Pacific Rim - Part 4

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Marvin said:
I personally only like Elba when he plays american(ala the Wire), never been a fan of any of his other stuff. Though Prometheus was some of his more fun work.
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Check out his BBC show Luther, he actually sounds better in his native accent imo.
 
His American accent in Prometheus was a hot mess but he was still charming in that film.
 
Or they thought Man of Steel deserved a 9/10? I know I don't give movies 9/10 because I like a genre. Personally I don't care what IGN gives any film because I think they have lousy reviewers for the most part.
 
Bruce Malone said:
A 7.5 is probably more like a 5 in non-fanboy terms. IGN gave Man of Steel a 9/10 and are usually pretty generous to the fan-boy/comic type films, unsurprisingly i guess?
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Pretty sure the IGN review wasn't written by a fanboy fangirl.
 
I SEE SPIDEY said:
Or they thought Man of Steel deserved a 9/10? I know I don't give movies 9/10 because I like a genre. Personally I don't care what IGN gives any film because I think they have lousy reviewers for the most part.
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No I mean what i said in that their reviews of the sci-fi, superhero genre etc. tend to be more forgiving than most other reviewers.

Probably one of the only places i've seen give After Earth a decent review same for the last GI Joe movie.

I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing i'm sure they know their audience. However i do take their reviews with a gran of salt.
 
Bruce Malone said:
No I mean what i said in that their reviews of the sci-fi, superhero genre etc. tend to be more forgiving than most other reviewers.

Probably one of the only places i've seen give After Earth a decent review same for the last GI Joe movie.

I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing i'm sure they know their audience. However i do take their reviews with a gran of salt.
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You should take them with a grain of salt, I agree. I take the vast majority of critics with a grain of salt.

Looks like so far this movie is getting the mostly positive reviews I thought it would. Which isn't a bad thing.
 
Good to know that Pacific Rim is getting positive reviews, I am looking forward to this one.
 
redhawk23 said:
Considering the amount of detail he goes into describing various elements of the film I doubt it.

I'm not a huge fan of Faraci as a journalist or a site runner but I've read enough of his reviews to understand his tastes.

He is a big fan of certain kind of tone and particularly of positive focused stories centered around and driven by distinct characters. His taste for optimism in stories is almost to a fault at times and he can be a little too forgiving for schmaltz and the like (See his Cloud Atlas coverage).

I have found his judgement to be a pretty good gauge for action scenes and if he says such scenes are coherent, effective or memorable I usually find myself agreeing.

Given his tastes as a general metric, if the film was a disappointment, he'd be tearing into it. There's little Faraci likes more than tearing into a film he doesn't like and then somehow trying to hang it with some sort of unheeded political baggage to further bring it down.
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Faraci is friends with Del Toro. In fact Del Toro is close with a lot of these Internet movie bloggers so there positive reviews were a given. Faraci got a private screening and a one on one interview with Del Toro weeks before the movie opened. He walked in with his mind already made up like he usually does.
 
"I had non idea what these guys were talking about. I thought it wasnt so bad."

*smile*

Charlie Hunnam, I love that guy.
 
Faraci is the last person that I listen to before deciding on watching a movie. Whether he likes a movies or not is irrelevant.
 
BrollySupersj said:
"I had non idea what these guys were talking about. I thought it wasnt so bad."

*smile*

Charlie Hunnam, I love that guy.
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Me too. I've seen some reviews saying he's the weak link and kind of a mediocre actor. I love him on SOA, so I don't know... He has a unique presence.
 
I think he's excellent in SOA and same goes for what we've seen so far with Pacific Rim. He's a good actor.
 
JeremyJahns Awesometacular'd it.

Looks like we may be in for a treat.
 
Randal Graves said:
Me too. I've seen some reviews saying he's the weak link and kind of a mediocre actor. I love him on SOA, so I don't know... He has a unique presence.
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He's spectacular on Sons Of Anarchy, just like he was on Green Street Hooligans, just like he is on Deadfall, he is a great actor.

The weak link complaint is not something I'm surprised of, seeing as, even if the script is really solid, it does use a few clichés here and there, and his character is kind of a typical hero with a journey, the drift is the aspect that makes it different and fresh, but not surprised that some are finding the blond, muscular lead, bland.

It's like you see this complaint on many Hollywood tentpole movies, there was the same complaint from some people with Avatar, John Carter, so business as usual here.

I'm sure Charlie's gonna be really fine, but it's obvious that he's gonna shine way more on SOA where he has the time to dvp a character and IMO, TV shows are where you really see what an actor is capable of.

But that's also why an actor that's bland to someone is gonna be another person's charismatic type, and I think Charlie has that in spades.
 
