Pacific Rim

Today, we are canceling the apocolpyse! We watched Pacific Rim at our local cheap theater. Greatest monster robot movie ever! I loved it! Loved loved loved it! It was a ridiculous popcorn monster vs robot fighting movie, good human characters, awesome monsters and a really fun and well told story overall.

So the Kaijus are the monster aliens trying to take over earth, and the Jaegers are the giant robots humans built to battle them. The Jaegers are machines that require two humans to work in sync through a mind meld type thing to work the giant machine. Below are my personal favorite highlights of the movie, some spoilers so do not read further if you want to see it surprised.

The War - So I really love how it's not half a movie on figuring out what the monster is and building a robot. The story is good because the movie is set it in the middle/end of the war between these Kaijus and humans. It tells the backstory of how they show up, how originally it was really tough to take them down, and then how humans had the upper hand in building the Jaeger robots, and how they start to lose the fight and the battle. Great back and forth. Both the humans and monsters evolve in their struggle and fight and war for the planet, so it makes it less one-sided and a more dynamic story.

The Director - Guillermo Del Torro. I love Pan's Labyrinth, I love this movie, and I think I'm going to become a fan of his work. It's hard for me to "love" movies. Most range from like to "eh", but this guy produces some really fantastic creatures and monsters, and he has a way with story telling and characters I like. I didn't love the Hellboy franchise, but I may give it another shot. Will have to add his other movies to my list of new things to try.

The sentimental stuff. The most emotional and touching scene, was one between a father and son before going into battle. It wasn't the girl/boy romance crap, it was something else that was highlighted. This father/son story resonated a very strong but different emotional note, and I love that. I absolutely love that. The girl/boy romance at the end, guess what, they didn't kiss. They're both hardened warriors who just finished doing battle, and they bump heads and sort of hold each other, and I found that more intimate and real and I love that they didn't kiss at the end - I LOVE IT! They never kiss! Also, there's obvious chemistry and the fact that they'll hook up or get together in the end, but the way he admits it to her is a very short and side scene before a battle he says "all those years I spent living in the past I never did think about the future.  Till now.  I never did have very good timing." I love that they don't waste precious movie time on a lame romance, but put it as part of the story, but within everything very appropriately. No kiss, just a fast intimate romance and focus on the battle and war is fantastic. Its so nice when there's not obvious irritating popular formula movies follow.

Different characters - They have a variety of different types and characters. They have peppered in comedy relief and goofy divergent characters. One is named Hannibal Chau. I love that the girl heroine Mako isn't proportionally a female asian model typical beauty feature. She's got curves, she looks different, she's not dainty and she fits in as a warrior. She's not emotionally fragile in the typical sense, and she's a good kind of different female character.

Also, the actor Idris Elba that plays the main general Stacker Pentecost is also the gatekeeper Heimdall from the Thor movie series who I loved. In the Thor movie - Heimdall is the all-seeing and all-hearing guardian sentry of Asgard who guards the rainbow bridge. Badass!

Monsters and the epic battles - Another part I love is the focus was all on the Kaijus monsters and the battles with the Jaegers. I love visual scale scenes and these huge giant monsters fighting robots just brings out a kid in me. It reminded me a bit of Voltron and Godzilla, but it was just so much cooler. There are some great scenes and images of the battle and fights. There's a Pacific Rim - "Destroy All Kaiju" Featurette on YouTube where Guillermo Del Torro talks about the monsters and says "the big money shot was the monster". I love when we see the monsters and when the villains are scary, epic or interesting. This makes the hero so much more grand and important when he defeats the villain. Honoring the villain honors the story and the sacrifice and the quality of the heroes in a story.

I also love how it feels very international. Sometimes you can't understand the Australian guys talking, and the accents are all different in the movie, so it feels more like a worldwide fight against monsters instead of an American only fight. More international, more UN type which appeals to me. Of course everyone speaks English, but with all different accents. Also the story seems to nod to Japanese and asian influences it seems, so I like that too. Just a different more international perspective in the movie.

Of course, there are the usual movie plot holes and possibly some story inconsistencies, but overall despite this my husband and I really enjoyed ourselves in watching this. The previews make it look like it will either be super interesting and epic, with the usual movie potential to be absolutely terrible and awful, but we were really happily surprised that it turned out so well and so fun to watch. I will definitely own this one when it comes out on DVD and enjoy the ridiculousness of battle, monsters, robots and all of it many more times.

Thank you Guillermo Del Torro and everyone who worked on this movie :) Very enjoyable!