Pacific Rim Spoiler Thread: Today, We Are Cancelling the Use of Spoiler Tags!

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CosmicGroinPull said:
The only thing that really bothered me about the plot was the Governments' insistence on going with the Wall even when it clearly failed and how would they kill the kaijus that got through the Wall without any Jaegers.
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The "it's just to boost morale" excuse crumbles after the Kaiju broke through one of them, since building the wall wouldn't boost public confidence anymore.
 
Toxi said:
Answer: Flesh out the other teams some more. Especially the Russian team. It's clear they had some character ideas for them (notice how in the scene where everyone is running away from Gipsy Danger's plasma cannon, the Russian pair just walks), and it looks like the woman is the more talkative of the two, so you'd get some balance between the genders.
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Another thing i notice when the first lunch room scene happens i notice the male russian(forgot his name) sits down and he looks like he is in pain. Could be he has radiation poison from cherno alpha being a mark 1. Eitherway i would have loved more exposition from them, hoping they include that extra 1 hour cut on the blu ray
 
sol_bad said:
I honestly can't see how people could think the acting or even the script is bad in this. I mean, yeah, there are some bad lines about dinosaurs and digital/analogue but overall I don't see anything bad.
There was over acting but not bad acting.
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I realize some of the actors were intentionally hamming it up, but they just went way too far. That scientist with the cane was the worst. His scenes were like something out of the Shumacher Batman films. Ron Perlman and Clifton Collins Jr, who are usually great, don't fair much better. Raleigh and Mako were both really wooden and awkward, but would've been passable if they had some decent dialogue to work with.

The script is the biggest problem though. The exposition is so insanely clunky throughout. I didn't mind the huge info dump at the start. It's not ideal, but I understand that they just want to set up this world so they can get right into the story. But then it keeps happening throughout. At one point Charlie Day says to Ron Perlman, "Now as we both know, Kaiju have two brains..." If you both know it, then why are you telling him?! Did the kids from Super 8 write this? Later, Ron Perlman explains that the newborn kaiju was strangled by it's umbilical cord, No shit, we just watched it happen five seconds ago.

The rest is just cliche after cliche after cliche. Did anybody not think that Idris Elba was going to sacrifice himself AS SOON as he got a nosebleed? Or that young aussie would end up having a begrudging respect for Raliegh?

I don't want to just bash the movie. It's amazing to look at. The robot/monster designs are great, the effects are astonishing, the sense of scale really IS badass. It's well shot and choreographed as well. I was also never bored. It had a nice brisk pace that I appreciated after so many overly long blockbusters.
 
burgervan said:
Sorry for expressing my opinion of a movie in a thread dedicated to such.
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Well...

burgervan said:
... and the fight scenes weren't even that fun to watch.
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Im curious at what fight scenes you actually do consider fun watching...?

Later, Ron Perlman explains that the newborn kaiju was strangled by it's umbilical cord, No shit, we just watched it happen five seconds ago.
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Yeah...that's the joke. Pearlman's character was trying to save face since he ran away from the baby at the beginning...
 
W_Dreamer said:
Well...



Im curious at what fight scenes you actually do consider fun watching...?
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Note that I said they weren't THAT fun to watch. I enjoyed them, just not enough to save the movie for me. I think if I actually gave a shit about the characters at all, I'd love the fight scenes. They're well done.
 
I've never really understood "cliche" as a complaint. The reason these things are cliché is because they've been proven to work—the only difference is in execution. sometimes they work better than others. So while elements of this movie might be "cliche," there are times when it doesn't bother me. Obviously Idris Elba was going to sacrifice himself. That's not "cliché" or bad, that's proper foreshadowing and seeding—that's good storytelling. and there are times when it does. Idris Elba's speech at the end is cheesy—not because it's inherently cliché though, but just because it's been done before, and better. Cliche, for me, basically boils down to—there are so many more reference points to compare movie X to, so maybe I'm going to be less lenient on the storytelling compared to something that's taking a leap of faith, something that is a bit experimental. But if a story is trying to tell a "cliche" and does it well? More power to them, in my book.

