"Pacific Rim"

I've finished watching Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures' Pacific Rim. What do I think of it?

For starters, it has plenty of action and lots of city destruction, stuff that kaiju fans enjoy very much. There's no disappointment in that department.

The acting was very good and the movie had characters people could have empathy with and care about (unlike the 2008 Godzilla, but like Cloverfield). At last year's Stan Lee's Comikaze Expo panel on kaiju and giant robots, I pointed out having the robots (Jaegers) manned was a good idea as it would make the viewer have an emotional investment in the characters instead of just having the Jaegers operate by remote control. In this aspect, the movie did very well.

I still feel that CGI giant monsters don't give one the feeling of mass as do the "old school" method of having a man-in-a-suit smashing miniatures. But this movie came close.

I did notice that it seemed to rip off some elements from Godzilla x Mechagodzilla (2002) and Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003). Having helicopters lifting the Jaegers, like the planes that lifted Mechagodzilla in those movies, doesn't quite seem plausible. It would seem to me that choppers wouldn't/couldn't even budge the heavy Jaegers off the ground in real life. If a plane can lift a space shuttle, then several planes lifting Mechagodzilla seems more plausible to me.

Pacific Rim was an action movie, more in the style of Toho's Godzilla movies. It didn't even come close to the creepiness of Cloverfield. It is likely intended that way. Thus far, Cloverfield is still the best giant monster movie I've seen in the past ten years.

Still, I enjoyed Pacific Rim for what it is, a good roller-coaster movie.

I was going to grade it B+, but since the acting and story were much better than average for a giant monster movie, I'm giving it an A-.

Let's see if next year's Godzilla tops it.