Pacific Rim (07.12.2013)

[Cary Grant]

Being that it is Del Toro gives me hope but this trailer makes me think my opinion of him is in for a let down.

 

[Jr Mouse]



Is everyone blind? This looks awesome. Don´t compare a del toro movie to those other crap.

Completely agreed. It seems like a lot of people are looking at this and thinking Bay's Transformers just because it has giant robots in it. I don't see anymore reason to lump all giant robot films together then I would all films featuring superheroes, space battles, time travel or any other number of sci-fi themes.

 

[RFX45]

SUPER GIANT BANNER

 

[Jr Mouse]

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]


Main trailer.

 

[UnnamedPlayer]

so this is Engrish Neon Genesis Evangelion?

 

[RFX45]

 

[RFX45]

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[why]

It's only doesn't look like Transformers/Battleship/Power Rangers to nerds.

I checked it off my list when that black dude gave his pep scream in the trailer. Moments like that make every muscle in my body cringe so hard that my testicles pull back into my abdomen.

 

[whiteslashasian]



It's only doesn't look like Transformers/Battleship/Power Rangers to nerds.

I checked it off my list when that black dude gave his pep scream in the trailer. Moments like that make every muscle in my body cringe so hard that my testicles pull back into my abdomen.

Idris Elba is generally pretty awesome. The trailers that are heavy on Charlie Day (It's Always Sunny) are kinda cringe worthy...

 

[Jr Mouse]

Official reviews are starting to come in.

Whether or not it sounds like damning the film with faint praise, the greatest virtue of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim may be that you can always understand what’s happening, what the characters are doing, and why they are doing it. After what seems like years of convoluted megamovies whose pretzel-like twists, turns, and double-crosses confound logic and confuse audiences, it’s incredibly refreshing to watch a film where the setup is simple, the mythology straightforward, and the execution consistently clear.

Working on his biggest canvas to date, the director of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth introduces an entirely new world to audiences with a robots-versus-monsters scenario that includes the same sort of nerdy details and sci-fi jargon as its overcomplicated brethren, but under del Toro it all makes sense — and even better, he makes us care about it.

HUMANITY COMES TOGETHER TO BATTLE THE KAIJU

The film takes place in the not-too-distant future, where a portal unexpectedly opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, unleashing a wave of monstrous, building-sized beasts called Kaiju upon the world. (The term comes from the Japanese movie genre of the same name, which gave birth to such iconic characters as Godzilla, Mothra, and the Cloverfield monster.) In order to combat these creatures, humankind overcomes its geographic and political differences to create Jaegers, robots of equivalent size that are piloted by two people via a sort of mindmeld called a “neural bridge.” The fraternal bond between Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy) and his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) makes them the best monster killers in the Jaeger program — that is, until Yancy is killed in battle, prompting Raleigh’s early retirement.

Five years later, the Jaeger program lives on as a shadow of its former self: only a handful of the machines remain, and even fewer pilots. But when commanding officer Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) turns up to re-enlist Raleigh for a final all-out assault on the portal in the hopes of saving humanity once and for all, the disillusioned soldier finds himself paired up with ambitious novice Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), whose own past traumas may prove to be the key that unlocks the program’s greatest partnership yet.

Although all of that might seem complicated, once you know the words “kaiju,” “jaeger,” and “neural bridge,” you understand all you need to know about Pacific Rim — at least at the outset. What’s interesting about this film’s seeming simplicity is that it highlights an odd truth about cinematic mythologies in general: the more immediately digestible they are, the more interested audiences seem to be in examining their edges, uncovering their details, and expanding the world. For example, all we needed to know about Star Wars in 1977 was the Rebels, the Empire, the Death Star, and the Force, and suffice it to say that a couple of universes worth of characters, species, technologies, and even philosophies have since been developed. Compared to the updates and reinventions in Star Trek, Man of Steel, and The Lone Ranger, del Toro’s film is mercilessly streamlined, an exercise in restraint in spite of the fact that all its machinery (literal and metaphorical) was created from whole cloth.

Speaking of that machinery, the action — no small part of the film’s appeal — is phenomenal. Each fight evolves from the previous one, feels suitably epic, and actually serves a narrative purpose. After an opening sequence introduces the basic science of each Jaeger, the movie mostly avoids too many unnecessary expository details, instead unleashing the established foundation of technique and technology upon whatever odd-shaped monster might be in a Jaeger’s way.