But if cliches were just inherently bad, then, well, just about every single story ever told would be bad. But I don't think that's enough.

edit: also, I don't think the exposition scenes were bad at all. Ron Pearlman wasn't just explaining what happened, he was boasting. It's doubles as both exposition, it's the set-up for the punchline (which is him getting eaten). You're always going to get exposition in any story because shit needs to be explained; it's all about how it's presented and I don't think it was ever particularly clunky in Pacific Rim.
 
jtb said:
I've never really understood "cliche" as a complaint. The reason these things are cliché is because they've been proven to work—the only difference is in execution. sometimes they work better than others. So while elements of this movie might be "cliche," there are times when it doesn't bother me. Obviously Idris Elba was going to sacrifice himself. That's not "cliché" or bad, that's proper foreshadowing and seeding—that's good storytelling. and there are times when it does. Idris Elba's speech at the end is cheesy—not because it's inherently cliché though, but just because it's been done before, and better. Cliche, for me, basically boils down to—there are so many more reference points to compare movie X to, so maybe I'm going to be less lenient on the storytelling compared to something that's taking a leap of faith, something that is a bit experimental. But if a story is trying to tell a "cliche" and does it well? More power to them, in my book.

But if cliches were just inherently bad, then, well, just about every single story ever told would be bad. But I don't think that's enough.

edit: also, I don't think the exposition scenes were bad at all. Ron Pearlman wasn't just explaining what happened, he was boasting. It's doubles as both exposition, it's the set-up for the punchline (which is him getting eaten). You're always going to get exposition in any story because shit needs to be explained; it's all about how it's presented and I don't think it was ever particularly clunky in Pacific Rim.
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I agree that cliches can still work when exectued well, but at some point you should at least TRY to defy expectations. Even just a little. And cliches really aren't something you should STRIVE for. This is the same shit that people railed on Avatar for. There's not an ounce of cleverness or inventiveness in anything but the fight scenes. It's just generic action blockbuster story #2 and nothing more.

We'll have to agree to disagree about exposition. I was distracted by how obtrusively it was shoehorned into most scenes.
 
I think cliches are there for a reason, it helps us understand the characters motives without having to much exposition. For Pacific rim i think it helps immensely so that we can get to the meat of the movie quicker, i still think the characters are fine i have no issue as soon as it starts getting long boom-hong kong scene then immediately right into its third act. I understand the complaints but i just cant help but love the world building in this movie every scene has something new to teach us and doesnt beat us over the head with the same shit we already know. Meh to each his own i guess.
 
jtb said:
I've never really understood "cliche" as a complaint. The reason these things are cliché is because they've been proven to work—the only difference is in execution. sometimes they work better than others. So while elements of this movie might be "cliche," there are times when it doesn't bother me. Obviously Idris Elba was going to sacrifice himself. That's not "cliché" or bad, that's proper foreshadowing and seeding—that's good storytelling. and there are times when it does. Idris Elba's speech at the end is cheesy—not because it's inherently cliché though, but just because it's been done before, and better. Cliche, for me, basically boils down to—there are so many more reference points to compare movie X to, so maybe I'm going to be less lenient on the storytelling compared to something that's taking a leap of faith, something that is a bit experimental. But if a story is trying to tell a "cliche" and does it well? More power to them, in my book.

But if cliches were just inherently bad, then, well, just about every single story ever told would be bad. But I don't think that's enough.

edit: also, I don't think the exposition scenes were bad at all. Ron Pearlman wasn't just explaining what happened, he was boasting. It's doubles as both exposition, it's the set-up for the punchline (which is him getting eaten). You're always going to get exposition in any story because shit needs to be explained; it's all about how it's presented and I don't think it was ever particularly clunky in Pacific Rim.
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Besides which, Guillermo's intent was for Pacific Rim to introduce kids to the kaiju and mecha genres. The cliches are very helpful and maybe even necessary to make the film succeed on that front. When you use established tropes, you are treading familiar ground by definition.