Plus, let's not forget that Guillermo already cast him a few months back as a lead on Crimson Peak, and Warner Bros/Legendary were reportedly pretty high on Hunnam, and that led to the rumor that an artist is using his likeness as the Flash, for the movie Justice League. I like to think that directors know better than the critics or everyone else for this matter what their actors are capable of, therefore, they're not just gonna hire ****** actors of course.
 
Saw this film earlier tonight for free in 3D. I'll leave my thoughts here and attempt to be as spoiler free as possible.

I've been anticipating this film for a long time. I am a big fan of several of Guillermo del Toro's films in the past, plus like many here on the web, I am just kind of a fan of GDT as a person, a person who exhibits good humor and shares an enthusiasm for many of the same genres of films, comics, cartoons and games which I enjoy filling my time with. All that said, I am abosolutely primed to level and engage with the kind of material that makes up Pacific Rim. However, my fandom and anticipation so therefore hype could have really sunk my reception of this movie when finally seeing it hit the screen.

All of that said, this movie is great, it does not at all disappoint. Pacific Rim feels like the fulfillment of a promise, as weird as it is to say. And not just of the promises made in the films premise of mechs vs monsters, or the promises of the filmmakers that film would ultimately be centered around character driven conflicts. It certainly follows through on those. In a weird way this movie fulfills the promise of what summer movies are supposed to be. Pacific Rim is the experience I hope to have each year when I look through the list of upcoming film releases at the end of April. The movie is great fun, it is something I want to share and discuss and revel in. It offers a rock solid story and distinct characters. It offers a whole world to think about. It makes use of a lot of a lot of tropes and imagery that haven't really been tapped into in live action films, especially here in the west but also contributes a lot of interesting ideas of its own.

What it comes down to is that this is one of the first films that I've seen all year, particularly this summer where I walked away completely satisfied. I don't have to qualify my enjoyment of this film. ("It liked except for..." "It was pretty good for what it was..." "Better than I expected" etc). Pacific Rim delivers.

The film introduces its world in a rather manner of fact manor. Really, its just up to you whether you're going to engage with it or not. An opening montage of mediaclips and voice over (way better than the cut we've heard from trailers btw) simply present a world in which the Kaiju just show up. After attempts to fight them with conventional weapons the first Jaeger is built as an attempted solution. It proves to be surprisingly effective and therefore the most apparently practical solution within the film's world and its what the nations of the world commit themselves to. And for many years it works quite well. The fact that Kaiju sometimes attack and that we sometimes have to fight them just become incorporated into our culture. The attacks are unfortunate but fairly managable, much how we deal with hurricanes now. Somtimes they are particularly bad, but it in the end it is still just the weather. It doesn't stop us from building cities in the Gulf. Again, its all rather manner of fact and it works well. The film however tells the story of what happens when this status quo falls apart, when the Kaiju get worse and the the threat is no longer manageable.

Several presumptuous blurbs have been thrown around trying to compare this film to Star Wars. That's not really the comparison I would make just because this movie won't make that kind of splash. I think they are responding to the rich world building that's at play here, and rich it, but still that's not really the comparison I would make. If a Star Wars really had to be made though, The Empire Strikes Back might be a good comparison for tone and characters. Even then though the comparison doesn't quite stick because the feel of the film is given that odd Del Toro twist.

Not to keep just comparing this film to others, but it must be said that Transformers is completely off base point of comparison for this film and this comment is not due to a Transformers comparison being a potential sleight. Its just the matter of fact that this truly is a character driven film. In the Transformers movies, the escapades of the Witwicky family always felt slightly tacked on, just getting the way and muddling what the audience actually wants to see the robot fights. In this, without the human characters, there are no battles. The kaiju don't just pose a threat to humanity as an abstract whole. The monster attacks ultimately feel like attacks directly on the characters of the film, whom we really get to know. Complications don't arise just from a bigger monster showing up or a mechanical failure but personal failures on the count of the characters, from their own attitudes and habits or their failure to over come the baggage that they bring along with them. Everything the filmmakers emphasize in interviews in regard to character driven conflict is absolutely true. The Kaiju are presented pretty much as a force of nature but the time the story is set, they are a simple fact of life. The story isn't so much about fighting them so much as how different people bounce off one another in trying to survive and figure out how to overcome the threat.

Really if I was going to use any film as a point of comparison it would actually be The Matrix. The Matrix similarly wears its influences on its sleeve without ever dipping into reference or relying on earlier associations to tell its story. It introduces a conflict in which humanity is pretty much on its last leg and in which a crew of people are desperately fighting the good fight. Pacific Rim also reminds me very much of the Matrix in its characters. In the Matrix we got to know Neo, Trinity and Morpheus really well but then we were also introduced to the rest of Nebuchadnezzar. These side characters were interesting in their own right but we never really got to know them particularly well, yet many of them remain memorable. The case is very much the same here in Pacific Rim except that the number of characters that we get to know is thankfully far wider. We get to know Riley and Mako and Major Pentecost intimately, but the film also has a surprising focus on the story of the some of the other Jaeger pilots as well, as well as the two scientist characters. Similar to the Matrix though the cast spins out into a number of interesting and memorable yet fleeting tertiary characters that really help the film to feel expansive.

