Review: Pacific Rim

When I first saw the trailer, my initial thoughts were "Oh dear, it's another stupid Transformers-esque dumb summer film". But when I saw that Guillermo Del Toro would be directed it, I began having second thoughts because Del Toro has made good monster movies in the past such as Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth. So I thought I would give it a go.

I'm sort of glad I did, mainly because the most common occurrence throughout the film was the NOISE. It wasn't loud, it was LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDD!!!! Just when I thought Michael Bay made it to the limit of noise for his Transformers series, I think Del Toro just made Bay s*** his pants in embarrassment. Not only did he make it louder and more over the top, he gave it depth and most importantly, fun. Never has the noise of metal on monster been so good.

The performances were not anything special. A few of the minor characters for me stole the show, such as Ron Pearlman whose presence in Del Toro seems to become a common theme, and he seems to always bring his A-game in his features. There was a nice surprise of seeing Burn Gorman as I'm a big fan of the sci-fi TV series Torchwood. I will talk a lot about the story though, which I think made it fun to watch. The skill of working these skyscraper high robots was a nice added element to the film. It gave you a great chance to know a lot about these characters that work these robots which made you care for them throughout.

The biggest positive to come out from this film was obviously the visual effects. Del Toro knows how to do detail after what I saw in the two Hellboy films, and was successful in this one. The imagination in the monsters was very well done and gives a lot of references to the Japanese monsters that Del Toro has inspired a lot of his films.

I have mentioned this before, but another positive was the fun element. There was hints of Starship Troopers, and the fight scenes just reminded me of every ending to a Power Rangers episode from my childhood.

The whole thing is over-the-top, clichéd and simply a big dumb summer blockbuster. But unlike some of the recent summer films, there is a fun element. There is a lot of scenes of big robots just beating the crap out of huge monsters, but Del Toro manages to make every fight more enjoyable then the next. Michael Bay needs to take note, because this is what Transformers should have been.

Oh, and this one has a post credits scene which is very funny.

Rating: 7/10