Escape to the Movies: Pacific Rim

[Daystar Clarion]

Gush more Bob


I saw it this morning.

It's alright, not great by any means, and I'm easy to impress.

I don't know, I think I was just expecting it to be more like this in terms of fun.



What is awesome, is that the voice of GLaDOS says 'Rocket Punch engaged'

I repeat

[HEADING=1]the voice of GLaDOS says 'Rocket Punch engaged'[/HEADING]

Now I wait for Platinum games to make a movie...

Hey, it could happen

Agreed, there was no polish, no style. Don't get me wrong the fights were epic but apart from 1 cool acrobatic manoeuvre, it was trading body blows all the way through. Dialogue could have been served with crackers (again, not really a problem but did the huge cgi budget mean there was nothing left for a scriptwriter?), basically we need an eastern big budget mech movie...and see it done REALLY right.

I think that's exactly why I didn't like it as much everyone else.

I mean, yeah, I went to see robots punch monsters in the face, that was the soul reason I went.

Apart from the mentioned air scene, there was just no finesse to any of it. The fights were boring, it was just punches and grappling, but with no sense of impact.

I wanted Gurren Lagan, I got Rockem Sockem Robots.

 

[revjor]

Bob likes his nostalgia as usual, and that's nice, but did he miss the part where...

Spoiler

Idris Elba chooses the asshole kid as his co-pilot near the end and hand-waves it saying "You're an egotist with daddy issues". And because he can summarize him with that sentence, they're perfect for neural bonding? What? Didn't we just go through about two hours of ALLEGED psychic bonding between our two main protagonists? And Idris and the douche just hand-wave it because whatever? The whole audience held their breath thinking somebody would explain things in that scene. But it ended. And then the movie ended. It was a good fun movie but what the fuck was the point of all that moping and bonding and doubting and wondering between Becket and Mako if any two people can bond just as well in like a second? It undermined everything the movie had built up to.

It was more than that:

Spoiler

First the father and son reference in their goodbye that jaeger pilots don't normally talk to each other about their feelings because they already know what they are gonna say. Though the father still feels regret for not having said them. Then Idris says the whole "You're egotistical, arrogant...etc... I figured that out that on day one." *camera switches to broken arm dad.*

Idris' first Jaeger partner was the Aussie pilot's dad. So Idris has the shared memories of the father which include part of the son's life. That would make them as close to father and son as you could get without Idris being the father. The "I figured that out on day one" is also the Idris saying, "You are my son and we can do this together." Which is one of those things the father never said. It was a nice little moment of fatherhood and brotherhood between partners past and present.

Then when the son questions how he'll be able to handle Idris' mind Idris explains that he can keep his mind completely blank. Which shows that he's the most badass of all the badassest.

 

[Summerstorm]

Oh sure Bob!
I'll just grab my bike and pedal that sucker across the fucking Atlantic.

I'm so goddamn jealous right now.

But hey at least it's supposed to be good so I do have something to look forward to at least

Hm hm... 5 days... FIVE DAYS.
Dammit.
That is five days i have to read about it being too awesome to miss on the internet. CURSE you, global network!!! CURSE YOUUUUU.

 

[Iceklimber]

Moviebob often mentioned this Movie and always referred to it as an "Original" but but there were giant Robots controlled by Humans that fight each other or Monsters were in Japan since many many Decades time and time again so no Idea how it is supposed to be original.

 

[Buizel91]

Can't wait to see this! This along Monsters Uni is in my top 4 to see this month!

 

[Fangface74]

Moviebob often mentioned this Movie and always referred to it as an "Original" but but there were giant Robots controlled by Humans that fight each other or Monsters were in Japan since many many Decades time and time again so no Idea how it is supposed to be original.

Also agreed; Robot Jox (1989 I think)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kd642Ix5ks

 

[Ix Rebound]

I disliked how both the Russian and Chinese teams got precisely ONE battle in which we saw them fight, and in that very battle both were killed. For all their robots/teams were hyped-up to be "legendary" when introduced, what a terribly short performance.

What made even less sense is that the Chinese+Russian teams were killed despite being vastly more in-sync due to so many years' battle experience (Chinese team was composed of triplets for christ's sake)...and then a random combination of the protagonist + some Japanese girl whom he has fuck-all experience drifting with beats BOTH category 4 Kaiju? Kaiju which had no issues destroying both Chinese and Russian teams? Sorry but WHAT? That goes against the whole "better sync'd pilots = better fighters" principle, doesn't it?

