Picoreview: Pacific Rim: does what it says on the tin.
Okay, no, it doesn’t, because the tin says “Pacific Rim”, not “giant monsters fight giant robots!”, but close enough.
I liked it. I didn’t love it, which I wanted to, but I liked it, and it certainly delivered what I wanted it to. The effects were (literally) tremendous, and there were a couple of moments where I squeeed happily at the way something monstered out. There was one scene in particular where I kind of just sat back and thought, “The makers of the original Godzilla movies* would be proud.”
I thought the hero looked like Guillermo del Toro had wanted Channing Tatum and hadn’t been able to get him, so sent them out to find that type. Except this guy had a spark of native intelligence to his gaze, which I’ve never found to be true with Tatum. Or whatever his name is. So he was an improvement on the type, IMHO, and … y’know, everybody keeps saying “There was no character development!” but I thought everybody developed pretty well, actually, including Raleigh.
I *loved* Mako Mori, the female lead. I loved her backstory, her persona, her story arc, and her hair. Go read this review for details on why. In fact, her only problem for me was that she was goddamned near the only female in the entire movie, and that’s not her fault.
Idris Elba is just OMG. The only thing I could have wished for was to see him and Ron Perlman in the same scene together.
Actually, as my friend Chrysoula said, what I really could have wished for was for this to be a 6 or 8 hour miniseries with time to delve into the entire world and how they got there more deeply. But I enjoyed it for what it was. :)
*Original movies. Not that thing with Matthew Broderick, which was the worst movie I have ever sat all the way through.
I am a Godzilla fan. I don’t care what name they put on it, that Matthew Broderick travesty was NOT Godzilla. I’ve been kinda looking forward to seeing Pacific Rim since my husband sent me the trailer months ago simply because I wanted to see if it was as cheesy/great as Godzilla.
By the way, if you’ve never seen the more modern Godzilla’s (1990’s-2000’s) you should check them out. They are just as good as the original 6 or so, maybe better.
I embarrassed my husband when we saw the Broderick thing because I was actually saying–not quite shouting–“STEP ON HER, JUST GO AHEAD AND STEP ON HER” at the screen. I have never in my life seen such a useless female lead as the blonde in that movie. Dear grod.