The action in this is very good as one may assume, but really even more than just the wow factor of the monsters and Jaegers and the effects. The movie does a great job of really selling the connection between the machines and the human pilots as a single unit. Blows against the Jaegers really feel like wounds to the characters and every punch feels like a challenge and an honest threat to the characters lives. This isn't the meaningless pummeling witnessed a few weeks back in MOS.

It really has to be said though, this film has too much rain. Or rather the problem isn't so much the rain so much as some really conspicuous smoke. The choice to set most of the fights at night really works in the films favor for the most part. The Kaiju as you've seen are designed to be bioluminescent and the night time settings allow for use of many different light sources and often allow for a very distinct color pallet (The Hong Kong fights are absolutely beautiful and are lit like nothing else I've really ever seen). There are no real day time fights though. There are some bits of daytime Kaiju footage, but they are exactly that within the film, clips of footage or in one case the ground level memories of a little girl. Most of these are put to good use but in the absence of rain, there is often too much smoke. There are one or two the Kaiju that I felt I really didn't get a good enough of a look at. Luckly the film stops doing this and the Kaiju start being featured front and center. Overall I feel that the choices made make the film visually distinct from other movies (Bright daylight fights would only bolster the transformers comparisons) but your mileage may vary.

I I know I haven't really touched on the acting or a few other important bits but this is running a bit long and I'm happy to to discuss everything in more specific terms (and still spoiler free) so I'll just kind of cut this here.

What it all comes down to is that I think that this is the real deal. A truly satisfying summer film with a lot of heart and interesting ideas and visuals the likes of which we've really ever seen in live action, and really at times beyond what we've even seen in other media. I'd be afraid of over-hyping the film, but I think you'll be surprised at how well it holds up to even the highest of expectations. Pacific Rim delivers.
 
Hunnam was just fine the role, but I'd actually have to agree that he is outshined but those around him. His performance has kind of an odd quality to it. I don't really know how to describe it. His performance and his character are fairly reserved a lot of the time but he's certainly never wooden. Hunnam actually brings a lot of warmth. His character spends a lot of time offering sympathy to others.

You could probably describe his character in terms of the "hero's journey" plot but the film employs it quite well. He's never at all presented as any kind of messiah figure as is often the case with the heroes journey in modern movies. He is needed because of his experience, not just because of some kind of special quality that he was born with. It never feels trite. While Hunnam is certainly the main character, the film spreads its focus to other characters a lot which helps the old trope from feeling played out. Most importantly, the other characters almost all have their own arcs rather than just supporting Riley's (Hunnam).

Really the fact that almost all of the characters have an arc the a fair number of them really feel fleshed out and human and the way everyone is continually bouncing off of one another is really what sold me on this movie.
 
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Some people were wondering about the 3d. I never intended to see the film in 3d as Del Toro never really intended for it to be and also I'm not really for 3d movies in general. Personally my eyes just adjust and start correcting for the effect after about 15 minutes.
However the screening I won tickets to were in 3d. I'm glad they were.

First let me preface this by saying that the theater I went to is really good for 3d. They know what they are doing in that regard and always make sure the projection is bright. The theater is pretty new and in my experience has one of the best projectors in the area.

Your mileage may vary but if you do want to see the movie in 3d you should probably find an IMAX or else a really good standard theater.

While I'm not normally much for 3d, I thought the effects here were done quite well. Del Toro insisted that ILM render the effects in native 3d and it definitely shows. Any time the film is mostly comprised of effects the 3d is fantastic. It is extremely effective during the fights and other Jaeger and Kaiju scenes. The scenes with the humans though, that were post converted do not really gain much. Some of the in-camera shot scenes, such as scenes in the streets of Hong Kong and the like due benefit from the 3d some. But again, the fights and such really do make good use of the the 3d effect. There is none of the shrinkage that GDT initially showed concern about.

I was really impressed with the 3d right from the outset with the attack from the Trespessar, a scene we've seen since the first trailer, with the Kaiju claws crunching around the bridge looking quite tangeible and the cars and such falling towards the camera.

The 3d also works surprisingly well with the rain. Now again I saw the film in a theater that has really figured out projection with 3d and at other theaters the fight scenes may come off way too dark with the 3d but in my screening the 3d really popped with the rain and it felt quite visceral.

If you generally like 3d movies and especially if you have a 3d IMAX around, I'd give the film a try in that format. Its worth it.
 
What is the runtime of this film?

Edit: Found it: 2 hrs. 11 min.
 
Actually, del Toro recently said that his preferred format for the movie is 3D.
 
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