I feel remiss that I haven’t yet posted on my experience of Pacific Rim last Friday. I met my son at our nearest Hugh Jass theater for the 9:45 2D showing. We enjoyed a game of air hockey in the tiny lobby arcade. My feelings were hurt anew by the lobby décor’s horrible corporate “LET’S HAVE FUN” mirthlessness. At 9:20, we purchased a medium “buttered” popcorn and box of Junior Mints, and headed in to find our seats. It was easy to find seats as, somewhat surprisingly, there were only about 30 people in attendance.

All of my curmudgeonly kaiju fan/creature design aficionado nitpicking aside, I enjoyed the movie very, very much and actually am thinking of seeing it again in the theater, something I rarely do. I wish that we had gotten some more broad daylight- or even just sunset- brawls, and it would have been cool to have some take place in more open spaces. I also still wish that the kaiju designs had been less homogeneous in their texture, coloration and bioluminescence, but given their origin in the film, their similarities made sense. Beyond that, I can’t really complain: rollicking action, great pacing, some genuinely funny moments, spec-freaking-tacular production design and effects- you really see all the money up there on the screen. I loved the whole kaiju organ harvesting aspect, and Perlman and Day’s interactions. Great casting all around, even if Hunnam struggles with his American accent at times. And while I’ve never been big on robots/mecha, I fully dug the Jaegers. Especially the Russian one- they really nailed it on that blocky, antiquated-yet-totally-intimidating design.

Have to agree. I think the level of sensory intensity would make the experience pretty unpleasant for a 4 year old.

Saw it yesterday. Still trying to process how I feel about it. So many comparisons have been made to things i love like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but i just didn't connect with the film emotionally. I think i would have preffered this as a series of films, with more time to develop the characters and take them through their respective journeys. Feel like we just skim through their motivations to set them all up. Also, I think it was a mistake to not develop the other jaegaer pilots characters.

Pretty tired of seeing the bleak, grey colour palate used in so many movies of late. (I blame Nolan). Think i'm gonna have to see it again though before i give it a final verdict. : )

I thought a lot about Evangelion during the fight scenes, and I really wished that there had been less detail on the monsters and robots so they would have stood out more against the background. I guess I felt like making the live action visuals look more like anime with bolder color contrast and less like Michael Bay/Transformers would have improved the fight sequences. Although I still thought it was way better than the detail overload in Michael Bay's crapfests.

People have commented about the "always raining" fight scenes, in the dark....there was a part with the battle illuminated by searchlights (from helicopters? I forget) where you could see the color of the robots a little better etc. That was nice.

Good article on the title sequences. Includes video (although viewing them in a Web browser can't quite compare to the big screen.)

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/pacific-rim/

I am surprised everyone liked Pacific Rim so much. I thought the movie lacked any sort of "heart" that I would have expected from GDT. The dialogue was hokey, Charlie Hunnam's acting sucked (I like him in SOA, don't get me wrong), there was almost no character development, and the character design of the kaiju was repetitive, boring, and very hollywood. The Pale Man (eye monster) from Pan's Labyrinth, even after all these years, is still 1000x times more interesting to me than any of the kaiju in PR. I guess I was expecting more imaginative, whimsical monsters so it felt like a huge missed step for me them just resigning to some blue Tron glowing ugly nothings.

I did enjoy Charlie Day and Ron Perlman's performances, and the action was fun. I was just expecting an actually solid film, more than empty entertainment which is easy to find.

Ya,
I thought it was fun... but was wondering where the story was. It was probably closer to a transformers movie than a Guillermo del Toro movie. (though I've not seen transformers.. . I'm guessing it's lots of action without a lot of story.)

I'm actually pretty picky with my movies, and I thought the first two Transformers movies were quite enjoyable. They didn't pretend they were anything else than big robots fighting. I'd definitely recommend them.

Loved it.

Didn't Hong Kong looks like Blade Runner?

it seemed to lack story & substance. the action & robots/monsters were really cool but yeah, I expected more from Del Toro but then again, Hell Boy is so so.

When I hear "Giant Robots vs. Giant Monsters" I don't care who's behind it, I assume all substance and story has been burned to death with no remorse. And I'm OK with that.

I am pretty shocked at how bad this movie flopped in the usa last weekend and this weekend. Guess a sequel won't even happen. What really disappoints me is that I assume this will be the final nail in the coffin for The Mountains of Madness.

this is exactly what i've been thinking profound sadness

I would have loved for that movie to be done right in my lifetime and I honestly think no one would treat it with as much respect as Del Toro would have. I was hoping Pacific Rim would open the door and give him hollywood level money for productions that normally get indie budgets.

Only hope left is that it destroys the box office overseas for months and months. So far it's made about twice as much overseas as it has in the states. Which just proves that as always as a country we have pretty bad taste in movies.

