Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorite directors. Blade II, Hellboy, Hellboy II, and Pan’s Labyrinth are four of my favorite movies of all time. They all crack the top 100 list and Pan’s Labyrinth is no doubt in my top 10 for what I consider to be the best movies of all time. Now, I am not a critic with a degree in theatre and cinema or anything along those lines, but I love movies and I have a huge imagination. Everyone is free to enjoy a movie and Guillermo del Toro has provided me with many movies that I enjoy a lot! Pacific Rim might not make it higher on the list then the four movies already mentioned but it was enjoyable. Let’s talk about what made the movie only enjoyable, what could have made it better, and where it faltered.
The movie was simply too long. Alana and I agreed that it could have achieved the same effect without a few scenes that seemed to add nothing to very little to the movie’s overall feeling. Cut out some of those scenes and the movie would have moved a bit quicker, keeping you engaged. The movie had some character and plot development, but nowhere near as much as some of his other work so I banked on huge fight scenes to make up for that. Unfortunately, there was a lot less robots vs. monsters (jaeger vs kaiju) than I anticipated. I should have known better because Blade and the two Hellboys also had some serious downtime. It just seemed as if the fight scenes in those movies were longer. You might be disappointed by some of the fights because they simply end too quickly, before we get to see what the jaegers or kaiju are truly capable of in combat. On top of that, many of the kaiju are just too similar. One of the monsters had a bunch of abilities, but the other four or five were all the same. That was a bummer.
The movie did have some powerful scenes, mainly involving human lives being taken. They were my favorite scenes because I would not expect a movie like this to have the effect on me so I appreciate what del Toro did there. He did a very good job taking what would seem like a rock-em sock-em Godzilla vs Ultraman and turn it into something with plot twists and complications that kept you on your toes. Many events and outcomes were predictable but I didn’t see everything coming. The actors all did a fair enough job, the special effects were exciting and well done, the editing and cutting were clean enough to make large-scale fights easy to follow. A lot of things were done properly.
I could see room for a potential sequel that takes a completely different path and continues to highlight the world’s reaction to and actions taken in order to deal with the disaster. We appreciated the anti-government, pro-freedom, anti-greed, pro-environmental stances that were taken, no matter how subtle. It’s refreshing but now not uncommon to see directors and writers go in that direction. The movie definitely was not too gory for young audiences despite some mature themes and large-scale deaths.
All in all, it was an enjoyable del Toro movie that might not have taken this genre out of the realm of its specific fan base, but it was successful in captivating multiple audiences and developing some advanced themes. We were in our seats a bit longer than we wanted to as the movie dragged on at times but it still gets a hungry thumbs up! (Fellow Gundam fans, don’t expect this to be anything like the series we all love. The jaegers were nowhere near “badass” enough to achieve Gundam status)
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