Pacific Rim: The Biggest Giant Monster Movie Ever Made!

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[DerGolem]

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[Benjamin Haines]

I think the most common (but certainly not universal) difference between the designs of American and Japanese monsters is that Japanese monster designs, even when complex, are typically patterned in such a way that you can take in all of their features and the bulk of their aesthetic details in one glance. With American monsters, particularly in the last 20 years or so, their designs are often intricately nuanced down to a very small level.

To put that simpler, you can look at a full-body photo of Anguirus for ten seconds and afterward be able to form a more-or-less complete mental image of the monster, skin and all. If you look at a full-body picture of Pacific Rim's Knifehead for the same amount of time, you can still gather a basic mental image, but you'd really have to zoom in on individual parts of the monster to fully take in everything about the design and be able to put it all together in your head later when you're not looking at a photo.

I can definitely see why the monsters of Pacific Rim would all look kind of the same and therefore come across as generic to people who aren't keen on the general aesthetics of American movie monsters. When the differences between the individual monster designs exist on a very micro level, viewing them from a macro distance can make their overall design patterns run together and make them look like they were all made from the same mold, even if they have drastically different body shapes. It's kind of ironic how the relative simplicity of Japanese monster designs actually serves to make them stand out from each other when viewed from a distance.

Personally, I'm loving everything I'm seeing about Pacific Rim: the crazy cool kaiju, the individualized robots, and the gorgeous-looking footage in the trailers. It doesn't look Japanese but I wouldn't want it to; it's an American movie. Being inspired by and paying tribute to Japanese monsters is appealing but actively trying to replicate that foreign style would just be a guaranteed way to miss the mark. As it is, Pacific Rim takes the core of what's always appealed to me about Godzilla and the genre as a whole (giant, otherworldly characters in titanic clashes laying waste to cities) and presents it in a new style. With talent like Guillermo Del Toro running the show, I don't have any doubt that this will be a rollicking good time that will please the monster-loving kid in me. That's all I want from it.

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[DerGolem]

[DerGolem]

Also found this on DeviantArt and thought it was pretty awesome.



Original artist is TheMonsterfink

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