Capsule Reviews: Pacific Rim
Oh Guillermo del Toro, save my summer!
When the first glimpses of Pacific Rim started showing up last year, the otaku glee was already palpable. At the same time, there was plenty of worry that it would be handled poorly. We’ve been let down by plenty of giant robot movies over the past six years, the worst of course being the Transformers franchise. And yet, with Guillermo del Toro at the helm, buzz has been running high. In a summer where most of the movies have been mediocre at best, all Pacific Rim needed to do was deliver good kaiju vs mecha fighting to be successful. Did del Toro manage to make a masterpiece?
FUCK YES.
Synopsis: A rift opens on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, letting giant monsters invade the world. In response, the world’s governments get together to build the Jaeger Program, an effort to build giant robots to fight them. This works for a couple of years until the monsters start getting bigger and more frequent, resulting in more and more losses. The governments cut all funding to the program, hoping that a giant wall will suffice. What is left of the program gathers in Hong Kong, planning one final desperate plan to close the rift forever before the monsters overrun the world.
So let's start with the obvious: cinema snobs need not fucking apply. If you HATE JOY and would rather watch Driving Miss Daisy on continuous loop, then don't bother seeing this. That being said, if you don't see this in a theater you are missing out on one of the most intense cinematic roller coaster rides this year.
Guillermo del Toro has crafted an amazing piece of blockbuster cinema here. He not only created a “monsters vs. robots” epic, he managed to give it an emotional weight that any other director would have likely completely screwed up. The monsters are legitimately frightening. The robots are awe-inspiring. The characters, while being standard archetypes for this kind of story, are all well written and well-developed, with clear motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. Even the token comic moments are handled as a natural part of the narrative, more quirky and earnest than funny. The movie is exactly what it is supposed to be, and manages to do everything right and then some.
My only nitpick may be the usual shaking camera effect during the fight scenes. I’m not exactly a fan of the “shakey cam” thing, but when you then add copious motion blur to it you get scenes at that are nearly unwatchable. There were chunks of the fight scenes where I lost track of what was going on because the scene was just a continuous stream of blurred light and color, punctuated with rapid cuts to other blurry action. These bits were thankfully fairly rare, but they were still enough to notably frustrate me. However, even in spite of these scenes, you can follow the action really well most of the film.
The CGI effects are stunning throughout. Everything, from the biggest robots to the smallest bits of silt or snow, is animated to photorealism. You can see the damage these titans are doing to each other and everything around them; it’s literally breathtaking.
I saw this in 2D, so I cannot comment on how it would look in a 3D showing. However, the movie is extremely dark, so I don’t imagine that adding the standard 3D sunglasses on top of that would make it any better.
The actors all turn in really good performances, with Idris Elba more or less stealing the show. Charlie Hunnan and Rinko Kikuchi turn in solid performances with a lot of emotion as our main characters. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman are also highly memorable as our earnest comic relief characters, scientists way over their heads and trying very hard to be useful. Also, you will worship Ron Perlman as white Dolemite (and I want his fucking shoes).
"Hey, look, I'm on the Hellboy set again! Neat!"
This movie is completely worth a theater ticket; this needs to be seen on a big screen. This is highly recommended, and may be one of the best movies of the year.
When the first glimpses of Pacific Rim started showing up last year, the otaku glee was already palpable. At the same time, there was plenty of worry that it would be handled poorly. We’ve been let down by plenty of giant robot movies over the past six years, the worst of course being the Transformers franchise. And yet, with Guillermo del Toro at the helm, buzz has been running high. In a summer where most of the movies have been mediocre at best, all Pacific Rim needed to do was deliver good kaiju vs mecha fighting to be successful. Did del Toro manage to make a masterpiece?
FUCK YES.
Synopsis: A rift opens on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, letting giant monsters invade the world. In response, the world’s governments get together to build the Jaeger Program, an effort to build giant robots to fight them. This works for a couple of years until the monsters start getting bigger and more frequent, resulting in more and more losses. The governments cut all funding to the program, hoping that a giant wall will suffice. What is left of the program gathers in Hong Kong, planning one final desperate plan to close the rift forever before the monsters overrun the world.
So let's start with the obvious: cinema snobs need not fucking apply. If you HATE JOY and would rather watch Driving Miss Daisy on continuous loop, then don't bother seeing this. That being said, if you don't see this in a theater you are missing out on one of the most intense cinematic roller coaster rides this year.
Guillermo del Toro has crafted an amazing piece of blockbuster cinema here. He not only created a “monsters vs. robots” epic, he managed to give it an emotional weight that any other director would have likely completely screwed up. The monsters are legitimately frightening. The robots are awe-inspiring. The characters, while being standard archetypes for this kind of story, are all well written and well-developed, with clear motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. Even the token comic moments are handled as a natural part of the narrative, more quirky and earnest than funny. The movie is exactly what it is supposed to be, and manages to do everything right and then some.
My only nitpick may be the usual shaking camera effect during the fight scenes. I’m not exactly a fan of the “shakey cam” thing, but when you then add copious motion blur to it you get scenes at that are nearly unwatchable. There were chunks of the fight scenes where I lost track of what was going on because the scene was just a continuous stream of blurred light and color, punctuated with rapid cuts to other blurry action. These bits were thankfully fairly rare, but they were still enough to notably frustrate me. However, even in spite of these scenes, you can follow the action really well most of the film.
The CGI effects are stunning throughout. Everything, from the biggest robots to the smallest bits of silt or snow, is animated to photorealism. You can see the damage these titans are doing to each other and everything around them; it’s literally breathtaking.
I saw this in 2D, so I cannot comment on how it would look in a 3D showing. However, the movie is extremely dark, so I don’t imagine that adding the standard 3D sunglasses on top of that would make it any better.
The actors all turn in really good performances, with Idris Elba more or less stealing the show. Charlie Hunnan and Rinko Kikuchi turn in solid performances with a lot of emotion as our main characters. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman are also highly memorable as our earnest comic relief characters, scientists way over their heads and trying very hard to be useful. Also, you will worship Ron Perlman as white Dolemite (and I want his fucking shoes).
"Hey, look, I'm on the Hellboy set again! Neat!"
This movie is completely worth a theater ticket; this needs to be seen on a big screen. This is highly recommended, and may be one of the best movies of the year.