I saw it tonight at a screening. tl;dr - Cool movie, I liked it, but it didn't blow me away. But it's a fun time. Also, the 3D sucked.
Now the longer version:
First, I'd be surprised if this movie bombs. I think it'll actually do pretty well at the box office. The screening I went to was fucking PACKED. Now, usually these lines are pretty long, since they're first come first serve, but this was absurd. The entire lobby of the theater was overflowing and the line went out the door! So I think a good amount of people know about this movie. That + everyone clapped at the end = potentially good WOM, I think.
On to the movie.
The CGI, kaiju/jaeger designs, the fight sequences, other fx, etc. all are insanely good looking. Some of the kaiju are a little samey, and I wish Del Toro didn't have essentially all the battles happen at night because the darkness makes it hard to make out the fucking beauty of what's going on. But even still, it looks pretty.
The script is boilerplate. Next.
The acting ranges from so-so to bad. Hunnam and Elba both kind of suck. Actually, mostly everyone kind of sucks; flat at best, shouting-as-acting at worst. The only exceptions are Charlie Day (surprisingly) and Ron Perlman (obviously). Easily the standouts, they're both a lot of fun.
The music is forgettable. At times I thought I heard bits of Game of Thrones, then I noticed Ramin Djawadi in the credits. :lol
I do NOT recommend seeing in 3D. The battles look fine, though I don't think the effect added anything to it. All of the non-kaiju/jaeger parts looked absolutely awful. I don't see that many 3D movies so I don't know where exactly this falls on the grand spectrum of things, but this is easily the worst 3D I've ever seen. Really fucking blurry and a shit ton of ghosting. Could be my theater, but like I said, the CGI parts looked fine, it was all the non-battle scenes that looked terrible.
All in all, it was a good time. Wasn't mind blowing, wasn't the ultimate genre movie, isn't going to be the landmark blockbuster of the century or whatever the fuck the hype has gotten to now. It's a fun movie of giant robots fighting giant monsters with a bunch of dumb cliched shit and some surprisingly funny moments in it.
Go see it. But not in 3D.
And stay for halfway through the credits.
