Pacific Rim (2013)

"Today at the edge of our hopes, at the end of our time. We have chosen to believe in each other. Today we face the monsters that are at our blogs, today we are cancelling the apocalypse!" -Marshal Pentecost

To think the Americans now own the Gundam robots.

Maybe it would feel more realistic (or logical..) if they had an all-Japanese cast.

Directed by monster loving Guillermo Del Toro, the movie tells of a story in the distant future that our world is in a brink of destruction by monsters, known as Kaiju. The humans only hope of survival is by building monstrous size robots called the Jaegers, controlled by two pilots having to "drift" their minds, binding their minds together in a neural link which lets them share the mental strain which would otherwise overwhelm a single pilot. Retired pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) has to bury his past and team up with a rookie pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) in order to pilot his old Mark 3 Jaeger, the Gipsy Danger to carry out a new mission led by Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) that could finally bring an end to the Kaiju's devastation.

Monster-Robot Beatdown!

Blend in Godzilla, Ultraman, Power Ranger's Megazord, Real Steel, Transformers and throw in designs from Iron Man and G.I Joe, you pretty much get Pacific Rim. But having the monsters called Kaiju, you know the inspiration is mainly from Godzilla and the various Japanese's monster movies in the past, and having the robots called Jaeger, a german word for Hunter, I guess it made sense to have those brilliant engineers from Germany move on from building cars to building giant robots. Well, I believe the only reason why I enjoyed the movie a lot is because Guillermo Del Toro certainly knows how to bring out my childhood love for giant monsters, Ultraman, Power Rangers and robots. I grew up with Godzilla, Power Rangers and Ultraman, all of which had monsters destroying the city (Power Ranger's one is usually the end bit), and  both Power Rangers and Ultraman have our heroes matching up in size with the monsters, either by means of Ultraman space powers or combining Zords. And I'm pretty sure this movie is made for the fans of those.

You must know my friend Godzilla?

The designs of the film is pretty cool, from the robots to the monsters, to the those G.I Joe-ish suits the characters wear in the film. Although it's somewhat a "Kaiju" film, I felt there's more attention given in creating the robots than they do for the monster. The designers and concept artist certainly gave the robots an individual look base on their pilots, their country of origin and their technological development. The monsters although varied in their designs and their look, are much of the time, difficult to see when you have them coming out at night, moving under water, fighting in stormy weather or being captured blurry on camera... or dead. I guess you could somehow make out that some have glowy in things on their skin, one has wings and one has an amazing Predator-looking mouth. But they don't really have a cool a stand-out signature look or even a signature sound. Well, at least not as signature as Godzilla. But with what we have, everything has a COOL look and feel to it. I mean, this is a giant robot-monster beat down movie. How cool is that?!

The technology design and look is REALLY COOL!
 

Besides the visuals and the epicness of the robot-monster beat down, this movie certainly has a good story with character development in it. Each character in the story have a background story and each one plays an important part in the film. They were really well thought out and I really became invested in our characters of the story. I guess the only drawback is the acting of our two main actor and actress; Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi as our hero Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori respectively. They came off rather flat at times. Idris Alba gave a strong performance as Marshal Stacker Pentecost. But the acting and character of Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler and Burn Gorman as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb really got my attention. Although the duo somehow came off a little bit like goofy side characters. Their characters brought some lightheartedness to a serious story. Even their look came off a little over the top. I mean, one looks like your typical mad-scientist and the other looks like a comic-book geek... but well, he's a Monster's geek.

They do make good models...but they can't act. I'm more inclined to buy their gear than their performance.

I can't help but feel there are some cliche, unoriginal moments in the film. The scene with Marshal Pentecost looking for Raleigh at the wall construction site, to ask him to come back into fighting off Kaiju, reminded me a lot of Colonel Sam Trautman looking for Rambo in Thailand, to come back into fighting for America. And even the climatic scene of the movie, our hero did an Avenger's Iron Man move by blowing up a nuke at the other side of the portal. I kinda expected that's going to happen when I see the radioactive logo behind the robot's back. I was like "Oh yea, the Gipsy Danger is nuclear powered. It's certainly going to end up being the bomb to collapse the tunnel." The scene where the characters and Mako were in suspense of whether our hero, Raleigh Becket was going to survive in the end. We've been treated with so many of that kind of ending in movies that we know...our hero is going to survive, no surprise, and he even delivers a "funny" one-liner to prove it. You know, let's go eat Shawarma anyone?

You can actually hear them screaming out their weapons before unleashing them. Like they'll say "Super Rocket Powered Dragon Punch! (or something of that sort) before punching the monster.

I really enjoyed the movie. The story is pretty engaging, I'm still in awe of the battle between the robots and monsters, and the whole concept and the design of the robot and the technology were really cool. Guillermo Del Toro did deliver a good Hollywood action flick, and gave a lollipop to the monsters and robots loving child in me. However, I can only give the movie a category 6.5 out of 10 glowing-blue-acid-spitting-pregnant Kaiju.

Reminds me of something Bender would say...