Pacific Rim Review

I pretty much knew before ever seeing this that I was going to like it. Then people started badmouthing it on the internet, and any doubt I had was absolutely erased. Guillermo del Toro, big robots, and big monsters? And people don't like it? That's a recipe for success that you can cook up for me any day of the week.

First things first, yes this movie is light on story and heavy on plot and action and special effects. Sorry, but which part of the trailers led the people who didn't like it to believe otherwise? This is yet again an example of people going into a movie with unfair and unrealistic expectations, totally prepared to hate it before they'd even seen it. As I mentioned before, there's not much of a point in doing a plot synopsis as you get pretty much everything you need from the trailers. Basically giant monsters named Kaiju from another dimension find a way to invade Earth, and the entire planet pools it's resources and builds giant robots known as Jaeger's to combat them. As time goes on, the Kaiju become larger and more frequent, and the people of Earth are forced to make decisions about the Jaeger program and whether or not a different approach is necessary.

That is all you need to know. In fact, it's all you should need to know if you're the kind of person who enjoys the movies I write about here in the Batcave. What you get from Pacific Rim is basically an anime only instead of traditionally animated everything, there are computer animated robots and monsters and real live people acting it out. The dialog even sounds like an English dubbed anime. I felt like it was intentional, maybe it wasn't, but to me for whatever reason is sounded like that was the entire point. Personally, I'm not a huge anime fan, but I have been known to get into one every now and again. Back in the late 90's/ early 2000's I got pretty into Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Pacific Rim almost immediately made me think of it. In fact, the plot is essentially the same. As long as you know that going into it, Pacific Rim will blow your mind. Let's say you aren't into anime at all though, in fact you hate it. If that's the case, all you need to do, is shut your brain off and watch the pretty robots and badass giant monsters beat the shit out of each other.

I ended up taking my kids with me to see this, and I can with all honesty say that I watched this the exact same way my 9 year old son did. Pacific Rim made me feel like I was 9 years old again. This kind of thing doesn't happen to me often, so I know when it does I'm watching something special. I can't speak for any ladies who may be reading this, but I can assure you that this movie is the exact kind of thing that was running through the heads of every little boy who ever picked up his Transformers and smashed them into his Inhumanoids out in the back yard. It took me back to my youth for two hours, and that's exactly what I wanted it to do.

Guillermo del Tor may have done more harm to his name as a producer than good as of late, attaching his name to a couple of "meh" ghost movies, but he's never steered me wrong as a director. Pacific Rim is a big time popcorn blockbuster of an action flick, and entertains from start to finish anyone going into it with the right mindset and expectations. When the credits finally rolled, after almost 3 hours in the theater, I was immediately ready to watch it again. I even sat in my car in the theater parking lot after the movie looking to pre-order the bluray on Amazon, I loved it that much. Sadly, it's not available as of yet, but rest assured I'll be guaranteeing my copy on day one as soon as possible.