Guillermo Del Toro said:
“I really wanted to make a movie that had an incredibly airy and light feel,” Del Toro said the other day, reflecting on the film he had just finished. “This is not a super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie. I wanted very much to do a movie that is aiming for a young audience. Adults can be, God willing, entertained by the big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals and the action and all that, but my real hope is that this movie allows for a new generation of kaiju and robot kids that fall in love with giant monsters.”
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It was an enjoyable movie, but I can't get over how incompetent the military is. I can suspense my disbelief that punching with huge mechs is an (cost) effective way to deal with godzillas instead of ballistic weapons (because it looks awesome), but why did the F-22s get so close to the lumbering beasts in those flashbacks? Twice. It's like the pilots wanted to kamikaze into it. It's beyond stupid. At least in the Godzilla movie, it hunted down the Apaches, but jets are faster than the speed of sound for crying out loud!

Other things I found humorous in no particular order:
Mako checking out Raleigh
Rocket punch!
Flying kaiju
"Oh hey we have a sword"
The scientist subplot
Charlie Kellie as the scientist
Ron Perlman
The stereotypes (Chinese basketballers, toughguy Aussie, Russians providing nukes)
Hong Kong not looking like Hong Kong
Radio transmission at the very end
No sex scene
 
Mariolee said:
It may need 200 million to break even but movie studios don't make films to break even. They need a significantly large profit margin if they want to consider a film good enough to make a sequel, especially if they're going to increase the budget.
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It needs $380-400 million to break even. Roughly 50% of box office income goes to the theaters and distributors, so the rule of thumb is that you have to double your budget for the studio to break even, and go beyond that to make a profit.

Pacific Rim is going to be riding heavily on home video sales if it intends to come close to breaking even. At this point it's really just the positive reviews and audience response that could get Del Toro a greenlight for the sequel. The studio would basically have to be willing to gamble that those who did see it were positive enough on it that a sequel could build a much bigger head of steam leading up to release from the hype of people who enjoyed the first film. That's something that may not be very clear until it's on Blu-Ray/DVD.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
The "it's just to boost morale" excuse crumbles after the Kaiju broke through one of them, since building the wall wouldn't boost public confidence anymore.
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didnt that happen after the government meeting? we never hear from them again, so we really don't know how tied to the wall they were after sydney.

burgervan said:
Later, Ron Perlman explains that the newborn kaiju was strangled by it's umbilical cord, No shit, we just watched it happen five seconds ago.
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That scene was about Perlman trying to justify his running away and explain away his fear. He was trying to say 'oh i knew i only had to tactically retreat only this far because it's lungs weren't formed and it'd run out of umbilical' when really he ran because he was as scared as everyone else. he was too proud to admit it and in his blustering, put himself at risk of being munched.
 
Pandaman said:
didnt that happen after the government meeting? we never hear from them again, so we really don't know how tied to the wall they were after sydney.
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They cancelled the Jaegers to shift funding to the Wall. The Wall was proven totally ineffective about a day later, while it was (weeks?) until the events of the latter part of the movie. It still seemed like they hadn't un-cancelled the Jaeger program, even temporarily until they could think of a new plan.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
They cancelled the Jaegers to shift funding to the Wall. The Wall was proven totally ineffective about a day later, while it was (weeks?) until the events of the latter part of the movie. It still seemed like they hadn't un-cancelled the Jaeger program, even temporarily until they could think of a new plan.
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The Jaegar program wasn't a working solution either, they were dropping like flies and were taking much longer to build than the Kaiju were coming. The governments were in a loss/loss situation once the wall failed.

even if they had uncanceled the jaegar program, they'd be kaiju food before a second mark 5 could be built. according to the PR wiki, the sydney dome was shutdown on december 29th, if we interpret that to be the same day eureka was decommissioned, then the wall failed on december 30th and the movie ends on january the 12th.
 
