Movie Reviews 2.0
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It's an original property and not an adaptation, something quite unique nowadays.
It is however inspired by the entire mecha and giant mosnter genres, but in del Toro's unique style.
Well that was by far the coolest part of the movie.
Sigfried1977
Legend
Correct. it wasn't challenging and it reached pretty much everyone. My point was that it managed to do all of that without being insultingly stupid and/or condescending. That movie actually had a really clever script.
Anways, I've now seen Pacific Rim and I loved it. Sure, everyone was basically a walking cliche, and as long as you've seen at least a couple of summer movies in your life, you probably didn't have any problems predicting every single character arc the moment someone entered the frame and opened their mouths. Doesn't matter though because all of them were likeable (unless they weren't meant to be of course) and fleshed out enough to infuse the fights with a sense of actual peril. It actually felt like there was something at stake here. And damn, those fights were just so bloody awesome. Pacific Rim was basically the Anti-Transformers. It felt like a true passion project, and del Toro got everything right that Bay and his bean-counter-meets-army-fetish mentality got so spectacularly wrong. I even liked the 3d for a change.
That Pacific Rim loses out to something like Grown Ups2 at the box office is just fucking depressing. Heck, it would've been depressing for just about any movie, but a movie like Pacific Rim? That's just wrong.
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Babel-17
Veteran
Very nice, I'm only half way into it but I can safely say that the acting of the guy playing Minty is first rate. The effort that went into this is probably a story unto itself.
Cool imagery, but in actual fact not particularly useful as a weapon - the damned thing is hollow and would buckle under its own weight when out of water and picked up from one end. Even during the film I question why they used a couple of cargo containers to smash around the monsters head as, surely, just the Jaegers fists directly would have been denser and more damaging!
Cool imagery, but in actual fact not particularly useful as a weapon - the damned thing is hollow and would buckle under its own weight when out of water and picked up from one end. Even during the film I question why they used a couple of cargo containers to smash around the monsters head as, surely, just the Jaegers fists directly would have been denser and more damaging!
Nitpicking you are
I had same thoughts during some of action scenes. I also wondered why they used plasma canon only single time against most monsters (presumably needing long charging) and then fired it up dozen times to kill monster Level 5. But all this is just nitpicking ... I enjoyed this move quite a lot!
PS. From time to time I like to watch simple action movie like this one or Expandables. I think it is because while growing up I've watched a lot of Commando, Rambo, Rocky and so on. But still, my favourite gene is Si-Fi and I enjoy almost all movies from that bracket.
Thems fightin' words buddy.
Evangelion required not one but two extra movies be made because the ending of the series didn't make any sense. Given that the series creator was under going a stress related nervous breakdown it isn't too surprising this happened. They ran out of money to do anything particularly epic at the end thanks to the series not being plotted and thought through before they began so they blew most of the budget up front.That said, Evangelion is still a remarkable piece of work.
RahXephon on the other hand was complete piece of work. It knew where it was going from the begining, laid in consistant clues from the get go and was a better series, I'd argue, to watch even though it wasn't as landmark a series as Eva. I know I got to the end of RahXephon and was satisfied with how they closed it out - all the important questions had been resolved by series end. Saying RahXephon was being weird for weird's sake is doing the series a huge dis-service.
What I find really funny in all this is Guillermo himself confirms the primary source for the series is Tetsujin 28 or 'Gigantor', which predates Eva and is primarily just about giant robots defeating giant robots operated by criminals. The only allusion Pacific Rim might be considered to make to Eva is in the neural link - but Eva used this to make literal the symbology of returning to a womb like state being required to synchronise with the unit (and the series hints strongly that various mother's souls are what is inside the Eva units themselves - certainly Unit 01 was almost certainly Shinji's mother in there.). Pacific Rim however has an underlying theme of co-operation and unity being required to defeat the Kaijui. This is reinforced with the two pilots needing to make a team to make the Jaeger work, to the teams needing to be a multi-national effort to provide the numbers required. It is a very different plot theme.
Pacific Rim isn't really derived from Eva, it merely exists in the same genre of stories.
Anyway, I really enjoy Pacific Rim. I think the story is good enough. I expect something worse because everybody that didn't like it criticized the story, the acting, of both. What I found is that the story is within my expectation for this kind of movie. For me, the story is comparable to those Marvel movies (and MoS). I expect the star is the battle between Jaeger vs Kaijuu and I get that (+ Rinko Kikuchi
Yup, pretty much on the nail. Pacific Rim is just about fun fights with enough plot in there to string it all together into an entertaining story. It doesn't really have much more to it than that making it glorious popcorn fun.
Rurouni
Veteran
My feelings when watching RahXephon is that it could be made a lot more easier for the protagonist if everyone says the fact up front. It's massively annoying for me to watch that stuff. Basically if you give more knowledge to the protagonist then from my pov it would be easier for him to move forward. And from what I see, giving him the truth wouldn't negatively impacted his ability. When the truth came out, I was like why you don't tell him from the beginning.
