User Reviews

While watching this movie, I was reminded of a couple of films and TV shows from my youth, first was any of the original Godzilla films, the second, a TV show Ultra Man. The FX were way better here, but, it just made me think of them. I found the film entertaining, no Oscar winner, but, it was good. Some parts kept you on the edge of your seat, of course, rooting for the good guys.

I also had to think that mankind would have or could have thought of a better defense/offense weapon than giant robots. To bring a fight into the city would have cost trillions of dollars, perhaps Quadrillions of dollars. Okay, I'm reading way to much into it. Watch the movie, you will enjoy it.

To all the reviewers who gave this movie low ratings, I can only say this; What did you expect to see? Did you watch this expecting to see something deep and meaningful? The trailers and posters make it perfectly clear what kind of movie this is going to be. Heavy CGI, regular Hollywood 'save the planet' storyline re-run. Young eye candy super hot actors. You know the score. If you want to see something clever, this is not it and it was never going to be.

Question is, does it do the job it sets out to do? I think it does rather well, yeah OK, it's cheesy as hell and you know how it's going to end before it starts, ( the world will be saved right? ) considering it's being told in retrospect the clue to the inevitable ending is there in the first 10 seconds of the movie.

I liked the mind meld idea of the 2 pilots, and I thought they covered most bases explaining the technology behind the enormous robots (Jaegers) pretty well. It does have a few technical plot holes here and there, but the film does have a 'let's just get on with it' kind of feel. The alien creatures (Kaiju) are great and the robot v monster battles are superb. Towards the end the pace picks right up and the story starts to fall apart a bit, but by that point who cares? In general Pacific Rim is a fast paced, slick looking piece of techno-action that most Sci-Fi fans will enjoy. It's big, loud, dumb and very pretty, largely due to Guillermo Del Toro being at the helm.

It's Sunday afternoon on the sofa material I think. I know these kind of films are 'designed' for the big screen, but honestly I prefer them at home most of the time. Unless of course, you like feeling as though you are sitting the middle of a continuous explosion for and hour and half.

I went into the theater expecting to see a cartoon for adults and that is exactly what I paid for.

Guillermo Del Toro is an extremely talented director, producer and above all an extraordinary artist. Pan's Labyrinth gave justice to his talents and "The Strain trilogy" exemplifies his talents as a creator and innovator of interesting mind-grabbing stories/plots.

However, Pacific Rim was a horrible movie not only because it lacked substance (a clear plot, climax, resolution), but because it proved to audiences everywhere that Hollywood no longer requires decent actors and plot-lines to create a blockbuster movie.

The only intricacies and attention to detail that could be found in this movie was in the CG design of the so called Jaegers (Robots). Yet, the movie served to ignore the basic human sense of sight when most of the movie took place in a dark setting. It was a metaphor of how the movie itself was a black hole of cash and talent with all the darkness sucking and robbing people of their investments and experiences.

An episode of Beast Wars that I watched as a young child had more substance and gave more satisfaction to its audience than this movie. Pacific Rim is a destruction to the art of cinematography in that its business model lies in providing the awe-factor, shocking the audience into believing the movie is great with bling. Expensive jewelry doesn't make a woman more beautiful, it just proves that she has the money to afford it, and that is exactly what Pacific Rim accomplished.

The movie is just a failure of epic proportions and the fact that it rates a 7.9 on IMDb just proves that we, the collective audience, have just stopped caring. Movies no longer provide us with mind-blowing catharsis, they are now just a means of blowing off steam.

As far as summer blockbusters go, 'Pacific Rim' has probably the most unabashedly uncomplicated premise - giant robots versus giant monsters. How much you enjoy Guillermo del Toro's robot-monster smackdown ultimately depends on whether you expect the movie to be any more than that. If you did, then you're probably going to walk away disappointed at how simplistic this apocalyptic spectacle will turn out to be; but if you're satisfied simply with watching huge-ass monsters and robots go up against each other, then you will enjoy every bit of this epic (and yes we do mean it literally).

Indeed, the draw of del Toro's monster of a movie has always been to witness the monumental series of battles between massive lizard-like monsters (referred to in the movie by the Japanese word 'Kaiju' as a tribute to the science fiction films from the country which featured such giant beasts, e.g. Godzilla) and 25-story high robots (known as Jaegers, or 'hunters' in German) operated by humans. And in this regard, let us assure you that nothing in your expectation will prepare you for what del Toro has managed to accomplish on screen - not even comparing it to a 'Godzilla' meets 'Transformers' movie does it any justice.