ElTopo said:
Why was that character even in the movie? Could've been cut and nothing of value would have been lost.
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They had to get newt up close and personal with otachi to show the audience he was right about the kaiju being a targeted weapon and couldn't have otachi tear apart the base to do it.
 
ElTopo said:
Why was that character even in the movie? Could've been cut and nothing of value would have been lost.
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Perlman's character helps to explore the world much more then just the battle imho, his character alone illustrates how there's a demand for Kaiju organs and a culture around that for instance.
 
TheWraith said:
Perlman's character helps to explore the world much more then just the battle imho, his character alone illustrates how there's a demand for Kaiju organs and a culture around that for instance.
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Yup, and he's basically funding the resistance at this point.
 
burgervan said:
Just got back from seeing this. Laughably bad writing, terrible acting(the only exception being Stringer Bell), and the fight scenes weren't even that fun to watch.

If literally all you want is robots and monsters, that's cool, but I don't know how people can defend this movie on any other level.
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Well, the movie made me like a kid because of the robots and monsters. Though the last part was kinda predictable and cheesy as hell that made the movie crappy shit, well for me at least


Error said:
the kaiju blood is toxic and pollutes the environment, shooting the kaijus would result in kaiju blood getting needlessly spilt. That's why most of the combat is close-range instead of long-range.
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You're not making any sense. They're ripping the kaijus apart in close range as well.
 
ElTopo said:
They could've easily gotten that information across via a few regular lines of dialogue. Also we've seen the "culture" around this (sort of) in the information dump at the beginning. They could've just mentioned it there as well.
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No wouldn't have had the same impact. Looking for Hannibal Chau allowed Newt to go into the "real world" an meet him in his hidden Kaiju-harvest place. This allows for a much deeper, more immersive look into the world, and I found it an interesting interchange with the fighter scenery.
 
Pandaman said:
They had to get newt up close and personal with otachi to show the audience he was right about the kaiju being a targeted weapon and couldn't have otachi tear apart the base to do it.
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I didn't care that much about the Newt/Chau stuff, but I understand it. In large part, I think it was added to give personal stakes to the attack on Hong Kong, rather than just make it a faceless city getting destroyed. Newt as damsel in distress.
 
ElTopo said:
Again, they could've easily done that via the first kaiju-Newt drift. Then once the two cat 4 Kaijus are done he goes to their corpses and they do the second drift. No need for Perlman.
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again, it was aboiut proving it to the viewer so we're not just taking the word of what would have otherwise been a random background character. Without Newt in Tokyo the kaiju drift would be as silly as the Anologue comment.

Those minutes could've been used on something else, they probably also just could've had the Kaijus do something coordinated/smart to show that they might be a targeted weapon.
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they did do something coordinated/smart, it was called Cherno alpha.

Why not have Otachi tear the base apart, they're going all-out and attack the breach afterwards anyway.
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they need to fix the robots after the fight, they need to seperate Otachi from leatherback, they need to fight leatherback first to minimize the suspension of disbelief that comes with eureka surviving intact.
 
While I liked the movie, I thought it did way too much telling instead of showing, and because of that I never really got the feeling of the stakes involved. The main character also had almost no personality, outside of doing stupid shit that should have gotten him in some kind of trouble instead of none. The movie oddly spends so much time building up things that are obvious from the start, and zips over important details. It had vivid ideas, but they've been tossed in a completely generic action movie framework that's just dull.

Independence Day is by no means a great movie, but at the very least it gave you a sense of what was at stake, and some feeling of risk to character you were pretty sure were going to survive anyway. Strange from Del Toro also since his better movies are well put together.
 
Alright so I made a mistake and thought about the world too much. I actually like the rules they built for this film, I think it's a great universe but I have one thing that bothers me.