Raleigh’s machine Gipsy Danger, for example, uses an energy cannon, a retractable sword, and a rocket-powered haymaker to combat its opponents. But unlike a James Bond film where the hero advertises a cool gadget, uses it once, and then loses or discards it, Gipsy returns to each of them multiple times. It serves as an ongoing reminder that these destructive ‘bots are not sentient beings a la Transformers, but machines with the skills and personalities of the humans piloting them. The repetition also gives the Jaegers a certain kind of believability — a palpable physicality that suggests there are finite limitations to the ways they can move, much less to the number of missiles they can fire.

THE JAEGERS HAVE A PALPABLE PHYSICALITY

A RICH ENSEMBLE OF CHARACTERS

Like some of the most iconic sci-fi blockbusters, Pacific Rim also has the advantage of appealing, archetypal characters and a story that’s both viscerally and emotionally engaging. Whether or not you care deeply about Raleigh, the film’s Maverick-esque rule-breaker, del Toro and his co-screenwriter Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans) populate the world of the film with a rich ensemble of different characters, each of whom not only serve an important function in the narrative, but also provide a dramatic (or comedic) counterpoint to one another. Max Martini (TV’s Revenge) and Robert Kazinsky (True Blood) play father-and-son Jaeger pilots whose generational contentiousness conceals the importance of deep-rooted connections within a world largely defined by loss, while Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) and Burn Gorman (Torchwood) feature as a pair of bickering scientists — offering a wealth of scientific mumbo-jumbo, but also exemplifying how people make different, equally significant contributions to a war effort even without stepping onto a battlefield.

Raleigh is comparatively the weak link: bland, blonde heroism whose conventional journey provides a nucleus for the more dynamic characters to orbit. (It doesn’t help that Hunnam lacks, or fails to communicate, the quality that differentiates Raleigh’s initial swagger from his subsequent humility.) Meanwhile, the relationship between Martini and Kazinsky’s characters, or Mako and Stacker, reinforces deeper themes within the film — about parents and children, loss and redemption, and the intangible bonds that form between the unlikeliest people.

ONE OF THE MOST SATISFYING MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

Admittedly, del Toro’s film is the sort you go to in order to watch giant monsters fight giant robots, and then incidentally stay for all of that character development and thematic complexity. Certainly fans of those Japanese kaiju eiga that inspired Pacific Rim will find much to enjoy amidst its wanton destruction, which marvelously includes the sight of a robot scoring a home run off a monster’s forehead with a bat improvised out of a battleship. But again, the beauty and straightforwardness is deceptive, the simplicity of the film’s bruising physicality hooking you into its more sophisticated underpinnings.

Ultimately, all Pacific Rim really needed to be was a clear-eyed, proficient example of high-concept thrill-ride storytelling, whether or not its “original” premise was particularly original. But del Toro accomplishes that task and then some, making one of the most satisfying movies of the summer — and one of the best of his career — by creating not just a new world, but one whose mythology actually deserves a universe.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/8/4501378/pacific-rim-review

--

Brendon has been showing Pacific Rim mad love on this site for weeks now. It’s safe to say he likes it. One of his central points is that Pacific Rim is not a Transformers rip-off. He’s right. It isn’t.

But people who like the Transformers films are going to love this movie. People who like Japanese comics about giant robots are going to love this movie too. People who have always wanted to see Godzilla done right are going to love this movie. People who played Portal are going to love this movie. And people who were just hoping for a really really well-converted 3D action epic are going to love this movie.

Me, I thought it was OK.

Ah, I’m kidding. Pacific Rim is one underdeveloped subplot away from Summer blockbuster perfection. It’s a big dumb movie that’s fun to watch – but it manages to be epic and daft without insulting the viewer’s intelligence. Unlike some films I could mention…

Pacific Rim is a harder, darker, more physically present film than Transformers. The giant mechs have a palpable weight in every scene. You feel as if you might have an idea how these things work.

The cast are…while not exactly unknowns….not exactly big marquee names. A few faces will be familiar to British TV viewers. Charlie Hunnam started his career in Ant & Dec’s kiddiesoap Byker Grove. And Idris Elba made his first forays into in public awareness with a stint on Family Affairs, the Channel 5 soap opera that not even Idris’s Mum watched. He has, in fairness, done a couple of other things since. Luther, The Wire, Thor. Stuff like that.

Instead of frittering money away on big-name actors director Guillermo Del Toro has put every penny of the (reported) $180 million budget on the screen. He built a practical set for the Jaeger cockpits, and then larded Iron Man style CG control panels on top. The result is a slick, futuristic, but slightly greasy working environment that looks exactly how you might think the inside of a huge combat robot might look.