Let's start with the basics. First and foremost, the action is shot cleanly, meaning none of them shaky-cams nor extreme close-ups that diminish the scale on which it is unfolding. It is also coherent - thanks to some impressive work from del Toro regular Guillermo Navarro as cinematographer and John Gilroy and Peter Amundson as editors - rather than just a mashup of scenes that don't flow well into one another. We'll add one more before we start gushing - it is also beautifully choreographed, with just the right mix of medium and wide shots to place you right into the heart of the action.

If that description above seems too clinical, then how about this - these setpieces are superb; in fact, they are worthy of every superlative that you can think of. Working on a gargantuan scale, del Toro executes the action with magnificence, whether the fleeting shots of the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge at the beginning or the more detailed sequences in the middle and at the end - in particular, a simply jaw-dropping one begins at sea just off the waters of Hong Kong and then continues seamlessly inland where both the port and the very city centre gets decimated by two Jaegers battling two Category 4 Kaijus.

It isn't just about how colossal it gets; it is also the sheer mesmerising quality of the images, starting from the amazing level of detail of the Jaegers and the Kaijus. Even though it seems to be raining a little too conveniently every time one of these battles happens out at sea, there's no denying just how real and majestic each of them feels. On the other hand, the cityscapes are arresting in their neon hues, and the combination of the futuristic look with which del Toro paints these familiar cities with the bioluminescent appendages and venom of the Kaijus make for a particularly appealing visual palette.

Now that we've finished with the savoury bits, it is only fair that we get to the (ahem) less than wieldy parts, which is in actual fact just about everything else we have yet to talk about. At first, the science- fiction mythology sounds rather intriguing - instead of coming from the skies, the threat to our planet came from a rift deep within the Pacific Ocean, a portal through which the Kaijus emerged and necessitated an equally massive response in the form of the Jaegers. Ditto the functioning of the Jaegers, which given their size, have to be operated by two pilots who sync up their minds via the neural handshake, otherwise known as the "drift".

But del Toro and his fellow screenwriter Travis Beacham (who is also credited with this original story) uses these elements too mechanically. The rift is no more than an excuse for an underwater climax where the Jaegers aim to close the portal from which the Kaijus emerged, a resolution not quite different from that in 'The Avengers'. More significantly, the melding of minds isn't quite exploited for enough dramatic possibility, particularly given its significance in enabling our two lead pilots, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) to bond so seamlessly with each other.

Equally clunky is the characterisation, which has as much poignancy as a piece of metal. Raleigh's scarred Jaeger pilot, still reeling at first from the death of his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff), heals too quickly for us to make much of an emotional connection. Mori's own traumatic near-death experience as a child that continues to haunt her also rings hollow and is equally quickly forgotten. Idris Elba plays his Jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost in suitably macho fashion, but is largely one-note and engineered simply to deliver the rallying cries at suitable intervals - like the oft-heard "Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse" in the trailers.

No thanks to the plotting and character issues, the pacing of the movie sags considerably after a prolonged prologue establishing the necessary backstory of the robots-versus-monsters war and Raleigh's own past. It only picks up at the halfway mark when the deep-sea monsters finally clash again with their mechanical counterparts, which will either be stimulating enough (if you're an adolescent fanboy) to make you wet your pants or leave you numb. Our opinion? It is del Toro's most ambitious, most imaginative and probably most groundbreaking movie ever, but we wish there were more of the warmth and character that have defined some of his best work.

This is the worst movie I have seen in a long time. Sure it has crazy creatures battling it out in the oceans which is just fine with me but so many elements just let the movie down. It could have been so much more.

Why did the drivers of the Jaegers need to actually be in the Jaeger at all? and why are the controls linked to massive mechanical devices, surely this would be electronic. And the head is fired onto the Jaeger via some massively complicated lift type procedure? Yet they can clearly just get out the head when needed?

It took 8 days of tanks and planes to take down a Kaiji but one shot into the eye from an auzi clearly causes it some distress? ONE SHOT?

The oceans are about 4 stories deep, which seems to change or the size of the Jaegers adjusts during the movie.

What's with every bit of steel needing to be rusty except for Ron Perlman's shoes? and massive bulkhead doors being used for the living compartments.

The acting, sooooo bad.

Let's send the helicopters to go and pick-up the two survivors, but lets send 20 helicopters, that makes much more sense, especially since this is a military program that has been shut down so ready access to dozens of helicopters becomes easier.

