you want to read it just go over the back and forth I had with knight4light.

No offense or anything, but I don't feel like repeating the EXACT SAME WORDS over and over and over again every time someone reads what I post.

 

[Mister K]

I was hearing everyone as I walked out, they all seemed dissapointed. I think it was the camp acting.

I was very tempted to yell "Alright guys, if you really want a show about giant mechs fighting giant monsters with Edgy themes and character development

But trust me, you guys aren't ready for this."

I went for robots punching monsters in the face

I got robots punching monsters in the face, and bonus, I didn't have to deal with another ***** like Shinji Ikari.

Ikari Shinji. The person, that even in "manly heroic pose" looks like a wuss.

OT:
Just came from the movie. It is good. No, wrong. It is GOOD. I had not had this much fun since Avengers. My only gripes are that "non-main" bots had really little screen time and that I didn't see gigantic robotic arm flippin a bird at the end.

P.S. As usual, the Russian robot is the most badass one.

 

[MeisterKleister]

I hear from some reviews that the only major downside of watching this movie (which isn't actually this movie's fault) is that the 3D version often is too dark to see anything, especially all the fights that happen during nighttime.
Because apparently most theaters do use the 2D light bulbs for screening 3D movies instead of the more bright bulbs that are necessary, so that they can save money.

So I'd strongly recommend seeing this in 2D, unless you *know* for sure that your theater uses the right light bulbs for the 3D.