Pacific Rim: The Biggest Giant Monster Movie Ever Made!

[swfreakjpb]

Lots of Anime vibes in it. In the visuals and writing. Good Stuff.

His top five Kaiju film choices are great. WOTG is one of mine as well.

[goji4ever]

While not perfect it is really good at what it does. Whoever is doing the godzilla script hopefully watched and took some notes, the tone is right about where it needed to be. Above all else it seemed confident in what it was doing, it didnt seem to have that feel that transformers has where there must be a forced joke here or a forced joke there....It just exists within its universe and goes. No character came off as annoying which was great.

Having watching the Gamera trilogy of the 90s and all the "millenium" Godzilla movies it was weird seeing that lots of stuff shown in the movie has been done in the Japanese effort in the genre..its just that here it works cohesively.
-Pre-credits battle before the title screen check, Character with traumatic past Kaiju encounter check, Team piloting Kaiju check, Robot being airlifted to the fight check....it just goes on and on......About the only thing that is different is the willing use of Nukes which is the only thing Japanese films never advocate.

Love it.

PS.. why is it that Jets insist on doing really close fly bys on monsters, the munitions have ridiculous range...i dont get why they always show them risking it in these movies. Is it just for tradition? Like throwing the pistol at Superman after you use up all the bullets?

[jellydonut25]

[MouthForWar]

[jellydonut25]

[Rodanex]

[william newell]

[Jorzilla]

[Cookie]

[MouthForWar]

Anybody else love that they didn't go for a kiss at the end?

Apparently, GDT shot several versions of that and he picked the right one, IMO.

[quote]I guess this is another spoiler, but you don’t end on a kiss. Why?

When I was working on the movie we had three or four different versions of the relationship between Charlie and Rinko because I wanted to see if I could make a story about two people liking each other without having to end in a kiss. So when I shot the ending we shot three versions. I’ve never done this before, but instinctively I thought we should do three versions. We did one version where they kiss and it almost felt weird. They’re good friends, they’re pals, good colleagues.

It’s weird because she’s stepping into a place vacated by his brother, which indicates a tight but perhaps not fully sexualized relationship.

It’s the only time Iâ€

[Berean]

I have been looking forward to Pacific Rim ever since the film was first noised around more than a year ago. When the news broke that Guillermo Del Toro was directing and wrote the story the excitement level went up a notch. Why you might ask?

First, I am a fan of Kaiju (Giant beast/monster) films going back to the seminal Japanese film Gojira in 1954. Sadly the genre has been badly underserved in recent years, with the only efforts in it being in anime style (and bad efforts at that). So the prospect of a new take on them perked up the interest.

Second, Guillermo Del Toro has a reputation for imaginative films. Granted sometimes he lets his imagination get the better of him and the resulting film is murky (Don’t be Afraid of the Dark) but he also has created some excellent films (Hellboy II: The Golden Army). He is known for films featuring intricate clockwork type mechanisms and bizarre monsters frequently from fairy tale type backgrounds.

So with the background, let’s take a look at Pacific Rim.

To summarize the film at a high level, it is about the struggle to defend humanity from an onslaught over several years of creatures called Kaiju in the film (yes they are actually called Kaiju). In desperation as normal defense methods prove fruitless, enormous combat robots called Jaegers (Hunters in German) are built to combat the creatures. The film focuses in on two Jaeger pilots and on the end of the war with the Jaeger corps down to its last strength.

So, after all that does it work? I say yes it does. Here are some of the reasons I liked it.

1.It actually has a humanity about it. This is typical for Del Toro and in such a large, epic story I questioned if he could bring it off and he did. The Jaeger pilots feel like real people and the fleeing masses in the cities under attack are also handled well, giving a real feeling of mass panic. Which lead to point #2…

2.The city attacks are VERY well executed. They really feel like a city is being torn apart with people trying to just hide and survive. This is an area where (for example) the Transformers movies failed miserably. Those movies made cities under attack feel like a soulless video game not a real place under devastating attack.

3.Ron Perlman did a GREAT turn in a supporting role as a sort of “smugglerâ€

[MouthForWar]

[DannyBeane]

[Berean]

[DannyBeane]

[MouthForWar]

[Berean]

[king_ghidorah]

[Kailem]

[quote="MouthForWar"]Anybody else love that they didn't go for a kiss at the end?

Apparently, GDT shot several versions of that and he picked the right one, IMO.

[quote]I guess this is another spoiler, but you don’t end on a kiss. Why?

When I was working on the movie we had three or four different versions of the relationship between Charlie and Rinko because I wanted to see if I could make a story about two people liking each other without having to end in a kiss. So when I shot the ending we shot three versions. I’ve never done this before, but instinctively I thought we should do three versions. We did one version where they kiss and it almost felt weird. They’re good friends, they’re pals, good colleagues.

It’s weird because she’s stepping into a place vacated by his brother, which indicates a tight but perhaps not fully sexualized relationship.

It’s the only time Iâ€

[kiryugoji04]

I keep coming back to Star Wars in my discussions of this film. Both of them are stuffed full of clichéd and archetypical characters but all of them are almost invariably so well lived-in by their respective actors that they transcend their archetypes to become just as wholly lovable as any character in a more dramatic character study. Spectacle films such as these tend to have to sacrifice much in the way of deep development of their characters in favor of the all-important world-building that constructs the fantastical scenario the audience is being thrust into but when populated by talented performances, they can easily overcome this apparent handicap. Pentecost's look of disgust when Raleigh grabs his arm or Obi-wan's look of incredulity at Solo's boasting - to name some examples off the very top of my head - are delightful little ticks that add leagues of depth to their characters in mere seconds. I guess my ultimate defense for the characters is that even though the obvious primary draw for this film was the robot on monster action, which was delivered in spade, it says a LOT that almost all of the discussions between my friends and I on the way home from GFest centered around the characters and how much we love what was done with them. We didn't leave the film needing more from the characters because they didn't register for us, We left WANTING more from them because we loved how they'd been crafted so very much. Simplicity is not a bad thing and I thank Del Toro for understanding that.

Other thoughts on the Star Wars connection: the primary character development for the characters of Star Wars comes in Empire and Jedi more than in the original film itself, and I feel like Pacific Rim would play out similarly, should it get a sequel (and I pray it does). Secondly, Star Wars also as a pretty conclusive ending, save for Darth Vader escaping. I see no reason why Pacific Rim couldn't get a sequel at this point and I would really love to see more of the world that was created for this film as well as more of Raleigh and Mako's relationship as partners. (Thank GOD they didn't kiss at the end. Favorite part of the movie, maybe. XD)

[king_ghidorah]

I love that they didn't kiss, but I can't agree with the implication that some of you are making that there's no romance there. I just took it as a innocent, sweet, elementary school-type of romance. They haven't graduated to kissing yet, and in this day and age where people seem to always have sex when meeting for the first time in films, this was a very sweet throwback.

But, there's deff some heat between the two of them.

Edit* And count me in as another person who really like the two leads' story. My favorite part of the film and that's why I'm a little down on the second half. Their story just kind of stops.

[kiryugoji04]

I feel like there certainly could be but there doesn't HAVE to be. I'd actually think a neat plot-point in the sequel would be one of them seeing someone else and the audience getting to see how it effects their relationship one way or the other. I dunno.

[king_ghidorah]

[kiryugoji04]

[king_ghidorah]