Is it weird to think (admit) that I find these two pieces of art, to have more personality and humor than the main two characters during the entire movie?
Just saw this today, and I was really disappointed, even in the "It's a dumb, summer Blockbuster, just turn off your brain and enjoy it" Well.. I tried to turn off my brain but I kept being distracted by the very poor writing and boring main characters with cliche love story in the making...more than three times I found myself finishing the sentences of the characters before they did. Such poor writing. Idris Elba's character was the only watchable person in the movie, that main dude, was a horrible choice for a main lead...He was just an average (TV actor) that was given even worse script to work with.
The Asian lady (with blue tips, I had hard time taking her seriously, is that homage to Evangelion or something?)... was just slightly more blander than the dude, ironically they did kinda deserved each other. Much like many boring couples do in real life. Between the guy's relationship with her and that Aussie "bully" guy fight scene "Apologize to her", I swear I thought I was watching an episode of 90210 or Degrassi High or something, the fuck kinda high school bullshit was that?
Also you would imagine a professional (military) pilot, wouldn't use childish dialogue such as "I think it's dead but let's go back and double check" about their enemy during a fucking battle...! You know... maybe use some more technical combat terms to his copilot, such as "target down" "confirm kill" etc... video games have been getting this right since the first Call of Duty game, what's their excuse? And again, who wrote this shit?
I would've loved to seen a movie following that blond Russian couple around, manning that Russian Jaeger... They looked more interesting than the main two.. and not only they didn't say a word, they weren't even on screen for more than 2 minutes. What was their story? What's their relationship to each other? How long have they been piloting that weird looking Jaeger? nothing, who cares.. let's just drown them asap and... cut back to a close up of our high school heroes having weird sexual tension while staring at each other in the eyes.. fuck me! such lost opportunity...
Also, this one didn't bother me as much, (because I never expect to LOL or chuckle at action movies like this) But the movie lacked humour more than I anticipated. The only time I remember chuckling out loud was when Charlie Day's character says "It's classified information, I cannot tell you even if I wanted to.. well it's pretty cool... actually... I'm gonna tell you." to Ron Perlman's character on that balcony scene. I think there was at least another two attempts at humor in the movie besides that one, but I don't even remember, they fell flat.
Anyway I could go on forever just on the terrible writing and main characters of this show.. but I must stop there and applaud three things I liked about the movie.
1) The special effects (phenomenal) "Always raining, always night time" didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I can't imagine robot vs monster battle scenes be too convincing during broad, bright daylight settings.
2)This may seem trivial to some, but it's very important to me, the lack of shitty product placements we always see in this type of movies (summer, action blockbusters) I'm happy to say, I can't even remember seeing one, if they were a few, they flew right over my head.. I didn't see one Pepsi can, not an Acura SUV/car (maybe that little Nissan hatchback in the very beginning on the bridge?!?....nah!) Nothing, no Mountain Dew, No 7 Eleven, No iHop... And thank you to the film producers for not doing this to their film.
3)Last but not least, my favorite part of the movie that I was pleasantly surprised with was the Kaiju. Their designs were great, you could easily distinct the gorilla Kaiju from the crab kaiju to the alligator Kaiju etc. cool designs...And more importantly cool back-story behind them. Loved that they weren't just mindless monsters plowing through the city, they had a gameplan and they were adapting to their enemies strategies and fighting back accordingly. Charlie Day figuring this shit out by studying their brain was a definitely the only decent part of the story. I was honestly rooting for the Kaiju, I was hoping they would destroy all the stupid Jaegers and triumph and destroy the shitty, boring humans.
You know the movie failed in storytelling and character development when you gave two shits about the sappy, melodramatic "old soldier giving a pep talk...and returning back to the battlefield for one last time to give all he's got, including his life bullshit!" and just wanted to see those Kaiju kick ass (They were the true characters in the film)
I honesty didn't care if Idris, that bully, or that Japanese woman, along with the cardboard cut out, poor man's Changing Tatem dude died in battle against those cool monsters.. I mean they just killed off the pilots of the Chinese and Russian Jaegers like they were nobodies.. Why should I stop and care about what happens to the Gypsy Danger all a sudden? Oh yeah because it's "analog" it doesn't shut down during a power surge..really?
it's an action comedy with ALL anime clichés thrown in. Its great entertainment after a few beers.