I get this is a movie aimed at Americans but...come on, at least TRY to give giant robots from other countries a decent chance and "balance" the robots/teams in terms of power -_-

Yeah that kinda annoyed me as well, more so because (since im aussie) I wish we saw Striker Eureka in more fights, I mean its said that it has over 10 confirmed Kaiju kills and it described as the most advanced Jaeger of all time, but it only gets 2ish fights and then game over

It gets an admittably awesome introduction where its beats the living shit out of kaiju in under 20 seconds of screen time. But then when the stakes are actually high, it roughs up one kaiju but is then shut down just in time for the other (american) jaegar to SAVE THE DAY! -_-

It gets my hopes up in the end where gypsie and striker team up to assault the breach but then dashes them when it gives the Cat 5 kaiju a paper cut and then decides to blow itself up.
Never mind that they were in pretty much 100% battle condition (ok the chest piece was dented)They could have at least waited until they were properly banged up, maybe even until they killed that other Cat 4 kaiju but no. It got to be the 'muricans thats save the earth! -_-

 

[revjor]

I disliked how both the Russian and Chinese teams got precisely ONE battle in which we saw them fight, and in that very battle both were killed. For all their robots/teams were hyped-up to be "legendary" when introduced, what a terribly short performance.

What made even less sense is that the Chinese+Russian teams were killed despite being vastly more in-sync due to so many years' battle experience (Chinese team was composed of triplets for christ's sake)...and then a random combination of the protagonist + some Japanese girl whom he has fuck-all experience drifting with beats BOTH category 4 Kaiju? Kaiju which had no issues destroying both Chinese and Russian teams? Sorry but WHAT? That goes against the whole "better sync'd pilots = better fighters" principle, doesn't it?

I get this is a movie aimed at Americans but...come on, at least TRY to give giant robots from other countries a decent chance and "balance" the robots/teams in terms of power -_-

Yeah that kinda annoyed me as well, more so because (since im aussie) I wish we saw Striker Eureka in more fights, I mean its said that it has over 10 confirmed Kaiju kills and it described as the most advanced Jaeger of all time, but it only gets 2ish fights and then game over

It gets an admittably awesome introduction where its beats the living shit out of kaiju in under 20 seconds of screen time. But then when the stakes are actually high, it roughs up one kaiju but is then shut down just in time for the other (american) jaegar to SAVE THE DAY! -_-

It gets my hopes up in the end where gypsie and striker team up to assault the breach but then dashes them when it gives the Cat 5 kaiju a paper cut and then decides to blow itself up.
Never mind that they were in pretty much 100% battle condition (ok the chest piece was dented)They could have at least waited until they were properly banged up, maybe even until they killed that other Cat 4 kaiju but no. It got to be the 'muricans thats save the earth! -_-

Spoiler

They were doomed when both kaiju were bearing down and they knew it. They blew the nuke thinking it would kill both allowing Gypsy to grab a corpse and easily finish the job. Even if it killed the Cat 4 in 2 on 1 combat what difference would that make? It's dead either way and the 5 is still alive. If that went wrong you run the risk of dying in the fight and both kaiju living. There was no way the one legged and one armed Gypsy was gonna beat both.

From what I can tell, an Aussie, a Brit, a Japanese(haha "a Japanese") and an American did a whole lot of world saving in the end.

Also Aussie bros shot a kaiju in the face with flare guns. How do you get more badass than that?

 

[tohellwithyourcrap]

It's Power Rangers, with slightly better looking uniforms.

you say that as if it's a bad thing. the first way i described this movie to people was to tell them it was power rangers vs godzilla.

I did not expect nor do i need much else from this particular film other than said power rangers fighting the aforementioned godzilla(s)

Pacific Rim was great. I wish my nieces and nephews could understand words. They would love this movie if they were just a few years older.

 

[Malisteen]

My only criticism is the under-use of the Russian and Chinese teams, yeah. I mean, the film was long enough already, but they could have cut or re-arranged things to allow one or both of them to shine more.

Other than that, though, it was a fun movie with great action, cool monsters, and a refreshing lack of pretense & wangst. I loved it.