Eva otoh can be watched purely as an action driven anime (at least until around episode 20), but RahXephon wasn't nearly as fun without the story. It was the mystery around the story that keeps me watching RahXephon as the fight itself wasn't as interesting as Eva.
Eva otoh can be watched purely as an action driven anime (at least until around episode 20), but RahXephon wasn't nearly as fun without the story. It was the mystery around the story that keeps me watching RahXephon as the fight itself wasn't as interesting as Eva.
The PR-EVA connections are far more superficial and mostly related to the imagery. The scene where Crimson Typhoon (chinese jaeger) is airlifted out of the base looks very much like some shots of Eva-00, for example, or when it's lifted in air and rotates its lower torso was something close to what an Angel did in the anime. There are a couple other shots that can be considered hommage to Eva; and probably many others that are related to japanese monster and mecha movies which I didn't catch as I haven't seen those movies.
100% agree.
Saw Man of Steel and I actually thought it was alright. Seems to be getting a lot of negativity. I thought it was pretty entertaining. Action was pretty well done, good cast. Light on story, but not in a terrible way. The only character I didn't really get was Kevin Costner. He was kind of an idiot.
Peripherally related to this thread: why so many recent movies are pretty much identical:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html
Ayato wasn't told about being Mulian because, to date, everyone who has the mu-phase has turned into a blue blooded enemy of humanity. Kunnugi literaly saw colleages he had served with change and engineer the confrontation with humanity that he felt so guilty about. It doesn't help that Bahbem was interferring from the get go with what the TERRA forces knew and understood about mulian intentions/technology. Basically no one has a reason to tell him the straight truth and whole bunch of reasons to keep quiet about it.
Gainax's style is more kinetic and frenetic for their fights. But they didn't really change for the run of the series. Shinji hears of a coming angel, his insecurity causes him to doubt about piloting the Eva unit, he whines a bit, gets forced into piloting and then usually wins at the last minute more by luck than skill. Asuka and Rei always were better fighters than him.
RahXephon's fights, towards the end of the series, are pushed to the background because by this point it has already been established Ayato is competent with RahXephon. The series focus is more about his manipulation as the various factions try to get him to choose their side in the coming tuning.
If you are only watching RahXephon for just the mecha fights, then you are doing it wrong. (Which is one of the reasons I tend to object to people calling RahXephon just an Eva clone. Both series have quite different story telling objectives.)
Anyhoo this is very off topic for Pacific Rim. I am very tempted to visit the local Imax and see it again just to see it on a really big screen...
I saw Pacific Rim over the weekend and actually rather enjoyed it, considering one of my friends set me thinking it was the worst movie ever made, gauging by his description of it. It was also my first Imax experience, and I have to say Imax is pretty impressive. Sadly, it was 3D and our seats were like the second row in, so it looked like one huge blur-fest. I'm really not a fan of 3D movies, in general. In fact, I detest them. I would have much rather watched this, or anything else I saw in 3D, in standard format.
All in all, Pacific Rim was a lot better than I was set up to believe it is. Aside from the mildly cheesy acting, it's chock full of neat visual fanfare. I wasn't expecting stellar performances, judging by the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it received generally favorable reviews, so my opinion was totally up in the air. Cliche love stories, the take-no-shit military general, and rebellious, skeptical wise-ass, pepper the movie with their utterly predictable roles.
Honestly, I came to see a goddamn robot twice the size of a skyscraper punching a monster in the snout in stunning fidelity.
I wasn't disappointed.
All in all, Pacific Rim was a lot better than I was set up to believe it is. Aside from the mildly cheesy acting, it's chock full of neat visual fanfare. I wasn't expecting stellar performances, judging by the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it received generally favorable reviews, so my opinion was totally up in the air. Cliche love stories, the take-no-shit military general, and rebellious, skeptical wise-ass, pepper the movie with their utterly predictable roles.
Honestly, I came to see a goddamn robot twice the size of a skyscraper punching a monster in the snout in stunning fidelity.
I wasn't disappointed.
Okay, what love story? Because Raleigh and Mako are friends and not lovers.
Understand that this is a movie primarily meant for 12-year olds. At that age you don't get love and kissing and such, but you already know that it's a big thing to be friends with the cool girl.
It's also kinda refreshing to see a movie where the leads are not put together just because.
Understand that this is a movie primarily meant for 12-year olds. At that age you don't get love and kissing and such, but you already know that it's a big thing to be friends with the cool girl.
It's also kinda refreshing to see a movie where the leads are not put together just because.
The handling of character emotional archetypes is pretty clumsy, but the relationship between Raleigh and Mako hits a few perfunctory checkboxes that evoke the idea of some kind of more than friends dynamic like a crush or some kind of emotional intimacy.
