First review in my life. Spoilers. Here we go... I think this film did a great job of bringing the giant robot genre to western cinemas. The designs of the Kaiju and Jaegers were amazing, and extremely well rendered. What I can praise above all is how intense I felt, watching this movie at the cinema. I really felt the action, desperation and elation when watching the battles (including Mako's flashback). They were utterly epic. However, I have two major problems with this film, and I hope to see them rectified in the sequel:
1) Show, don't tell. Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon died way too quickly. While I'm sure it was meant to show how dangerous the new Kaiju were, the effect was lessened by how we only see the two Jaegers fail. Stacker's descriptions of them and their records count for little when their fight in the movie might as well be played to Bulk and Skull's theme. It wasn't so much how they were dispatched, but how they couldn't show off their prowess before dying.
2) Artificially raising the stakes only works so many times. By artificial, I mean how both the Jaegers and Kaiju kept revealing new, game-breaking attacks that gave them the advantage (e.g. the EMP, wings and the sword). The movie kept shifting sharply between "Yeah, the good guys are winning!" and "Oh no, the bad guys are winning!". It wasn't the physics (I had no problem with a ship being used as a club. I knew it was ridiculous, but I didn't care because it was awesome), but how the weapons were used in the film. The Kaiju flying was what broke it for me. I (mentally) threw my hands up, said "Oh come on!" and spent the rest of the film not caring, just waiting for it to end. To be fair, I didn't have a problem with anything that happened after the battle in Hong Kong.
The rest of it was fine. The cliches and characters were acceptable. The soundtrack was great. I do look forward to the sequel. I enjoyed watching Pacific Rim at the cinema, I don't regret buying a ticket at all, but I won't be buying it on DVD.
After some thought, I've realised that the best praise I can give this movie is that I don't know how I could have done it better. Despite the problems I had with it, I can't easily think of improvements.
A sterling effort, but not flawless.
First review in my life. Spoilers. Here we go... I think this film did a great job of bringing the giant robot genre to western cinemas. The designs of the Kaiju and Jaegers were amazing, and extremely well rendered. What I can praise above all is how intense I felt, watching this movie at the cinema. I really felt the action, desperation and elation when watching the battles (including Mako's flashback). They were utterly epic. However, I have two major problems with this film, and I hope to see them rectified in the sequel:
1) Show, don't tell. Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon died way too quickly. While I'm sure it was meant to show how dangerous the new Kaiju were, the effect was lessened by how we only see the two Jaegers fail. Stacker's descriptions of them and their records count for little when their fight in the movie might as well be played to Bulk and Skull's theme. It wasn't so much how they were dispatched, but how they couldn't show off their prowess before dying.
2) Artificially raising the stakes only works so many times. By artificial, I mean how both the Jaegers and Kaiju kept revealing new, game-breaking attacks that gave them the advantage (e.g. the EMP, wings and the sword). The movie kept shifting sharply between "Yeah, the good guys are winning!" and "Oh no, the bad guys are winning!". It wasn't the physics (I had no problem with a ship being used as a club. I knew it was ridiculous, but I didn't care because it was awesome), but how the weapons were used in the film. The Kaiju flying was what broke it for me. I (mentally) threw my hands up, said "Oh come on!" and spent the rest of the film not caring, just waiting for it to end. To be fair, I didn't have a problem with anything that happened after the battle in Hong Kong.
The rest of it was fine. The cliches and characters were acceptable. The soundtrack was great. I do look forward to the sequel. I enjoyed watching Pacific Rim at the cinema, I don't regret buying a ticket at all, but I won't be buying it on DVD.
After some thought, I've realised that the best praise I can give this movie is that I don't know how I could have done it better. Despite the problems I had with it, I can't easily think of improvements.