Pacific Rim

Giant robots. Yikes, is that hackneyed, and it only took one film franchise to do it. Aliens? Who really cares, right? We get a ton of aliens every year. Really, this film should have been completely unremarkable. And in fact, the box office results in America seem to think the same thing, doing mildly well but certainly not as well as it hoped to do.

And yet I have to admit, even from the trailers I had a deep suspicion I was going to walk out loving this movie. Maybe it was the giant robots being more closely related to Japanese Mecha than Transformers, maybe it was the scale of everything in the movie, maybe it was Guillermo Del Toro. Something about it fascinated me, and I was one of only a handful of people I knew who were really excited for this movie.

The biggest success for me in this film, something that I had never experienced before - the perfect mindset of being a soldier. Plot points were brought up where, in any other film, I would question the accuracy or the validity of the plot point. But in this film, I didn't. I felt like a soldier. It didn't matter why certain things were, the fact is it was, and the heroes had to find a way around it. That being said, looking back and thinking about those issues, the only one I found fault with was quickly remedied by a second viewing. And it worked well enough that it no longer bothered me. But to have a film so successfully put me into the mindset of a soldier that I forget to analyze plots the way I do has to be a success in some form.

It almost doesn't need to be said, but the effects of this movie are nothing short of phenomenal. It has a sort of Ridley Scott sci-fi look to it, maybe that being said coming off of Prometheus, but a bit more of a cartoony look that's easy on the eyes. But more importantly, it was bright, colorful, and fun to watch, with lots of details catching your eyes from every angle. In essence, this is what I wanted Man of Steel to look like - bright, colorful, fun, huge action but all within a certain size that we as an audience could visibly grasp as serious destruction. It just works. Unlike the abomination that is Man of Steel. (...terrible...)

Characters in this are not anything too special, but from the soldier mindset I was placed in, I connected with them simply as soldiers. This was a really strange experience. It left me feeling almost annoyed at learning too much about characters, a bit fearful of uncovering something I didn't want to know, almost a fear of not wanting to grow attached to them. And from what I saw and wanted to know, I really did love the characters of this film. It was such a strange experience to describe, it's actually giving me some trouble as a critic to put into words.

But all in all, this film is doing mildly well. If you have some money to throw around for a movie ticket, though, know that this film comes at my highest recommendation.

Rank - 4.5/5