Watched: Pacific Rim
Observations:
- God, this was fun. Beautifully-designed, larger-than-life characters, and dialogue ripped straight from B-movies (cancelling the apocalypse is the tip of the iceberg). It’s incredibly stupid, but I loved this.
- That said, Guillermo del Toro’s doing some interesting stuff here. It’s brave to have a central male-female action relationship end in cementing a friendship, rather than shoehorning in a romance, and things like family and respect seem more front-and-centre here. Some things, you don’t realise how rare they are until they crop up in blockbuster nonsense.
- The names were fantastic. Stacker Pentecost? Raleigh Beckett? And Doctors Newton and Gottlieb? There’s a madcap flair that runs throughout this - it has heart, but it never takes itself too seriously.
- It’s very well-acted (for what it is) - Idris Elba is really solid, as is Charlie Hunham, but the scenery-chewing triumvirate of Ron Perlman, Charlie Day and Burn Gorman feel more in line with the neon skylines than any of the protagonists.
- Every scene in Hong Kong was fantastic.
- Also, this film seems to have learned from Transformers that simply having big robots isn’t enough. There are some pretty impressive tricks up this film’s sleeves.
- Watch this. It won’t get you thinking, but it’s surprisingly refreshing, and doesn’t feel anything like its length.
