278. Pacific Rim Licked Balls
I don't know where to start with this one to be honest so I'm going to give a quick overview of the plot so we're all on the same page before I start pointing out all the specific things that irritated me with this film.
It's set in the future, at least I assume it was the future, it could be in 20 minutes time... it makes no substantive difference to the plot either way. Anyway in 20 minutes time a huge ass rift opens up at the bottom of the ocean somewhere (possibly in the pacific I wasn't paying attention but given the title it makes sense) out of which pops Godzilla who's not called Godzilla but who definitely is Godzilla anyway (because that's copyright not to mention expensive and the rights are owned by someone hoping to make another weak film in which Ferris Bueller saves the world a second time). So Godzilla does what Godzilla does which is stagger around like a drunken Norwegian in port for the first time in 6 months, pimp slaps Los Angeles and then finally gets taken down a week later, because the only difference between ineffective munitions and effective munitions is time.
They cry and little and then we're told a bunch more Godzillas come out of the rift and fuck shit up elsewhere. We don't get to see this part but still...
So eventually once they get bored of watching Godzilla stomping on things that are not Tokyo they decide that really the only rational way to deal with the impending threat of generic giant lizard attack is to build a fleet of sweet ass anthropomorphic robots and then cock punch Godzilla who's not Godzilla back into whatever shit heap he originated from.
So far so good right except the stream of Godzillas keeps getting bigger and bigger until eventually they start flinging around the robots like a toddler with a barbie doll she really doesn't like and then the powers that be (whoever the fuck they are) decide that the new best plan is not to bother making giant cock punching robots anymore but instead to build a super massive wall to hide behind. Believe me we'll be coming back to this so don't dwell on how stupid that sounds.
So bottom line is the film ends up with a rag tag team of retired old clunge punching robots conducting a last ditch mission to close up the Godzilla spawning rift, for once deciding to use actual weaponry instead of say making a giant leg with a giant foot on the end to jam in the hole while shouting 'stick that up your time/space hole Jimmy!'
So what's my problem with the film? It sounds pretty sweet right?
Wrong.
I'll try to keep this brief so lets limit this to 5 really stupid things about this film that led to me literally shouting in a high pitched tone while in the car on the way back from the cinema.
1. The Robots.
It doesn't make any sense to use a colossal amount of resources to make a giant robot designed to Greco Roman wrestle Godzilla into submission instead of say using the resources to build more bombers and then bombing Godzilla into dust every time he pops out of his time hole looking to get his drunk swagger one. If you have absolutely decided on building a robot then why make it look like a human. I like human's as much as the next guy but as far as a design for giant fighting robots it's a pretty unstable platform. Why not rock more legs or have swords for legs or just make a giant circular saw and then hover it over the top of the hole waiting to process the next Godzilla that pops out like a Japanese whaling ship waiting to perform vital taste based research into Whales.
There is a reason that when the US military wants to level a compound full of terrorists they use a pretty small bomb attached to a plane and don't simply make a really big really heavily armoured truck and then drive into the compound at speed. I'm not a physicist but it seems to me that in terms of a resources used / rewards ratio, making Fistor the giant Godzilla punching robot is a pretty poor use of resources. Especially as until the end of the film there's no suggestion Godzilla can fly so all you'd need to do is fly 500 feet above his head and twat him with high explosives until he finally dies. Hell you could even go really high and then drop old refridgerators on him.
2. Use of Weapons.
If you do defy logic and make a robot armed with plasma cannons and a fucking sword... at least then don't spend 20 minutes of foreplay punching Godzilla in his heavily armoured forehead and do just move on to using the weaponry you are eventually going to use to win straight away rather than trying to create a sense of peril out of a situation that was manifestly only a problem because you are a tool.
3. The Control Systems.
The film made a really big deal about how the 2 pilots (because 1 pilot was not mentally strong enough) had to go into a state of Vulcan mind meld with each other (except obviously again they didn't cal it that because expensive copyright and blah blah blah) in order to pilot the craft. Fine so 2 people go in and they each use a hemisphere of their brain and that pilots the craft. Except that that doesn't pilot the craft because when you watch the battles you have to every 20 seconds cut to the interior of the robot where you have two jackasses dressed up like Kryten from Red Dwarf (or later on exactly like Kryten's replacement) Fred Flintstoning the craft along via the medium of Dance Dance revolution. Super Dance Bonus! YAY! If you have to walk the thing and you control the weapons with your hands then what's the point of the whole mind meld wanktronics. While on the subject of redundancy if you can control the robots systems from the control room why not put the two pilots in a pod in the control room and then control if remotely without risking any loss of life at all?
4. The Defensive Wall.
You are building a wall to keep Godzilla from fucking up your shit and that makes sense... kinda. What doesn't make sense is why you'd build this wall all the way around the coast line of your country instead of doing the considerably more obvious thing of building it around the time/space hole that you already know is the root cause of Godzilla and Godzilla related illness. I'm not even going to get into pointing out that even if you did want to build a half mile high concrete and steel wall all the way around the coast line of the world there would be no way there is the manufacturing capacity to do so let alone the physical resources to do it. Why bother anyway when you could just make a massive concrete bung and stick it over the time/space rift itself for a mere fraction of the expense.
5. The Fact That it is Clearly Just Power Rangers
Giant robots fighting giant lizards while the people inside them wear ridiculous suits and refuse to use their best weaponry until after 20 minutes of getting their ass kicked while making overly expressive hand gestures and shouting out badly scripted lines without any apparent emotional involvement. Yep that's power rangers.
The fail... it burns!