Do you remember being a kid and playing with your toys with your brother or sister, or in my case, your cousins? Did you ever have a blast coming up with all sorts of scenarios for your toys to interact in and then pretend like it was a movie? Did you give the toys dialogue and make them do crazy badass shit you saw in other movies? Well I sure as hell did. I can remember tons of instances where I would bring some of my toys over to my cousin's house and we would sit there and create these "toy-movies". They were lengthy too, each one taking up at least an hour. I remember being a kid and wishing that in some way all these terribly made imaginative adventures we created for our toys could be real. Now why the hell am I telling you all this? -insert clever segue- Because Pacific Rim reminded me of all that!!
I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was full of action, the plot made sense, and the characters, while in some instances were a tad stock and cliche, fit in perfectly with the overall story. At no point was I sitting in my air-conditioned seat bored out of my mind, or wishing for something to come out and blow my mind. I found it to be highly entertaining. To delve in further, this is a film that does not need to be overly complicated. In fact, I can tell you what it's about in 5 words: Giant Robots versus Giant Monsters. That's it. No, really, THAT'S IT.
Now I don't mean to call the plot simplistic or unimportant in this case. I just want to express that in a film like this, the plot usually takes a back seat to the action. Though I suppose I should give at least a brief summation of it. So in the pacific ocean, there exists a portal to another dimension from which giant fish monsters (the Kaiju) come out and start terrorizing various cities. The countries of the world decide to unify and make Jaegers (Giant robots of awesomeness) to combat them. The problem is that the Jaegers need to be controlled by two people who have to have very good compatibility because the technology fuses their minds together in order for the Jaeger to work. So the film explains it as one person controlling one side of the Jaeger's brain. So the pilots need to work together efficiently to be a great pilot. The film actually details, briefly, the science behind the technology, which basically works like the Mobile Trace System from G Gundam in essence, but let's be honest here, science isn't the reason you should see this film.
What I appreciated about the movie though was the amount of care the director, Guillermo del Toro, placed in Pacific Rim. I could tell that with each scene, he thoroughly enjoyed working on the movie and it shows with every single fight scene. I could tell that he has so much respect for the Giant Monster movie genre and wanted to do it some actual justice. Make a Giant Monster movie the right way. You see, nowadays can you think of an action movie that does NOT take full advantage of CG and make every scene look unnaturally explosive? Well I sure as hell can't, but guess what? Although Pacific Rim uses plenty of CGI, it works in conjunction with the actors, well, acting. You see them in the Jaegers. You see them piloting it, and they sometimes look a little stupid, but that's ok. You know why? Because if you had to pilot a giant robot by wearing a bulky suit that kinda sorta makes you look like Sam Gideon from Vanquish (look it up and tell me I'm wrong), you would look a little stupid. But all that aside, each and every single fight hyped me up to such an extent I was practically screaming in the theater like a little kid. Watching these scenes made me feel like I was 9 years old and watching Dragonball Z again. I loved that feeling. Hell, in the middle of it, I was thinking about making a toy movie with my cousins again. A film that can make me feel all that means that it's definitely worth watching in the theaters at least once. Pacific Rim is a titular summer blockbuster movie and it is unfortunate that it won't get as much recognition and popularity as it deserves. So please watch this amazing movie and support the eventual home release. So yeah, if you'll excuse me, now I have to go hunt down some Pacific Rim toys and play the shit out of them!