OK, I know the Jaegers aren’t strictly robots. But you know what I mean.

The bad guys, the Kaiju, look pretty much how you imagine giant homicidal Cloverfield beasts from another dimension might look as well. They’re excellently realised: and if the method by which they’re delivered to Earth suffers from some slightly inconsistent handwavium science-talk, at least it’s novel.

Then again, I’m aware of the preposterousness implicit in questioning the science in a movie about giant humanoid fighting machines duking it out with even gianter transdimensional Cthulu beasties.

Beasties that only, for some reason, attack at night. While it’s raining.

There was an almost thrown-away line explaining why the Kaiju have picked this (near-future) point in human history to attack. Something to do with dinosaurs and (I think) climate change. But where Pacific Rim scores over (say) Avatar is in its admirable lack of subtext. You wanted to see giant robots — giant robots with swords — punch monsters in the face? That’s what you get. And no tree-hugging.

Once you’ve swallowed the premise – a task made easy by an elegant prologue – it’s fun all the way. Some particular highlights for me were the battle that is fought while the plot of The Perfect Storm goes on below, the Thunderbirds launch sequence for the Jaegers and the captivating charisma of Rinko Kikuchi, who plays Jaeger expert Mako Mori.

Some of the other Jaeger pilots are a little undercharacterised, and the subplot involving Ron Perlman’s Kaiju trophy hunter and Charlie Day as a crackpot scientist doesn’t get enough enough screen time to unfold properly, but this is minor stuff. Especially as those things just go to demonstrate how we could easily afford to take another couple of trips to the world of Pacific Rim.

Idris Elba is great, if maybe a shade too young as the ridiculously-named Jaeger supremo Stacker Pentecost. Charlie Hunnam has a fairly straightforward hero role to play, and is perfectly fine in it. Charlie Day grabs all the best lines.

The stars of the thing, though, are Andrew Neskoromny’s spectacular production design and the amazing special effects by ILM. You’re going to want to see this movie in the biggest, loudest cinema you can find.

I would have liked to know more about the lives and personalities of the Jaeger pilots and their fruitloop scientist backup team, but that would have required the more dilatory pace of a TV miniseries. And there’s no way something this huge is going to be made on a TV budget any time soon. You know how ads for movies always say “only in cinemas” ? They really mean it this time.

My biggest negative was the disappointment that Gypsy Danger was the name of a robot, and not a Daily Mail headline. Oh. And nobody mentions Mechagodzilla. Not even once.

Pacific Rim is a big noisy popcorn-eating blockbuster that isn’t exactly going to change anyone’s life, but will give most viewers around 131 minutes of delirious fun.

Which sounds to me like a pretty reasonable deal.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/07/08/pacific-rim-the-bleeding-cool-review/



Day one.

 

[SixOhNine]

Are the pilots called "Jaeger-meisters"?

Because all the names sound stupid enough for this to be true.

 

[willy cheesesteak]

^
Jaeger

• a : hunter, huntsman
• b : one attending a person of rank or wealth and wearing hunter's costume

Kaiju

• Kaiju (怪獣 kaijū?) is a Japanese word that literally translates to "strange beast". However, the word Kaiju has been universally translated and defined into English as "monster" or "giant monster" and refers to science fiction films from Japan featuring unnatural creatures of immense size. Kaiju films usually showcase Kaiju of any form attacking a major Japanese city or engaging another (or multiple) Kaiju in battle.
  
  The most famous Kaiju is Godzilla. Other notable Kaiju include Gamera, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, Rodan, Daimajin, Gappa, King Kong and Guilala. The term ultra-kaiju is shorthand for monsters in the Ultra Series.
  
  Related terms include kaijū eiga (怪獣映画 kaijū eiga?, monster movie), a film featuring giant monsters or a single monster, kaijin (怪人?, referring to roughly humanoid monsters) and daikaiju (大怪獣 daikaijū?, giant kaiju), specifically meaning the larger variety of monsters.

 

[RFX45]

Really, really loved this movie!

 

[Saturdays]



Really, really loved this movie!

Same, very fun movie to watch. Proper stuff!

 

[Jr Mouse]

Now that's how you do a summer blockbuster! Had a fantastic time. Whole theater was into it. Lots of clapping and cheering. Even my girlfriend loved it. Want to see it again, but in IMAX 3D.

I'm so glad that this one lived up to and exceeded the hype.