Pacific Rim
I finally got around to seeing PACIFIC RIM, nine years after it came out.
Basically, I wanted to see giant robots punching kaiju, and the movie delivered! The battle scenes were interspersed with characters talking about their feelings. The most memorable character was Idris Elba, who played Marshal Stacker Pentecost, which has to be the coolest name for a character I’ve come across for a while.
Alas, the piloting interface for the giant robots looked like an expensive elliptical machine, which led to the characters shouting dramatic lines while pumping up and down on the ellipticals (I mean, piloting interfaces) which seemed vaguely ridiculous.
Marshal Stacker Pentecost is assisted by two Mad Scientists, who by doing Mad Science, realize that the kaiju are in fact genetically engineered bioweapons sent by an alien race, and so they conceive a desperate last-ditch plan to defeat the aliens and save mankind. (This is also the same basic plot of INDEPENDENCE DAY.)
The city of Hong Kong gets destroyed in the movie. Of course, Hong Kong gets blown up a lot in modern cinema, which is baffling until you realize that producers are desperately trying to get the movies past the censors of a Certain Large Unfriendly Government, and these censors are unlikely to respond favorably to any of their own cities getting blown up by space aliens.
Overall, I’d say PACIFIC RIM is about the same tier as KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (in which Hong Kong is also destroyed), a popcorn movie in which it’s best to turn off your brain for a few hours and watch giant monsters fight while the human characters cast horrified glances skyward or into the camera.
-JM
Honest Trailers for Pacific Rim: https://youtu.be/fupWquPNoTc
I think I need someone like the Honest Trailers guys to review my books. Would save a lot of embarrassment 😉