Pacific Rim Review

By Brian @ Hard Ticket to Home Video

BRIAN: So things I liked about this picture:

1) The battle in Hong Kong. Definitely the best action sequence of the movie. The rest of the fights were a little underwhelming, especially the one underwater. This one is still pretty good despite the fact that the crew of Gipsy Danger almost forgot they had two built-in swords.

2) Idris Elba, although his character really doesn’t do much for a leader, and Charlie Day, but I think if someone else was playing his character I would have disliked him.

3) Some cool-looking sets, the ones that weren’t 100% CG.

Paris

Paris

4) I like the news footage of the kaiju destruction. There should have been more of it.

5) Mako’s flashback scene. Really the only time you felt a human was in danger the entire movie.

That’s about it. Literally everything else could have been done better. I had hope for this movie because I love monster and mass-destruction movies, but the lame elements of this really tarnished it. And I love Cloverfield, which a lot of people write off, but in that movie it mattered to the characters that things were being destroyed. There was barely any human element in Pacific Rim at all. If I was 15 I wouldn’t have cared about that, but oddly enough it seems that I do now.

Score: 6 nosebleeds that foreshadow something but never really go anywhere (out of 10)

BRAD: Pacific Rim entertained my inner 12-year-old but sadly bored the adult that I am. I think if they toned down the whole drifting plot or better yet made it more interesting it would be a better movie. I like the idea of the two pilots mind-melding but Raleigh and Mako had one bad experience and then voila! It’s all fixed now in the next scene. The prep rally speeches were lame; “We’re canceling the Apocalypse!” And the countdown clocks made zero sense (how exactly were they able to determine a time the kaiju were going to attack? And if so, how did they not capitalize on this feat?). The fights were OK but hard to see or really enjoy. (BRIAN: Does anyone reading this remember if the clock was a countdown to the next attack or a time since last attack? We honestly don’t remember. Shows how much sense it made.)

Things I liked:
1) The design of the jaegers. Though not groundbreaking they looked awesome and the CG movement was good. Although them having such a vast array of weapons was a tad much. A retractable sword? But you can’t figure out how to detonate a bomb in a hole in the ocean floor?

2) Charlie Day was the perfect comic relief for this sort of picture. But the English guy from The Dark Knight Rises was groan-inducing.

3) Idris Elba is always great and even though his dialogue was written poorly he still did a better job than say Stephen Lang in Avatar.

"You know, Avon, you gotta think about what we got in this game for, man. Huh? Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some fucking ghetto streetcorner, man? Naw, man. There's games beyond the fucking game. "

“You know, Avon, you gotta think about what we got in this game for, man. Huh? Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some fucking ghetto street corner, man? Naw, man. There’s games beyond the fucking game. “

Score: 5 worthless anti-kaiju walls (out of 10)

Pages: 1 2

28 thoughts on “Pacific Rim Review”

  1. FAX MACHINES????????? Who the BOOP uses fax machines NOW much less in the future????

    Hi Brian, let’s do another movie treatment, please fax me your next section. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BLOOORRRRRRRP BLEEEEEEP

    Like

  2. I believe the countdown clock was the time since the last attack occurred, but don’t quote me.

    This was a hilarious read and while I didn’t have that many nice things to say about this film in my review either (thanks for the pie compliment, Brian lol) I really have to bite my tongue now and say the movie was a whole mess of fun. I’m glad you and Brad took as much issue with the lack of humanity in this script as I did, because I thought there was room in here for it to have a little more realism on the part of the characters and such. I actually thought the whole “cancel the apocalypse” part was quite good, laughable maybe (if on the right combination of drugs) and I might go see this again if I got really, really stoned. The awe factor here was off the charts. del Toro can take that as a compliment or as a stab at the cheese-factor here

    Like

    • That’s what I thought, because they couldn’t predict exactly when the next attack would occur, right?

      The special effects were good, but really that’s just standard these days. They were any more impressive than say Transformers or The Avengers. I think we’ve reached a point where special effects are so good they don’t have the ability to wow anymore.

      Like

  4. Fuck yea. I’m glad there are other people out there that dislike this movie as much as me. I have no idea what that countdown clock was about. They showed it for 2 seconds and then started the hand waving and congratulatory butt pats.

    And Brad is correct, the fights sucked. Bucket Head totally deserved to get raped, though. I mean, it’s a giant robot with a bucket on its head.

    Like

  9. Pingback: Godzilla (2014) Review | Hard Ticket to Home Video

  10. You both make valid points. But I still kind of had fun with this one. Even though, you know, the script sucked ass. Still think I liked it about the same as Godzilla, though. I just looked & I gave Pacific Rim a 7.5. I think I always rate too highly. Take at least one away from all my ratings! ; )

    Like

Got something to say?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s