Pacific Rim: The Biggest Giant Monster Movie Ever Made!

[metal_bryan]

[XvGojira]

[MekaGojira3k]

[metal_bryan]

[XvGojira]

[Henry88]

[MekaGojira3k]

[XvGojira]

[Cookie]

[Hybrid Gojira]

[MouthForWar]

[lhb412]

[MouthForWar]

[Henry88]

[MouthForWar]

[DerGolem]

[MouthForWar]

[DannyBeane]

[quote="DerGolem"]Okay guys, I've been in and out of this thread since the film came out so I apologize if what I'm about to bring up has already been discussed and I just missed it, but I want to talk about one aspect of PACIFIC RIM in particular: the acting.

Yeah, yeah I know I'm the guy who blew up the Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (91) thread by saying that the human characters - and in turn their acting - doesn't matter in a kaiju movie, it's all about the monsters, and I stand by that and for awhile now have used that to defend Pacific Rim since the one aspect that just about every critic has attacked it over is how bad or at least lack luster the acting is. Good reviews and bad reviews mention this. The good review just choose to minimize it in favor of the action, while bad review focus on it intensely.

So what brings this up is that I went to see Pacific Rim tonight (for my fourth time) with my sister who just got back from China and who is herself an aspiring filmmaker. She.... hated it.

Granted kaiju isn't a favorite genre of her's like it is mine, but she's watched a few films with me, and she is a fan of sci-fi otherwise; particularly Doctor Who and Firefly. But she said she thought it was del Toro first failure as a filmmaker on account of how bad the acting was and how painfully cliche the human characters were.

So naturally I brought up the argument that kaiju movies aren't about the acting but the monsters. She's heard this argument before and based on the few films she's seen agrees with me. But she didn't buy that argument here. She said that too much of the film's focus was on the human characters for them to be truly inconsequential. If the film truly wasn't suppose to be about them at all then they would have been less time spent with them. Rather, in her opinion, Pacific Rim doesn't so much look like a movie where the human character don't matter as much as one where they do but where del Toro, as the director, simply didn't care about them. "There are real actors here with real characters they are trying to play, but del Toro is smothering them and they are screaming loudly in protest." was her way of phrasing it.

Now to be honest the "bad" acting in this film is something I've noticed. In some scene it's actually kind of painful. But del Toro knows how to do character drama, look no further then Pan's Labyrinth, so what exactly is going on here?

I think it has to be deliberate and that my sister might be right when she says that it appears that del Toro is deliberately suffocating his actors. A few points on that....

1) In an early interview Ron Perlman talked about how he would do deliberately over the top scenery chewing takes thinking that del Toro would logically ask him to do another more serious one. Instead del Toro would yell cut and say that the over the top one was perfect, leaving Perlman going "What you're kidding? That was awful!"

2) In the July issue of Empire magazine Idris Elba was interviewed about the film. When asked about his performance he said that del Toro told him to be "theatrical" and described the whole tone of the film as "very tongue in check" and "not serious at all" which came as a surprise to him.

3) In a LA Times interview actor Robert Kazinsky mentioned that that he actually disliked del Toro's suggestion of having him constantly playing with a bulldog. Quote: "It was a bit of a bone of contention for me. I even said to Guillermo, I said, “Dude, can I just have one scene where it’s about me and not the dog? Can I have one scene where I can really do some really heavy-duty acting?â€

[MouthForWar]

[XvGojira]

[quote="DerGolem"]Okay guys, I've been in and out of this thread since the film came out so I apologize if what I'm about to bring up has already been discussed and I just missed it, but I want to talk about one aspect of PACIFIC RIM in particular: the acting.

Yeah, yeah I know I'm the guy who blew up the Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (91) thread by saying that the human characters - and in turn their acting - doesn't matter in a kaiju movie, it's all about the monsters, and I stand by that and for awhile now have used that to defend Pacific Rim since the one aspect that just about every critic has attacked it over is how bad or at least lack luster the acting is. Good reviews and bad reviews mention this. The good review just choose to minimize it in favor of the action, while bad review focus on it intensely.

So what brings this up is that I went to see Pacific Rim tonight (for my fourth time) with my sister who just got back from China and who is herself an aspiring filmmaker. She.... hated it.

Granted kaiju isn't a favorite genre of her's like it is mine, but she's watched a few films with me, and she is a fan of sci-fi otherwise; particularly Doctor Who and Firefly. But she said she thought it was del Toro first failure as a filmmaker on account of how bad the acting was and how painfully cliche the human characters were.

So naturally I brought up the argument that kaiju movies aren't about the acting but the monsters. She's heard this argument before and based on the few films she's seen agrees with me. But she didn't buy that argument here. She said that too much of the film's focus was on the human characters for them to be truly inconsequential. If the film truly wasn't suppose to be about them at all then they would have been less time spent with them. Rather, in her opinion, Pacific Rim doesn't so much look like a movie where the human character don't matter as much as one where they do but where del Toro, as the director, simply didn't care about them. "There are real actors here with real characters they are trying to play, but del Toro is smothering them and they are screaming loudly in protest." was her way of phrasing it.

Now to be honest the "bad" acting in this film is something I've noticed. In some scene it's actually kind of painful. But del Toro knows how to do character drama, look no further then Pan's Labyrinth, so what exactly is going on here?

I think it has to be deliberate and that my sister might be right when she says that it appears that del Toro is deliberately suffocating his actors. A few points on that....

1) In an early interview Ron Perlman talked about how he would do deliberately over the top scenery chewing takes thinking that del Toro would logically ask him to do another more serious one. Instead del Toro would yell cut and say that the over the top one was perfect, leaving Perlman going "What you're kidding? That was awful!"

2) In the July issue of Empire magazine Idris Elba was interviewed about the film. When asked about his performance he said that del Toro told him to be "theatrical" and described the whole tone of the film as "very tongue in check" and "not serious at all" which came as a surprise to him.

3) In a LA Times interview actor Robert Kazinsky mentioned that that he actually disliked del Toro's suggestion of having him constantly playing with a bulldog. Quote: "It was a bit of a bone of contention for me. I even said to Guillermo, I said, “Dude, can I just have one scene where it’s about me and not the dog? Can I have one scene where I can really do some really heavy-duty acting?â€

[planetxleader]

I haven't posted my thoughts here yet, but I just got back from the second time (surprised it's only the second) seeing it.

It has set very well. It is perfect. It is freaking awesome.

I mean, "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!". Also, being a Sunday night on the beginning of the film's third week in suburban Georgia, there was a really good crowd. We had trouble finding seats.

I was monitoring the audience's enjoyment, especially curious and worried they might be bored through the film's first half, which is very character-focused, but they ate everything up and reacted wonderfully to all the jokes and intimate character moments. People were getting really charged when Raleigh started beating down the Aussie kid, and I myself found myself choking a bit throughout the moments leading up to the final deployment. Like, seriously, the film freaking delivers. I'm totally seeing it a third time.

So going off of that, I have no problem with the characters or the actors. Like, whatsoever. Upon the first viewing I was sort of agreeing with Matt Frank, who thought the characters seemed a little one-dimensional, but I quickly made up my mind that no, they are just broadly painted. And seeing it again tonight, I stand by that. Whatever you might say about them, they're certainly engaging. They held the attention and hearts of me, the GHIDRAH crew, and a theater full of casual moviegoers. "Do you want to die here... or in a Jaeger?" Zing.

[MouthForWar]

[DerGolem]

[MouthForWar]

[kiryugoji04]