Pacific Rim

For me, Pacific Rim was one of the most anticipated movies of the summer along with the comic book titles. There was just so much building it up. Director Guillermo Del Toro left The Hobbit to work on it, the trailers promised exciting visuals and Idris Elba’s speech had me ready to cancel the apocalypse. With the movie finally hitting theaters, I must admit that it did liv eup to the hype. A concept full of original elements while still paying tribute to past films in the monster genre, Pacific Rim is quite an experience.

The story takes place in a future where giant monsters, or Kaiju, travel through an inter-dimensional portal in the ocean and attack Earth’s cities. In response, the humans construct massive robots, jaegers, piloted by two people to fight back. As the program suffers defeats, a retired pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and a rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) take control of one of the jagers. The plot develops well with strong character development among the two leads. We don’t see too much of that for the other players, but we need that time for massive alien and robot fighting. When the battles do go down, it’s an accomplishment in CGI. The film which understandably deals heavily with digital elements never comes off as phony. If they can convince an audience that a robot yielding a ship as a sword is walking through a city, I’d say it’s a success.

The biggest issue with the film is the predictability of the major plot points. The opening sequence has all the tell-tale signs of an ensuing tragedy that sure enough does occur. From there, a handful of sequences play out as you would think they do. Even so, every scene contains high drama whether it’s from a face to face argument or a jager/kaiju battle. The cast runs solid through and through. A few scenes even show great acting skill. The young Mako flashback comes to mind.Pacific Rim is the type of the movie that will inspire audiences by what can be done with a concept. All of Del Toro’s monster and horror movies come together in one of the most epic movies ever made. You read that right. This movie is a massive spectacle.