Pacific Rim

[thalaw2]

Movies with giant robots or super heros are dominating the box office. 

[BentonGrey]

Yay!  I just saw this, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The guys and I had a great time, and I thought the movie was a ton of fun.  It's occasionally a little goofy, very corny, and yet totally awesome.  I really enjoyed that they mostly let me watch the action, instead of throwing nothing but shakey-cam and knees and elbows at me.  The only thing that could have made it better would be more giant robot fighting.  

[lugaru]

Saw it on the big screen... delivered all the big dumb robot wrestling I wanted, but it was pretty clever beyond that. A couple of the sci-fi concepts where straight up silly but mostly they where really clever and allowed for some really great on screen moments to occur. Also it was funny, fun and the chemistry between all the leads was believable.

[oldmanwinters]

Still trying to figure out whether I want to pay full ticket price to see this on IMAX on to wait it out and pay $3 when it hits the cheap-seat theaters.

[steamteck]

Gets a thumbs up form me. Just saw with the wife and number one son. My eldest daughter had already seen it and loved it. Delivered what it promised and our theater was packed but it was only one screen and 3 showings. a pity is not doing very well with the GA elsewhere.

[BentonGrey]

Yeah, I'm not getting the impression that it's doing super well.  There were like, no showings here. 

[lugaru]

Still trying to figure out whether I want to pay full ticket price to see this on IMAX on to wait it out and pay $3 when it hits the cheap-seat theaters.

Saw it on IMAX by accident (missed the cheaper screening I wanted to see) and it looks/sounds great in that format... so no regrets.

[hoss20]

It's definitely on my "to see" list this summer. For me, seeing the previews was kind of like seeing the ones for Transformers. I could care less if the story isn't Oscar caliber, I just want to see some freakin' transforming robots fighting. In this case, there's giant robots and giant monsters. I'm glad to hear that the movie was enjoyable for all of you that have commented. I can't imagine having Guillermo del Toro directing it was a bad move, either.

[oldmanwinters]

Still trying to figure out whether I want to pay full ticket price to see this on IMAX on to wait it out and pay $3 when it hits the cheap-seat theaters.

Saw it on IMAX by accident (missed the cheaper screening I wanted to see) and it looks/sounds great in that format... so no regrets.

Yeah, I'm so tempted to pay full price, since I expect this movie is almost entirely about visual spectacle.

IMAX ticket prices can be quite expensive where I live, but maybe I can try to swing by on a discount day.

Yeah, I'm not getting the impression that it's doing super well.  There were like, no showings here.

Much like Burger King learned years ago, the 18-34 male demographic can only get you so far.   

[steamteck]

[
Much like Burger King learned years ago, the 18-34 male demographic can only get you so far.   

hmm , no one in my family who went was in that demographic. me ( male 55) wife ( female 54) Son ( closest male 16) daughter ( female 23) to bad for them we're not typical, but  then we're a committed geek family.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

According to the Wikipedia information, it's doing quite well and is doing the best of any of that director's films.  It's faced some unexpectedly stiff competition from Grow Ups 2, but is still making plenty of dough, so no worries.

[lugaru]

Spoiler free review, going up on my site soon.

Secret agents, wars in space, superheroes, apocalyptic scenarios, races against the clock and scary monsters. Regardless of the year, you can count on nearly every summer movie following these tried and true templates to draw in a crowd seeking air conditioned asylum. Honestly as a geek I love this time of year, I get to watch the big budget cliffnotes to my favorite comic books, games and movies. The problem is that the season of big movies is not the season of big ideas, and I find myself knowing the plots of all these films before they come out. Like I said, I own the comic, I've read the novel, I've played the game.

That is why it makes me happy when somebody puts together an original summer movie, which may still be indebted to all pop culture that came before it, but the actual characters and story remain unknown until I sit down to watch it. This is the case with Pacific Rim, it's dino-DNA goes as far back as Godzilla and it lifts heavily from giant robot genre masterpieces like Neon Genesis Evangelion but it still managed to surprise me. It may help that the whole project is overseen by Guillermo del Toro, who seems to be always overflowing with enthusiasm and creativity, even when taking on well known characters like Blade. His love for creepy and crazy monster designs seen in Pans Labyrinth and Hellboy 2 gets showcased in the form of Kaiju, towering monsters from another dimension that are headed for our major cities. Standing in their way are the Jager,  massive rock-em sock-em robots that wrestle the reptiles to a standstill before finishing them off.  These Jager are piloted by teams of 2 people in psychic sync, so when Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) loses his brother and co-pilot in a fight, he experiences the whole traumatic event inside his head as well.

This causes him to flee the program, and all the remaining pilots start to die off two at a time, as the Kaiju get bigger and more aggressive every year. This leads the director of the Jager program (Idris Elba) to track down Raleigh for one last push against the Kaiju. Needing a new partner, he is eventually paired with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) so they can pilot his newly rebuilt Jager. Probably at least one of the people mentioned so far has you yelling "Oh, I love that actor" and that is the thought process behind the casting, it would seem.  Besides Idris who played everyone's favorite "district manager" on The Wire, you have Charlie Day of Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame, Burn Gorman from Torchwood and the inimitable Ron Perlman as a black market Kaiju organ dealer.

While all the roles are written as fairly standard archetypes, the group of actors have great chemistry together so even the most eccentric performances fit in and are highly enjoyable. Another highlight is just how much thought went into the movies mythology and setting. Any one of the sci-fi concepts this story introduces are laughable but cumullatively they flesh out a world full of crazy solutions for crazy problems. And honestly have a lot more to write about this film, but then my review would become large enough to threaten coastal cities. Instead I will end it by repeating the absolute core of what I liked about this movie, it was both familiar and surprising. This might sound like a low bar to clear, but I welcome those small pleasures in another summer of sequels and reboots.

http://www.theconnoisseurs.com/index.php/be-merry/cinema/983-pacific-rim

[bat1987]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/23/pacific-rim-reaches-number-one-internationally

Yes! I really want this film to succeed, Del Toro is a very pationate, great director and the movie is a blast! If grown ups 2 can make money, PR deserves it.