They can build Jaegers with some sort of amazing sword device that comes out of nowhere but forget to tell the drivers?

Charlie and the professor, just random cast choices there!

It's set in the future, some things are hi-tech others are retro rusty junk, it doesn't make any sense.

There's just so much more. How this movie gets a 7.8 is beyond me. Don't waste you life and avoid at all costs.

Guillermo Del Toro's epic homage to the Japanese 'Kaiĵu' movies, produced on a bigger budget than all such giant monster movies of the last fifty years combined. Del Toro obviously has a great love and respect for the genre, resulting in a very catchy action flick, undoubtedly the best American counterpart to its Japanese predecessors. One might almost say Hollywood has redeemed itself for the 1998 version of Godzilla, but such a statement had better be held back for another year, until the next American reboot of Godzilla hits theatres in 2014. In the meantime, Pacific Rim works well as an appetizer to the big G's resurrection. An extra-dimensional rift opens on the bottom of the Pacific and huge beasts come pouring out, wreaking havoc on mankind as they lay waste to cities and obliterate our armed forces. Humanity quickly sets aside its internal differences and joins forces in creating big robots to fight the creatures on their own terms. Piloted by a pair of human Avatars, these so-called 'Jaëgers' effectively combat the beasts, but the life of a Jaëger pilot as Del Toro reveals is filled with personal loss. When the monsters emerge ever more rapidly from the Breach, as it is named, Jaëger command develops an intricate and dangerous plan to halt the Kaiĵu threat once and for all. Del Toro briefly explores the history of the first Kaiĵu assaults and the development of their robotic antagonists and afterwards spends more time getting us invested in the human characters than is usual for this type of film. It does make the movie feel like its dragging its feet for a while, until he unleashes the action the audience craves with a vengeance, resulting in over an hour of nigh endless monster bashing. Unfortunately he cannot help but inserting a few characters that are supposed to deliver some much needed comic relief to make sure we don't take it all too seriously, but sadly these characters – stereotypical geeky scientists as ever we've seen them – are so mind-boggingly annoying (Charlie Day particularly) they make you wish for a Kaiĵu to step on them to end their endless whining. Del Toro's talents are better suited in delving deeper into a world where Kaiĵus are not only a threat to world peace but also big business: toy companies produce action figures of them, creepy cults worship them and in Hong Kong, a 'Bone Town' is established, a black market for Kaiĵu products for shady purposes, similar to the disgusting existing South-East Asian trade in animal parts. Run by Ron Perlman (always a joy when paired with Del Toro), some of the funniest, wittiest and anatomically most unsettling scenes take place here. Though the dealings and the history of the Jaëgers are fleshed out to the fullest, their enormous alien adversaries, ever the most important ingredient in a Kaiĵu film, do remain somewhat underexposed by comparison. Unfortunately their motivations – they're really foot soldiers out to cause as much damage to mankind as possible, in order to pave the way for an invasion from their (smaller) intelligent overlords – remind us of the recent Shyamalan flop After Earth, a movie we'd rather forget entirely. Usually, Kaiĵu are more antiheroes than full-out villains, but Del Toro opts to keep them a simple threat to be wiped out instead of imbuing them with a more sympathetic character like their forebears Gojira, Gorgo and Rodan, who were always the victim of human (nuclear) folly, transforming them into avenging gods to remind us of our place in the world. The movie is dedicated to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda, two people who only too well understood the need to layer their creatures and make them charm you so you feel more for them, but in this instance, Del Toro decided not to go with such wisdom. As a result, Pacific Rim at best is a highly likable action flick, but not necessarily an apt lesson for western audiences into the true nature of the Kaiĵu genre. Then again, there's only so much you can do with the notion of giant robots bashing giant monsters. Let's say Guillermo gets as much out of that premise as we could hope for.

A movie that could have been great if not for the obvious flaws that drag it down. Let me break it down by sections:

Story, Screenplay & Dialogues: A very promising premise that promises much more than if actually offers on screen. A razor straight story line that does not deviate from the obvious and every scene follows a predictable path. Offers no surprises, thrills, twists or turns. A scrappy screenplay only serves to drag the pace, especially in action sequences...where you are itching for the mega fights only to be let down. The director tries Chris Nolan / Inception'esque trip down memory lanes, only to falter without generating any emotion from the audience. Absolutely horrendous dialogue. Completely uninspiring. Scenes where a single look should have conveyed the emotion powerfully has been diluted with meaningless words. More worse as the viewer can even predict what is going to be said!