I have been telling people about the Kaiju Blue and why he wouldn't want to use the sword. My question is did Gypsy always have the sword or was hat an upgrade? I honestly think it would have to be E latter it makes the most sense and would be why he didn't know it was there.

The reason in say this is the Chinese Jäger had the blade hands, there was seemingly no concern for Kaiju blue, so it seems more like at the end of their rope they decided Kaiju Blue was better than a walking Kaiju, and started to tear into them, as well as upgrading Gypsy with the sword.

I would have liked maybe a tiny but of explanation on this, but eh.

I think this would be a great setup for the next wave of Jagers to have beam swords and weapons. They could use the example of a swords effectiveness combined with the beams ability to cauterize a wound and limit Kaiju blue spill.
 
Liked it a lot.

+1 to wanting Cherno to actually do something and live longer though.. He never got his badass moment. Saw it coming from the trailers, but I'm kinda sad there wasn't at least one instance of badassery, considering he's the best design for a Jaeger.
 
Monocle said:
Besides which, Guillermo's intent was for Pacific Rim to introduce kids to the kaiju and mecha genres. The cliches are very helpful and maybe even necessary to make the film succeed on that front. When you use established tropes, you are treading familiar ground by definition.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movi...dges-toward-greater-success-with-pacific-rim/
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If that was Del Toro's goal, I wish he had 1) shot some of the fight scenes in the daytime and 2) the marketing team had not made the film look so deadly serious. None of the trailers made the film look particularly fun, and certainly not light. (My eight year old thought it looked terrifying.)
 
HenryGale said:
I have been telling people about the Kaiju Blue and why he wouldn't want to use the sword. My question is did Gypsy always have the sword or was hat an upgrade? I honestly think it would have to be E latter it makes the most sense and would be why he didn't know it was there.
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Though it wasn't explicitly stated, I'm pretty sure the sword was an upgrade to Gipsy. If it wasn't, it would've been used against Knifehead at the start given how desperate the situation was when it started tearing into Gipsy's internals.

The reason in say this is the Chinese Jäger had the blade hands, there was seemingly no concern for Kaiju blue, so it seems more like at the end of their rope they decided Kaiju Blue was better than a walking Kaiju, and started to tear into them, as well as upgrading Gypsy with the sword.
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Honestly, the only answer I have is that the kaiju blue subplot was dropped due to time constraints. When Otachi's remains landed in Hong Kong, we saw that the harvesters took no special precautions handling it unless they had to go inside it. Even then, the equipment was only to supply oxygen.
 
Aytrial said:
Honestly, the only answer I have is that the kaiju blue subplot was dropped due to time constraints. When Otachi's remains landed in Hong Kong, we saw that the harvesters took no special precautions handling it unless they had to go inside it. Even then, the equipment was only to supply oxygen.
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I thought Hannibal detailed the steps they would take to neutralize the blood's effects long enough to harvest everything earlier in the film? And it wasn't like they were going to clean up any areas the blood may have spilled that were away from the corpse either.
 
enzo_gt said:
+1 to wanting Cherno to actually do something and live longer though.. He never got his badass moment. Saw it coming from the trailers, but I'm kinda sad there wasn't at least one instance of badassery.
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1. Elbow drop
2. Piston Punch x2

Aytrial said:
Honestly, the only answer I have is that the kaiju blue subplot was dropped due to time constraints. When Otachi's remains landed in Hong Kong, we saw that the harvesters took no special precautions handling it unless they had to go inside it. Even then, the equipment was only to supply oxygen.
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The Marshal says they neutralize the toxicity before they harvest.
 
sol_bad said:
I honestly can't see how people could think the acting or even the script is bad in this. I mean, yeah, there are some bad lines about dinosaurs and digital/analogue but overall I don't see anything bad.
There was over acting but not bad acting.
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The protagonist wasn't acting. He is a bad actor. He had no conviction in anything he was saying.
 
