Review of Pacific Rim (2013) by Sin S — 19 Sep 2017

Pacific Rim glorifies and celebrates giant robot and Kaiju movies of old. If you watched the trailer and thought to yourself "wow that was cool" then you wont me disappointed. But If you think the idea of fighting monsters with mechs sounds dumb then stay far away.

What you see is what you get which might be the movies biggest weakness. The premise is so out there that it might be to hard for someone new to the genre to jump in and enjoy. The visual effects are vibrant and details which makes for an amazing watching experience.

The Kaiju and jaegers move with much weight behind them you really get a feeling that they are there. Comparing how the jaegers move in this compared to a movie like transformers the difference is night and day.

In transformers the robots move so quickly and with such gusto along with the cameras movement/position that it makes it hard to fallow the action or even give an appreciation to what the animators had to do.

In this movie on the other hand we are given plenty of time to see the jaegers pull back a punch and see all the fine detail of the hydraulics working as the drops of rain hit the on the chest plate. While del Toro and the rest of the team did an amazing job at how it looks parts of the story fall short.

Many characters call across as just down right dumb. Some characters go against conman sense and even when being told that something would not work try to go and do it anyway. Their are a few plot holes as well but nothing that takes away from my enjoyment of this film.

This is a great movie and in my top 100 films list for sure. If you are a fan of Kaiju movies like Godzilla or giant robot shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion then you are sure to love this film. SPOILERS: Now for those plot holes.

If you can only pass though the rift if the rift thinks the dna is a Kaiju then why are they able to pass though in the escape pods? There is a reveal of a sword that the main robot had on hand to use.

The sword is shown to cut a Kaiju in half not once but twice thoughout the movie. Why does he not always use this if its so good? Why use your fists at all if you have these swords? And on that point why do you use the plasma cannons so infrequently? They don't mention that it uses power or anything or that it has a finite number of shots.

But even if it does have a finite number of shots why not just use the sword which again is a sword and doesn't need ammo? Some of this stuff might be just for reveals, suspense, or because of the movies passing but they still should be brought up.