There's the perfunctory "girl sees buff dude nearly naked", "girl spies boy from a hiding place/behind a door", "girl thinks boy is knocking, gets really excited, is disappointed", "physical altercation as possible sublimated attraction", "boy stands up for girl's honor", and a few other dramatic moments.
The general lack of weight the movie places on the interpersonal relationships is such that the movie doesn't seem concerned whether there's more to their friendship or not, as it doesn't answer the question of how to properly punch large monsters in the face.
The movie sort of started to build something, then didn't do much to say either way.
I wouldn't mind if they were just really good friends that punched monsters in the face very well.
The irony, or ambiguity, to the situation is that love or not, the two pilots are more intimately tied to one another than any steamy romp could provide. I feel the movie could have done more to show the uniqueness of that kind of situation or the link in general.
Some things were sort of set up for the link that fell by the wayside, like how in the first fight damage to the Jaeger inflicted serious physical pain. That didn't carry over too much.
There's a brief touch on the typical father-son "what did you wish you could have said" situation where the Australian Jaeger pilots have an assumed knowledge of everything they didn't feel like saying. At a later juncture the father has a brief bit of dialogue when he's forced to face the enormity of their lethal profession, and despite having the finest technology in the world to be sure his son knows said everything he wanted to say, he's fearful it wasn't enough.
I found the idea of having the convenience of shared thought to express feelings, but fearing that in the end you can't be sure you've earned it rather poignant, although unless you buy into the concept and fill in many of the blanks yourself, the movie doesn't put much into it.
An exploration of the other Jaegers and their pilots would have been nice, if they allowed for more running time. As highly charicatured as they were, the movie's perfunctory treatment of them in how telling how accomplished they were off-screen versus what they were shown doing on-screen was a bit lopsided.
I'm also not sure if it would have been cooler if Idris Elba played a character named Idris Elba, because that might be as anime a name as Stacker Pentacost.
There's the perfunctory "girl sees buff dude nearly naked", "girl spies boy from a hiding place/behind a door", "girl thinks boy is knocking, gets really excited, is disappointed", "physical altercation as possible sublimated attraction", "boy stands up for girl's honor", and a few other dramatic moments.
The general lack of weight the movie places on the interpersonal relationships is such that the movie doesn't seem concerned whether there's more to their friendship or not, as it doesn't answer the question of how to properly punch large monsters in the face.
The movie sort of started to build something, then didn't do much to say either way.
I wouldn't mind if they were just really good friends that punched monsters in the face very well.
The irony, or ambiguity, to the situation is that love or not, the two pilots are more intimately tied to one another than any steamy romp could provide. I feel the movie could have done more to show the uniqueness of that kind of situation or the link in general.
Some things were sort of set up for the link that fell by the wayside, like how in the first fight damage to the Jaeger inflicted serious physical pain. That didn't carry over too much.
There's a brief touch on the typical father-son "what did you wish you could have said" situation where the Australian Jaeger pilots have an assumed knowledge of everything they didn't feel like saying. At a later juncture the father has a brief bit of dialogue when he's forced to face the enormity of their lethal profession, and despite having the finest technology in the world to be sure his son knows said everything he wanted to say, he's fearful it wasn't enough.
I found the idea of having the convenience of shared thought to express feelings, but fearing that in the end you can't be sure you've earned it rather poignant, although unless you buy into the concept and fill in many of the blanks yourself, the movie doesn't put much into it.
An exploration of the other Jaegers and their pilots would have been nice, if they allowed for more running time. As highly charicatured as they were, the movie's perfunctory treatment of them in how telling how accomplished they were off-screen versus what they were shown doing on-screen was a bit lopsided.
I'm also not sure if it would have been cooler if Idris Elba played a character named Idris Elba, because that might be as anime a name as Stacker Pentacost.
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I agree with most of your observations, however you have failed to mention that there was no kissing scene at all
In fact the first draft of the script even had a love scene and the prequel comic also discusses pilots falling in love because of the neural connection and memory sharing. These issues were removed from the movie, most likely intentionally, in order to simplify the relationships for 12-year olds.
In some ways it's a bad thing as there are signs of a larger universe that the creators have developed, and the concepts and ideas seem to be worth exploring. But GDT apparently decided to keep the movie simple and focused on the action and I'm not sure if he was wrong.
In fact the first draft of the script even had a love scene and the prequel comic also discusses pilots falling in love because of the neural connection and memory sharing. These issues were removed from the movie, most likely intentionally, in order to simplify the relationships for 12-year olds.
In some ways it's a bad thing as there are signs of a larger universe that the creators have developed, and the concepts and ideas seem to be worth exploring. But GDT apparently decided to keep the movie simple and focused on the action and I'm not sure if he was wrong.
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