Saturday 13 July 2013

PACIFIC RIM makes Man of Steel look like an Ingmar Bergman movie

Trying to put the effect of PACIFIC RIM (I can't write it in lower case) down in words the next day.. This is not going to be a 'serious' review, I may come back to that, I'm going with my gut.

The buzz is something like you felt when you saw Thunderbirds for the first time as a kid. Tellingly there were plenty of adults scoffing in the audience at the bad human melodrama but the kids in the auditorium where absolutely loving it .. in particular one sight gag involving a Jaeger punching through a skyscraper to set off an executive toy kicked of squeals
of delight from a completely enraptured row of kids behind me.

To put my age in context I remember watching Star Wars in 1977 in a movie theatre in rural Ontario and I distinctly remember the adults with us were scoffing at that as well.

Iron Man 3 - Meh
Man of Steel - good movie but ultimately - Meh

Pacific Rim, despite being probably a worse movie, certainly less adult, than either of those above for some of its length, makes them both look very small beer now. I hope the upcoming The Wolverine is good as even as a comics fan my super hero movie threshold is under serious threat after having my actual imagination engaged for a change.

And ho - how - Transformers. The whole concept of secret giant robots in a world that is essentially unchanged is particularly laughable now. That as of now is a dead concept. Transformers 4 is akin to making Damnation Alley in the era of Star Wars now,  just give it up.

Re: the acting, Idris Elba has a good scene, the Japanese female lead is good , the actors playing Australians are going for larger than life and end up ultimately being stupid, but remain recognisably Australians. They get a lot of the best gung-ho action and it's nice to see American characters on the back foot in this area for a change. I liked their cute dog, another obvious shout out to a family audience and one of the great bits if incidental detail you get in del Toro's movies that would be an idiot sub-plot in a more conventional movie.

Biggest disappointment was not seeing more of the intriguing Russians and Chinese who I thought went down far too quickly after such a big build up. The international nature is particularly great ..
<cut - must find time to do Kaiju in detail>

So there is no-one going to see this movie? (I remember I couldn't motivate anyone to see the first Iron Man film either). If you liked any of Del Toro's output before this, even just Pan's Labyrinth or The Devil's Backbone, or you just have bored kids, you need to be in a air conditioned cinema this afternoon watching it. It's daft as a brush and totally brilliant.

And one last thing
Only when the closing credits rolled did I notice how fantastic the score is.

Txts sent afterwards last night from Goth club on Lychee Coolers...

Found where I belonged tonight - in a nice cool cinema watching a completely uncool movie. Comparing PACIFIC RIM to Transformers is like comparing The Matrix to Universal Soldier

PACIFIC RIM man.. Can't remember last time I whooped watching a movie. Character stuff is cheesy but lots of "I can't believe I just saw that" moments. Waarrrg.

PACIFIC RIM makes Zack Snyders MAN OF STEEL look like an Ingmar Bergman film

Not unlike HELLBOY except that all the action scenes are 500x bigger

Pic above created using the fab Design your own Jeager app - presumably a British Jaeger would be dealing with Gorgo - the British Kaiju



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