Film Review: Pacific Rim

Alt title: Megazord vs Godzilla

That name probably got canned for copy-write reasons.

Anyway back on topic. So I went to see ‘Pacific Rim’ with my good friend John and thought i would write down my thoughts.

Pacific Rim movie trailer

So lets start by saying it was better than I expected, although I did have pretty low expectations. I think my opening line to this review highlights that. I’ll be honest when I saw the trailer I wasn’t impressed. I though it looked like a twelve-year-old had decided to combine Transformers, Godzilla and Iron man. Alas the reviews came in and general people seemed to like it, so I figured screw it Guillermo del Toro hasn’t let me down before so why not.

Praising

Overall, it was OK, I certainly don’t regret going to see it but I’m not going to urge you to drop whatever you are doing and see it immediately (I mean come on, it’s no Avengers).

I would say if you love gratuitous action scenes showing giant robots fighting giant lizard-alien-monster things then this film is a good pick for you. It very competently handles some great giant fight scenes. It’s got nicely paced action and doesn’t suffer from “Transformers syndrome”, so you can see whats going on and you get a great sense of the scale of the fights and such. I also enjoyed watching it, the story just about holds the fights scenes together. The acting is overall not bad (Idris Elber deserves more of my attention in future) and I didn’t check my watch at any point in the film, so it was clearly well paced.  As I said it generally a good outing.

Giant monsters are cool

Whining

On the other hand there were a few issues that I will raise, doing my very best not to spoil anything in the process. As I mentioned the story holds things together, but it’s not going to win any awards. It was standard action film script #3. ‘Person does good, tragic event, person rallies back, insurmountable odds, person wins’. This isn’t necessarily bad, it’s a good formula and it works just don’t expect anything different. It’s also a film that attempts to do some ‘science’. Now as a ‘science’ person I always pay attention to these bits and well aside from the cringe-worthy geek the science isn’t too bad, although there are one or two glaring problems.

Another issue i had is that two of the major characters look very similar i couldn’t help shake the idea that they were going to turn out to be related, they weren’t…or were they! To avoid spoilers it could be either. The last big thing that i will criticise is the script. They covered some interesting topics and they set up some great things…only then to never revisit them. Slightly frustrating, especially when they would include random bits that actually detracted or confused the situation. I will mention ‘digital and analogue’ at this point and when you see it you will get the reference.

Movie science…often bad

Conclusion

Overall it was a solid film, despite my moaning I did enjoy it. It’s faults didn’t detract from the experience. Pacific Rim is a straight up action film that isn’t going to radically shake up the genre. I will tip my hat to Del Toro who manages to present the epic action set pieces in an easy to follow way without detracting from them. If you get a chance to see it, I think it’s worth a watch especially if giant robots are your thing.

I will activate 3 thumb rockets out of 5. (Another tenuous reference, sorry).

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