Tag Archives: pacific rim

Jul 12 2013

Pacific Rim Movie Review

per scifimoviepage.com

 

PACIFIC RIM

 

STARRING: Charlie Hunnam, Diego Klattenhoff, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman

2013, 131 Minutes, Directed by: Guillermo del Toro


Pacific Rim is not a very good movie. That’s not to say that a lot of people aren’t going to have a lot of fun watching it. If you are in touch with your inner twelve year old and can check your brain at the door, you are going to have a great time.

Guillermo del Toro divides his time between Hollywood blockbusters and arthouse fare and has notched amazing achievements with both. This is the director who made both Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. This time, though, he’s gone high concept. The movie is essentially Godzilla vs. Transformers. For some that’s going to be more than enough. One doesn’t pop in the DVD for, say, Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla expecting to see The Seventh Seal.

The premise is that an undersea rift in the Pacific Ocean has brought forth increasingly ferocious giant monsters that are destroying coastal cities around the world. They are dubbed kaiju from the Japanese word defining the whole genre of giant monster movies. To fight back humanity has built the jaegers, from the German for hunter. The jaegers are giant robots that require two humans to meld their minds with the mechanism and each other in order to operate it.

That’s really all you need to know. Yes, there are human characters who are given sketchy backstories, but you won’t really care about them.

“Large special effects fighting each other . . .”

Raleigh (Charlie Hannum) lost his brother in a fight with one of the kaiju. Stacker (Idris Elba) is the leader of the human fighters who keeps popping pills to deal with some mysterious injury inflicted in an earlier fight. Mako (Rinko Kikuchi) was rescued by Stacker as a young girl and now helps train the jaegers. None of these characters are much more than cardboard cutouts.

There are a couple scientists (Charlie Day, Burn Gorman) who provide crucial information late in the film but who are essentially there for comic relief. Thank goodness for Ron Perlman who chews the scenery in fine style as Hannibal Chau, a shady dealer who markets in the remains of dead kaiju. His scenes come to life in a way that very little else does in the film.

That’s the problem. Pacific Rim exists primarily for the battle scenes between the kaiju and the jaegers and then does everything it can to make them difficult to follow. They take place mostly at night, often in the rain when not underwater, and are edited in such a way that it’s often difficult to know what precisely is going on except that two large special effects are fighting each other. Are those pieces flying away part of the kaiju, part of the robot, or simply pieces of yet another city being trashed in one of this summer’s movies? Who can tell? At one point one of the jaegers turns out to have a hidden sword that proves an effective weapon and one can only wonder why it wasn’t used earlier.

So, if you are all hopped up for Pacific Rim because you can’t imagine more fun than giant monsters battling giant robots, go and enjoy yourself. Just don’t expect it to make much sense logically, narratively or visually. It’s not a very good science fiction movie, but it is a heck of an amusement park ride.

– Daniel Kimmel
Jul 11 2013

Pacific Rim Needs Our Help

Per TGDaily.com

Posted July 11, 2013 – 09:50 by David Konow

We just reported on the critical response to Pacific Rim, which so far has been mixed. There are critics that liked it, some who thought it was okay, and at least one overall negative review, which to be fair didn’t say the movie was dreadful, but it didn’t say it was anything to get excited about either.

You know from reading TGD that the geeks will be out in force to see Pacific Rim this weekend, yet even though the geeks are a force to be reckoned with, a movie can’t survive on geeks alone. In fact, the box office pundits have been predicting doom for Pacific Rim, even though its buzz is nowhere near as deadly as The Lone Ranger, or last year’s mega stink bomb Battleship.
How do these people know it’s going to bomb before it comes out? By tracking all the data, which isn’t always infallible. Variety headlined their story, “Pacific Rim Looking Grim With $25 Million – $35 million Opening,” noting that “Warner Bros. are bracing for what appears to be a gruesome inevitability” of potential low gross.
As The Wrap points out, this has been a particularly rough summer for movies, and this could potentially be the fourth week in a row of big screen bombs. Yet, on the other hand, as Variety also reports, Pacific Rim has gotten a very strong 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 98% rating of people who want to see it this weekend.
So definitely get out there and give Pacific Rim your support. It’s Guillermo Del Toro’s big return to the theaters, and it looks like it could be great fun. Hollywood may be panicking that it may not have a huge opening weekend, but perhaps word of mouth can make Pacific Rim a winner if the fan response is enthusiastic enough.

Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/72432-pacific-rim-needs-your-help#XhIPjEmXkI1d1oH2.99

Jul 10 2013

‘Pacific Rim’ Looking Grim With $25 Million-$35 Million Opening

Per Variety.com

After spending the past two weeks trying to turn the tide for “Pacific Rim,” Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures now are bracing for what appears to be a gruesome inevitability for the $185 million-plus monster movie: A domestic opening ranging between $25 million and $35 million.

This weekend could be the second in a row in which an expensive non-sequel property bellyflops at the box office after “Lone Ranger” flamed out last weekend.

The impending doom has been pretty clear ever since “Pacific Rim” came on tracking early last month. And while there are certainly some last-minute hopeful signs for Warner and Legendary to cling to (i.e. strong reviews and unreliable tracking lately), there’s little chance that “Pacific Rim” will open well enough in the U.S. to counter its monster-sized budget and marketing costs.

FILM REVIEW: “Pacific Rim”

But before we delve into the negative, there are a few possible bright spots:

  • Positive reviews. As of Tuesday afternoon, the film has scored an 85% rating on RottenTomatoes, with a 98% rating among audiences who want to see the film. Exhibitor reactions to the film also have been better than expected.
  • Overseas. Warner launches “Pacific Rim” in 38 day-and-date territories, including the U.K., Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Italy and Australia.
  • Skewed tracking. “Pacific Rim” straddles the line of being a fanboy and family film, with heavy interest among boys, and tracking for younger auds is notoriously unreliable. Does that mean the film can double current projections? No.
  • Holiday frenzy. The buzz surrounding the Fourth of July weekend was still humming on Monday, when NRG — the most subscribed-to tracking service — released its most current weekend estimates. The company will revise those estimates Thursday.

All of those factors weigh in “Pacific Rim’s” favor, particularly the first, after Paramount managed to parlay strong early reviews for “World War Z” into a surprising $66 million domestic opening.

SEE MORE: Is ‘Pacific Rim’ Doomed to Be This Year’s ‘Battleship’?

But to be clear, an opening like that is not in the cards for “Pacific Rim” — not with competition from “Despicable Me 2″ and “Grown Ups 2,” both of which also have strong family appeal. Observers predict that “Despicable Me 2″ will win its second frame in the high-$40 millions, while “Grown Ups 2″ is expected to gross in the low-$40 million range. Both “Grown Ups 2″ and “Pacific Rim” are rated PG-13.

For “Pacific Rim,” which is a passion project for helmer Guillermo del Toro, the early July release date was likely modeled after “Transformers,” which opened with $70 million in 2007. That’s the kind of start Legendary expected to see when it greenlit the pricey ensemble project about an apocalyptic battle between aliens and robots created to fight them. But without a major star toplining the film, Warners — which came on board later to help finance 25% of the production cost — had to market the film based solely on the original concept. The studio only recently began highlighting the pic’s humor and lighter elements to help draw interest.

SEE MORE: How Legendary Is Trying to Turn Around Troubling Tracking for ‘Pacific Rim’

Tracking for the film outside the U.S. is strongest in Asia, with the area’s long history of creature features, but the pic is seeing only moderate interest in other parts of the world.

Some celebrities, including Kanye West, have taken to social media with positive reactions to the film. Videogame design icon Hideo Kojima also expressed his admiration in a tweet saying, “This film is not simply a film to be respected, but most importantly, it let us dream the future of entertainment movies.”

The film’s grim financial outlook notwithstanding, Kojima may have a point. If only the film’s budget could have been kept in check.