In the cinema: PACIFIC RIM

Okay, I know I'm a bit late to this party, but it's still in theaters and I wanted to catch in on the big screen. Giant robots fighting monsters from another dimension? I don't understand why everyone didn't go to see PACIFIC RIM.

When giant alien monsters, called Kaiju, began invading the Earth through an inter-dimensional porthole along the Pacific fault-line, humans had to work together and build giant robots, called Jaegers, to defend the planet. 

This movie is 131 minutes of well paced monster movie fun. It starts right off with getting you caught up and understanding what's going on: the planet was under attack and extreme measures had to be taken or else all life would be destroyed.

You are introduced to the Jaeger program. Since the militaries of the world didn't fair well against the giant monsters that kept showing up through the inter-dimensional porthole, new technology had to be developed. We would fight monsters with our own mechanical monsters. In order to make the monsters more agile they would be linked up to the pilots through their minds. One person couldn't handle the load of piloting a Jaeger on his own, but in tandem, two people can share the burden and make the battling colossus dance a jig. Sorta. They were fast and nimble. Powerful and and armed with various weaponry. Different countries built different models but all shared similar basic technology.

Your first up close observation of how the battle looks when a Kaiju breach causes the Becket brothers to be sent out to intercept in the Gypsy Danger. It didn't go so well, as older brother Yancy and killed and Raleigh was forced to pilot the Jaeger solo, take out the monster, then bring the mech back to shore, giving up on the program.

Or so Raleigh thought. 

Fast forward five years. The governments decided that all they needed to do was build giant walls along their Pacific borders and scrap the Jaeger project. Great idea, right? Of course not. The first kaiju to meet the wall in Australia went through it like it wasn't even an issue. Luckily the Aussie Jaeger was still handy and it made quick work of the Kaiju. 

There was still a desperate need for the Jaeger program, but the governments weren't willing to continue support. The last remaining robots were collected and based at Hong Kong which seemed to be very close to the action. At that point, there were more mechs than seasoned pilots to get them out there. Raleigh was called back into the program and ended up teamed with a very able, very cute, but somewhat damaged Mako Mori. 

The rest of the movie is about the dynamics of the team. The doctors researching the Kaiju were comic reliefs. Ron Perlman was a peripheral character, but still fun. The Marshall, Stacker Pentecost, (Idris Elba) was enigmatic and commanding.

I must say, I don't understand the tastes of the reviewers and the willingness of the movie-going crowd to listen to those opinions. This is clearly the type of movie that reviewers would hate, OF COURSE it will get bad reviews in the papers. However, every person I know who went to see it loved it. With the high price of movie tickets, these days, I believe the public is using the reviews as an excuse to stay home and save movie. "I heard it was bad." "It's nothing I haven't seen already." Fine. Think that way, but don't complain when Hollywood continues to dump low budget crummy movies on the public. If they aren't going to make money, Hollywood might as well spend less. 

Enough said. This movie was 2+ hours of fun. If you didn't see it yet, you'll probably have to wait for Blu-Ray or DVD. So that should be in a month or two. Don't forget to sit through the credits for the extra scene, I can't say I was entirely surprised by it, but it was fun!

More on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/?ref_=sr_1