Saw it tonight, in 2D.
It was okay. More weirdly plotted than I expected, with a number of threads not really coming together, at least not on first watch.
I liked the decision to feature only a couple of extended battles, rather than a larger number of short ones. I was surprised there were really only three, those being the one in the intro, then the extended battle with two kaiju at the mid point, and then the ending. The pacing was better for it.
Performances were pretty solid across the board, the cast did a lot with some often very weak dialogue. I think they could have attracted a wider audience by putting more emphasis on the female lead in the marketing, I had no idea she was more than a minor role. Certainly my daughters would have been more interested (both refused to see it).
A lot of plot stuff didn't make sense to me. If the kaiju are doing an invasion, and sending creatures to "wipe out the vermin", why send the smallest creatures first, months apart? Wouldn't you send in several heavy hitters right out the gate? Spacing them out just gives the enemy time to prepare...which we did. The whole premise stopped making any sense once the gradually increasing size and frequency cadence was revealed.
Radios work across a dimensional portal?
They couldn't send a nuke through the portal because everything gets "scanned" like a bar code and bounced back out. So...how did the escape pods get through? They were released from the other side.
Why would they send a pregnant kaiju? How would the baby have useful memories from in the womb?
The wacky scientist pair didn't work for me, really cringe-worthy stuff. How did the kaiju know where he was after the mind meld thing? And why did they seek him out? To what end? Very odd plot path to go down. Took up a lot of time and concluded with a dead end.
Elba might as well have donned a red uniform and called himself an ensign, his demise in the ending battle was so thoroughly telegraphed.
I wish there was a daytime fight.
The action was good if shot too close at times, and the ending too predictable (a category five at the end?! Who would have thought.). Still, I had decent fun with it. Great visual design across the board, the soundtrack was good (I really dug the chugging central theme) and the fights had a great sense of heft to them. But I feel like the movie got in its own way too many times to really come together into something great.
Theater was 1/3 full. No applause at any point.
I was super happy they didn't kiss at the end. They are two people who care about each other. That's enough
Yup. Their relationship was really unforced through the entire film, and the movie ended on the right note.