Pacific Rim (or: This movie makes no sense and I don't care)

Go see Pacific Rim. Seriously. As your Lawyer, I advise you to go to the cinema, buy yourself a ticket and see Pacific Rim. Nothing else at the cinema will offer you as much fun as this film will in the two hours you spend watching it. Just... Just leave your brains at the door, k?


I don't mean that as a bad thing.  I don't know.  Maybe I do.  I feel like I would dislike this movie, if it wasn't so great.  I mean, it breaks so many rules of screenwriting, has such fundamental plotholes.

But who cares?  Guillermo Del Toro basically decided to make a grand scale Power Rangers episode and by god, it is glorious.

Now, let's deal with some of the problems first.  Exposition is a big one.  Del Toro clearly wants to tell a climactic story (and for obvious reasons, you don't want to put all your eggs into a basket in the hopes that you'll become a franchise) so we have to get to the end of the man-Kaiju war quickly.

This does have the awkward sideeffect of making the first ten minutes of this movie exposition, then a fight scene, then another ten minutes of exposition.

Not to mention you have plot points introduced and then forgotten (how exactly did Mako get over her traumatic memories again?)  You'll spend roughly half the fight scenes thinking, hey couldn't you have used that like five minutes ago?  The sword is a particularly egregious example of this, especially when you see it bisect a Kaiju in one stroke.

So why don't I care?

Because this movie is awesome.  This is hollywood at it's best.  It is grade-a blockbuster crack.  Every cast member is giving their all here, Idris Elba in particular is incredible, even getting his own Bill Paxton independence day moment with his "we are cancelling the apocalypse!"  Hell yeah!  I felt like cheering in the theatre at that moment.

Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi are fantastic as well, Charlie as the cynical ex pilot dragged back in and Rinko as his professional but naive partner.  For a movie that bases it's concept around human connection, these two make perfect protagonists.

Of course, the special effects are incredible.  Both Kaiju and Jaeger look completely believable in motion.  The Jaeger's especially really capture a sense of size and power.  These look like things you could actually believe you would see walking around (presumably seconds before a building fell on you)

So yes, this movie is dumb.  But it's also fantastic.  Considering the proliferation of dumb and the relative lack of fantastic, I'm pretty willing to take the good with the bad.

Posted in: Eva, Evangelion, Godzilla, Jaeger, Kaiju, Monster, Movie, Movie Review, Pacific, Pacific Rim, Review, Rim