The more I hear about this film and see trailers the more I get the feeling I'm going to be coming down on it in similar fashion. I could tell something was off when the first trailer hit. Needlessly complex for what kind of movie it is was the thought I kept having. It's not enough to just say "monsters showed up". Oh no, they've got to be aliens, but not just any aliens...extra-dimensional aliens, and not even just that: ED aliens with a portal in the sea. I was rolling my eyes already.
Plus they need to international it up by referencing foreign pop culture through it all which only the geekiest people will get(Kaiju/Jaeger...WTF? but ultimately not a huge deal in and of itself, just kinda annoying). But they make up maybe 1-10% of the audience on any movie like this. Most won't have a clue or care, I suspect.
Then they pulled out the "Giant Robots need to be driven by 2 people with their minds melded through a computer" for some reason. My eyes were practically back into my brain at this point. Uhm....why? And I don't mean why they use it inside the movie. I meant why have this choice from a writing standpoint at all? So you can cram more bodies...ahem, I mean fully fleshed out characters we can get behind into your movie? Just seems like stuff you wouldn't want to do with such a simple premise.
And there's the part that bugged me. When doing a film like this you have 2 choices:
A)You're going to go real simple and just keep to the main reason anyone would eve want to go see this film: giant monsters and robots hitting each other; or
B)Go real detailed so as to make all the minutia of how all this works worth something story-wise.
This movie looks to be trying to cut it down the middle and I'm just not sure that can work. Don't tease my brain if you're not willing to fully engage it. Otherwise, let it sleep while I ooh and ahh at all the pretty sfx and action.
Anyway, that's kind of what the marketing for this film is telling me this film will be like.
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