That's expecting too much these days unfortunately Chase. I'd be hard pressed to actually remember the last good film I saw in any genre...maybe "There Will Be Blood"?and that was 6 years ago. The whole fantasy/thriller/horror genre is made up of crap like this, stupid action hero movies (sequel, sequel, sequel- money money money), and horror movies that for the most part have to be watered down and PG13 to fill the most seats, or based on a true story (and more often than not its based on a poor screenplay of said events) for realism. I saw 'The Conjuring' this weekend and while it wasn't god awful, didn't make me jump once and was pretty predictable. Maybe I'm numb or just about every movie is a clone of each other in one way or another.

http://www.teefury.com/
wow the comments speak for themselves.

- Absolutely atrocious acting
- Impressive 3d
- Great Kaiju design but hard to make out features (rain, night shots or under water)
- Forgettable characters
- Loved the scale and spectacle (beach scene was jaw dropping)
- Probably the worst attempt at Australian accents ive heard in years (so cringe worthy)
- Hong kong street scenes were amazing
- Overall ... big disapointment. Was actually bored through most of it bar the fight sequences

totally agree

That is totally true.

I absolutely loved it.
I was disappointed story wise (e.g. why would they stop the Jaeger program before the wall is finished and has proofed itself - I would have loved a different reason for this like shortage of resources or lack of founds . . . it was just nor very convincing).
But that did not bother me during the movie. I was just blown away and to busy high-fiving my inner self all the time.

Besides the visuals I loved most that this was the first big blockbuster in quite a while that actually was exciting.
Seriously, when was the last time you actually did not know how a (big budget) movie would end?

Finally got to see it today, and really enjoyed it! I agree the story was a little lacking and predictable but it really didn't bother me a bit, I didn't go in looking for a rich story line just MONSTERS FIGHTING ROBOTS! I actually appreciated that it didn't spend lots of time developing rich back stories, they just gave you enough background so you empathize with the characters, a terrorized young Mako, Jaks.. I mean Raleigh losing his brother, hunters killing Bambi's mother blah blah and then got on to why we all wanted to see this movie anyway!

^^I totally felt the same way! So i found some of the character designs and concept art check it out!

Axehead cgi model


Knifehead Model

just really liked this image:


There are more here http://conceptartworld.com/?p=25223 and here http://www.pacificrim-movie.net/news/1011

some really awesome stuff there!
Also loved that they took into consideration for the kaiju designs how a person would wear the design as a rubber suit!
Alright, I'm done

Finally saw it today. I am a huge Guillermo del Toro fan ( can't wait to pick up the Criterion blu ray of Devil's Backbone this coming Tuesday ) and I enjoyed the movie very much. I thought the plot regarding the father/son jaeger team should have been scrapped almost entirely ( just like the Chinese and Russian team....we didn't learn shit about their respective backstories ) in favor of developing the Idris Alba/Ron Perlman angle.

While the visuals and GCI were great, I did crave more of a 'God's eye view' during the battles, as others have stated. I found myself getting lost in the fight scenes just trying to figure out whom was hitting whom....

I also expected more of a gross out factor from Guillermo regarding Kaiju guts, poop, brains, and carcasses

All nitpicking aside, I thought it was good smash it up fun time at the movies. I look forward to the blu ray extras to see the design team motivations and developments, and to listen to the director commentary ( Guillermo is great fun to listen to....)

I can't imagine why anyone was expecting something as deep, complex and humane as Pan's Labyrinth from this film. It's weird that so many critics seem to be making apples-to-oranges judgments. The movie isn't without its flaws but some of the criticisms are overly serious. While viewing, I was initially annoyed by the ridiculous scientist characters, until I remembered that they're intentionally goofy stereotypes, straight out of the kaiju canon. Aside from, arguably, the very first Godzilla film, what kaiju movie ever had compelling subplots, meaningful resonance or superb acting? This was always meant to be a dumb summer blockbuster, and Del Toro made it clear in advance of release that "the money shot" was going to be monster/robot fights.

One thing I loved about the film: Despite a few forgivable wink-nod references, the movie is completely devoid of the sort of cynicism, snark, or worse, the sexism and racism that in my opinion make movies like those in the Transformers franchise a real drag. The sincerity is so gung-ho, it's corny ("Let's do this together!") but it's authentic, which is brave and ballsy in today's overly snarky, tiresomely ironic Hollywood. It may be dumb, but it has a good heart.

Thank you for putting it in words, Dean - that is exactly what I think.

Only thought I had during the film, since I didn't expect much, how much better
the jaegers and monsters would have looked with brighter color schemes. Giving them Mazinger and so on colors but muting them a bit would have looked so cool.
The kaiju could have had some of the brighter colors you see on real life animals and they would have given them a lot more pop.

Other than that, the movie was great. Expecting a real story was a mistake.

And Ron Pearlman. Can't have enough of him.