I saw it yesterday at the first showing with eight other people (including the one who accompanied me who ended up with similar views to myself by the end) I must admit that I ended up not enjoying the movie at all. I know this is quite an unpopular opinion in here so perhaps I simply wasn't the target audience.
I came into the movie expecting it to be quite dumb with a huge emphasis on action (which itself would be incredible) and everything else to be pretty terrible. Even with those expectations, I ended up quite disappointed. After the opening until the Hong Kong action sequence (which was absolutely magnificent) I was quite bored as the movie (although, one thing I do have to say is that the young Mako scene was rather good, probably due to the actor they used) plodded along with its mostly paper-thin characters, poor dialogue and predictable plot. The comic relief scientists ended up more cringe-worthy than humorous and each appearance of theirs brought about a longing for the scene to quickly end as opposed to sustaining a sense of entertainment. As a result of all of this, I felt no sense of tension (which negatively impacted the battle sequence as amazing as it otherwise was), and no feeling of 'fun' or entertainment at all; it all just seemed incredibly dull. The Hong Kong sequence was, by far, my highlight of the movie but following that, my experience was mostly the same as it was prior; the final action sequence was underwhelming in comparison to me but it was still an enjoyable, well shot sequence. One thing that certainly deserves commendation though is the design, use of colour and cinematography throughout the movie, all of which were absolutely stunning.
I know that seems to be an unpopular opinion, and I am willing to give the movie a second chance on Blu-Ray, so I probably won't stay in this thread too much longer (I am glad to see just how many people enjoyed it though) but my biggest problem, I guess, is that everything in between the battle sequence felt dire to me, with no entertainment value to myself at all which negated any feeling of fun that I may have otherwise had. I know that this was partly what I expected going into the movie (everything outside of the action sequence to be terrible) but I had not expected so much of the movie to be focused on it and the action sequences to be so short (or perhaps they just felt short to me when placed between everything else in the plot).
In short, I guess my feelings were: Visually an amazing movie and incredible action sequences but they were far too short to compensate for everything else which I felt was dire and dropped momentum like Gypsy Danger on the beach. I am still glad people are enjoying it though, as I've said, perhaps it just wasn't for me; maybe my opinion of it will improve over time.
EDIT: Actually one thing I also have to say is that I like how they glossed over the backstory (even though I felt that it probably could have been integrated better rather than just dumping most of the information at the beginning but it ultimately doeesn't really matter) in the beginning to prevent it feeling like an origin story, moving straight into the plot of the film.
EDIT 2: Also, I really hope word of mouth carries this movie as I really do wish to see Guillermo Del Toro's "At the Mountain of Madness".
EDIT 3: Wow, reading this again and it's much more poorly written than I had initially believed; my apologies for that, I'll try fix it immediately. And done. It still isn't nicely written, nor is the structure particularly good, but hopefully it's better than it initially was.