 

[Edith The Hutt]

So I just found this quote by del Toro about the film:

It is my duty to film the finest fucking monsters ever committed to the screen. And the greatest fucking robots ever committed to screen. That's a pledge

Yeah, I reckon he delivered on that one.

 

[lightsentry]

It wasn't bad, it was what it set out to be and that's ok. Was pretty average on the whole though.

 

[mecegirl]

And you are saying that is a bad thing?

No. Just that it's silly for people to keep comparing this movie to Eva when it draws its inspiration from so many sources. Especially considering since the tone and iconography of the Eva anime is miles away from this movie.

 

[PuckFuppet]

No Minovsky particles here. No "AT field". Splashing around in water is obviously more damaging than all the weapons in the world, so we're doing that. We don't even go through the motions of hitting it with a nuke.

I take it the Minovsky and "AT field" references are to fictional concepts? Assuming that to be true I would infer that these concepts occur as part of the plot in a medium whereby there were hours worth of possible screen time to air them out thoroughly or perhaps could be referenced at length in other associated media like books or on a wiki. While it isn't exactly something they should feel that they can just handwave I don't think that a film aimed at launching a new and potentially high budget franchise should waste any screentime explaining concepts that a majority of its audience are not going to care enough about to understand.

Spoiler

Nothing in the intro suggested that they hadn't tried nukes at one time or another, in fact going by some background discussion about the rift I'd say that they had tried to get a nuke (or something else) through it before. But as was discussed earlier in this thread the potential collateral damage from the use of tactical nuclear warheads, or any ordinance powerful enough to damage a target that shrugged off a direct impact from a jet and multiple missles like it was no big deal, would be massive. Significantly more damaging even than having that target engaged and then held within a few km^2 by something that could exert enough physical force to chop it to bits or even tear it apart.

In the intro it explicitly stated that it took six days to take down the first Kaiju that made landfall with conventional weapons, presumably this was a Cat 1 or 2 but even going so far as to directly compare it with the Cat 5 we did see then the sheer amount of damage something that big getting hit with that much ordinance in a densely urban area could cause would be staggering. And we're not talking about some IED's slapped together by a few amateurs, we're talking about the kind of explosive and armour piercing ordinance at the disposal of a modern military force, and when you see the kind of damage those IED's can do it certainly scares the crap out of you when you consider how that damage would scale with the difference in available resources.

Furthermore the one time we did see a Kaiju get hit by a nuke it took a megaton blast to the face and walked it off.

 

[knight4light]

Bob. you need to watch this. Its a fully funded parody of PR. Totalbiscuit. Jessecox, dodger. huskystarcraft, gamegrumps. :3 its soo bad and awesome.


also Guillermo del Toro makes an appearance

 

[Flunk]

I actually saw an Anime series that used the same two pilots with linked minds are required to pilot the mech idea. It's called Gigantic Formula (it's not that good, don't all go out and watch it). I wonder if the creators of this movie saw that show or if they came up with the idea individually. Heck, maybe it's in a lot of anime that I just haven't seen.

 

[Jegsimmons]

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.

 

[romxxii]

I actually saw an Anime series that used the same two pilots with linked minds are required to pilot the mech idea. It's called Gigantic Formula (it's not that good, don't all go out and watch it). I wonder if the creators of this movie saw that show or if they came up with the idea individually. Heck, maybe it's in a lot of anime that I just haven't seen.

Gurren Lagann also uses the two-pilots trope, except instead of linked minds, they sync up their "spiral energy". Basically, the mecha responds to their temperament.

Pacific Rim draws on a lot of giant mecha and kaiju tropes. I like to think of it as a love letter to every single giant robot anime ever.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

The robots fighting monsters part of the movies was done amazingly, and that's ultimately the most important thing here, but I flat out disagree with what Bob says about this movie having "fleshed out 3 dimensional characters." The main cast and the main character in particular were especially bland, and ironically the secondary characters, namely Charlie Day's high strung punk-nerd scientist character had the most personality.

Also I'm surprised he brought up the whole "dealing with psychological baggage to punch monsters in the face" thing like it had any sort of presence. It came up once to present itself as a problem, and then was never seen again without ever being resolved. If you haven't seen it yet don't let this review color your expectations. Overall it's a fun action flick with really cool visuals but you won't see anything uniquely interesting or creative plot or character wise.

 

[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.