Aaron said:
While I liked the movie, I thought it did way too much telling instead of showing, and because of that I never really got the feeling of the stakes involved. The main character also had almost no personality, outside of doing stupid shit that should have gotten him in some kind of trouble instead of none. The movie oddly spends so much time building up things that are obvious from the start, and zips over important details. It had vivid ideas, but they've been tossed in a completely generic action movie framework that's just dull.

Independence Day is by no means a great movie, but at the very least it gave you a sense of what was at stake, and some feeling of risk to character you were pretty sure were going to survive anyway. Strange from Del Toro also since his better movies are well put together.
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Saw the movie 2 days ago and had a similar problem with it. I didn't buy into the Apocalypse stuff at all. Felt like they tried way to hard to come up with a "logical" endgame scenario and the movie suffered for it. Less would have been probably much more here.
And I can't even remember the name of the main character.....

The action was fun at least. Too bad it's all in the darkness and Cherno didn't cancel the Apocalypse by herself. :(
 
JetBlackPanda said:
Did I miss anything at the very end of the credits ?

I fucking loved this movie.
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It pans to the factory where they've raised Crimson, Cherno and Striker and are attaching them together to make a super giant Jaeger. Then it goes to black and you hear a Godzilla roar.

I might have made this up
 
Good movie. The yeagers should've had some energy based ranged weapons IMO.

I also wish they had explored the purpose of the little doodle bugs more, and why people were harvesting them.
 
Firemind said:
It was an enjoyable movie, but I can't get over how incompetent the military is. I can suspense my disbelief that punching with huge mechs is an (cost) effective way to deal with godzillas instead of ballistic weapons (because it looks awesome), but why did the F-22s get so close to the lumbering beasts in those flashbacks? Twice. It's like the pilots wanted to kamikaze into it. It's beyond stupid. At least in the Godzilla movie, it hunted down the Apaches, but jets are faster than the speed of sound for crying out loud!

Other things I found humorous in no particular order:
Mako checking out Raleigh
Rocket punch!
Flying kaiju
"Oh hey we have a sword"
The scientist subplot
Charlie Kellie as the scientist
Ron Perlman
The stereotypes (Chinese basketballers, toughguy Aussie, Russians providing nukes)
Hong Kong not looking like Hong Kong
Radio transmission at the very end
No sex scene
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Even if we suspend our beliefs for the sake of giant robots. I still have to wonder why they keep punching the shit out of these monsters if they are inevitably just going to end up shooting them in the face or cutting them in half. It would've been cooler to see all those weapons have to be used to scrape out a win. Not just finish the fight when the fight scenes get too long.

It probably goes without saying I really had trouble enjoying this movie. Typically it doesn't take much for me to enjoy a film (even kids films). However, they found all my buttons and pushed them repeatedly. By the time they mentioned something about analog Jaegers I was like seinfeldimout.gif
 
People complaining about the punching.
Have you seriously NEVER watched a Godzilla/Kaiju/mecha anime?
Punching giant things and causing destruction is all part of the fun.
 
I liked it, but it was a ripoff of Evangelion with the ending ripped off from Gunbuster

I guess homage is a better word...although the ending was very similar
 
Sayter said:
I also wish they had explored the purpose of the little doodle bugs more, and why people were harvesting them.
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Those were just parasites. Giant ticks or lice (because kaiju are giant).

The Hong Kong crew were harvesting them because they were harvesting everything to process and sell.
 
ScraftyDevil said:
Robots fought monsters before Evangelion.
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Yeah but the whole drift handshake thing and the synchonization thing reminded me of the Synch ratio from Eva. Mainly that part. And G Gundam too. Basically a bunch of different mecha anime series stuff. It was cool seeing all of them (even if I was the only person of my friend group to recognize)

I think one thing that was glossed over was why they ever thought the wall was a good idea when you have these robots capable of crushing buildings like paper. It wasn't explained who approved that plan or why it was even used
 
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