Review: 'Pacific Rim'

I remember the day when I was first introduced to what became a childhood favorite of mine with VHS copies of 'Godzilla vs Megalon' and 'Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla'. I was around 7 years of age and since then, throughout the rest of my childhood, I had watched almost every Godzilla movie. The good, the bad, the strange and even the american Godzilla. Giant monsters beating down other giant monsters (and occasionally giant robots) was always the way to go in my youth.

There's no doubt this movie, 'Pacific Rim', borrows heavily from the 'Kaiju'-type monster movies from the past and pays great homage to them as well. The second half takes place in Hong Kong, after all. But the problem is that many of todays audience won't be looking at the movie in that particular nostalgic fashion, but more on the overblown, 'Transformer'-like CGI effects for mindless entertainment.

Having seen previews for this movie, and the huge emphasis on the special effects/action/mayhem that's shown with these giant man operated robots, I had my doubts. I was expecting to hate this movie, that it would become another 'Transformers' rip-off, which I was already never fond of in the first place. To my surprise, I was only half wrong.

Yes, sure, it had it's moments that were fully overdone with the action and effects. Yes it involved aliens coming from another universe bent on destroying all humankind. Yes it involved giant robots defending the earth from the alien species. But it all came down to these two important things: Pacing and character. I was pleased to see there were actual moments in this film that let you spend time with these characters and make way for them to develop. I'd say there's at least a good fifteen minutes in the movie that allows just that. So when the end of the film comes around, you actually do sort of find yourself rooting for these decent characters to save the world from these giant, Godzilla-sized alien rhinoceroses. Well, that's what they looked like to me.

The films director is Guillermo del Toro, and his work from the past has left a strange impact on me. Some of his films I don't find any liking for, like 'Cronos', then there are others that I really adore, like 'Pan's Labyrinth'. 'Pacific Rim' is definitely his biggest film, budget and effects-wise, to date and I find myself sort of in the in-between of the previous two films mentioned. I don't love this movie or find it great in any way at all, but I'm far from hatred towards it and found some surprising amount of fun oozing off from it. Overall, it was surprising with what it delivered.

My rating: 2.5 / 4