Pacific Rim. An ATS member review.

So I went to see Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” last night. I’d been eagerly waiting for months on end for this, watching countless trailers and teasers on youtube to satiate my hunger for the film to finally come out.
For those of who who don’t know what this film is about, it’s basically as follows:

Giant monsters called kaiju (Japanese for “strange beast”) start appearing out of an inter-dimensional rift somewhere deep undersea in the Pacific Rim. They waste no time trying to smash up the earth and eradicate the humans (cats and guinea pigs are safe, though). So the humans get fed up and decide to build giant robots called jaegers (German for “hunters”) to start a giant UFC match in the ocean.

The film wastes no time getting into the heart of the situation by starting off with a 30 second narration that goes something along the lines of “Hey everyone. Once upon a time some giant arseholes turned up in the ocean and started wrecking things, so we built some robots to punch them. Lots of people died and a bunch of our robots got smashed up and stuff. Anyway, fast forward a bunch of years and the war is still going, bla bla bla. You get the drift”.

I was a bit disappointed by this. I wanted to see the initial moment the creatures arrived in all their glory. Instead I got a bunch of cut-scenes. Oh well.

The story follows the life of two young pilots who separately have had some very crap situations happen to them courtesy of the kaiju. They end up piloting one of the mechs by way of a “neural handshake”. Basically if one person alone tries to control a jaeger, the impact on the brain is enough to cause the pilot to flip out and explode.
There’s not much else to say as far as the story goes. It’s predictable and the dialogue is very straightforward. But you don’t go and watch these kind of films expecting Shakespeare, do you?

The CGI is amazing (worth watching in 3D), and the fight scenes are well done. None of the fast cutting rubbish we saw in the Transformers films. The only issue I have with the fight scenes, is that they always happen at night while it’s raining, or deep underwater where it’s dark anyway. That being said, the fight scenes in Hong Kong look amazing. Lots of buildings getting smashed and cars getting crushed and so forth.

Overall, it does what it says on the box. Giant robots vs giant monsters. I recommend you watch it if you love these sorts of films, as it looks beautiful and has a bunch of cool action scenes. Ron Perlman has a great role in the film, too. Just ignore the horrendous Aussie accents in the film (eg: “Strewth! That bloody mongrel monster is bigger than the Big Pineapple, mate!”), and the very, very obvious Independence Day scene. I won’t tell you what part that is as you’ll work it out for yourself.

Overall, I give it 3 and a half out of 5 stars.

Here's the trailer for those of you living under a rock:

Double post. Mods please delete!

I have been waiting to see this. Thanks for the dnd review.

Yeah, I grew up addicted to the Japanese monsters-in-rubber-suits movies. I am hoping this one steps up the game a little.

reply to post by Noinoi


Thanks for the review.. I'm not a big fan of children's movies.

I do like good CGI but without a good story, I'll pass....

I LOVED seeing Jax from Sons of Anarchy and also his step Dad the one time President of SAMCRO, in this film. I had no idea they would be in it and thought they both did an excellent job.

I went with my 13 yro son and with little expectation of some big wonderous mega movie in my head, just had a great time with all of the fast paced action and the Japanese Godzilla type theme.

If you like to pick em apart, then this is the one for you. If you like to go see a movie that brings out the non serious kid in you, then this is the one.

We cant wait for it to come out on DVD so that we can stop, pause, rewind at will because you do miss quite a bit because of the fast rhythm of scenes.

Just watched it. Story was alright but nothing that great. I really just watched because of the giant robots...

But yeah, the cgi was pretty damn good.


Bandai needs to make a legit live action Gundam movie already...

I really liked this, saw it a few weeks ago.... kicked ass.
Great FX and pretty decent acting throughout.

Really surpassed my expectations, though it was going to be pretty poor.... it was actually a cracking movie with some very memorable scenes and it made me feel like a kid again.

Not many films can do that.