Action & Animation: Very good, but could have been much much better. More slo-mo sequences wherein you can have a classic view of the behemoths colliding are missing trying to generate pace, but does not reach its mark. Most sequences happen in night/underwater adding to a jumbled rumble feel.

Characters: Tame and insipid. lack of character development leaves the viewers emotionally detached and not able to 'connect' with any of the characters. Notable exceptions are Elba and Pellman. Both the lead characters are eminently forgettable and do not make a impact. Director should have watched Independence day or MiB to understand the importance of character development. A leaf out of Real Steel would have lifted this to greatness.

Overall: Still a good movie. Watchable once with minimal repeat value. The Jaegers are awesome and just for that I rate this 7/10.

The film opens with a narration. It explains that a portal has opened connecting us to another universe in the Pacific Rim. Through this hole emerges destructive creatures from 60's Japanese films, updated of course. In a missed plot point, conventional means of fighting them seem to be useless, so we construct 100-150 foot tall robots called Jaegers to combat them. Missiles fired from Jaegers are effective, but...okay I tried not to think too hard about it.

The Jaegesr are controlled by 2 people, dressed in "Star Wars" storm trooper gear, that are in a mind meld that would make Spock green with envy. They are called pilots because Jaeger masters might be a copyright infringement.

The film combines elements of "Independence Day," "Starship Troopes," "Transformers" and "Ironman" and sets them into a stolen Japanese plot. Of course the rule is if you steal a plot from Japan you have to hire someone from Japan to be in the film, hence we have Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori. She will eventually team up with John Rico, eh ah Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam because Casper Van Dien is too old) to fight against the monsters coming at an increasing rate. There is a subplot that includes Ron Perlman and Charlie Day.

There are two schools of thought. One is to use the Jaegers to kill the creatures, the other is to build a war to keep out the illegal aliens. When the wall fails to keep out the illegal aliens, the Jaegers can defend the world thanks to "stand your ground" principles. Pardon my attempt at political humor.

The supporting characters were better written than the main ones.

This is an over dramatic, action packed popcorn film. The language is designed to appeal to a teen/young adult audience. Looks good on the big screen.

Parental Guide: 1 F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

The overly dramatic acting and dialogue hits you right off the bat in Pacific Rim, but if you can laugh through this then you can enjoy the incredible CG that comprises the bulk of the film. Pure-action-crappy-everything-else films rarely entertain me all the way through, but my eyes couldn't help feasting on the fight scenes between the incredibly detailed Kaiju and the shiny, badass Jaegers.

Each fight takes it up a notch, progressing from the first "fist" fight intro to fights with a frickin awesome sword, cargo ships, flying Kaiju, and so on. One of my favorite scenes was when the Kaiju baby bursts out of its dead mother and then chokes itself on its umbilical cord. I really loved the design of all the Kaijus and how they were each very different. Serious kudos to the CG artists and animators - I especially liked the bioluminescence element they added.

As for the plot and characters, they were totally absurd. The one working defense system that the international community has pooled their resources into has two scientists - TWO - that no provides resources or listens to. Stacker, the commanding officer, only pauses once in a while to yell "SHUT UP!" at them. There was some pretty crappy acting by the two leads, but watching it in conjunction with the absurdity of all of the other characters, dialogue, and plot, just made everything funnier.

If I had watched this in theaters, I probably would've been groaning to myself through the whole film, but being able to joke and laugh through a lot of the scenes, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it and appreciating the aspects that were truly well done.

"Pacific Rim" is going to be a hit with fanboys all over the planet. It's the type of movie that they feel obligated to love because of what it's about and who made it. In this case we have a movie about alien dinosaurs (Kaijus) fighting giant robots (Jaegers) directed by Guillermo del Toro (filmmaker who most Comi-Con attendees think can do no wrong). Sounds like it should work on every level doesn't it? Yeah, well it doesn't!

Alien monsters named Kaijus come up through a rift in the Pacific Ocean (Get it, "PACIFIC Rim"). Giant robots steered by military officers are used to battle these ferocious extraterrestrials. Our military must join forces with the world's most annoying scientists to find a way to seal off the portal between our world and the dimension they come from.

Let's start out my review on a positive note. The CGI in "Pacific Rim" looks great. The aliens and robots blend very well with all their surroundings.

And that's the only thing I can come up with positive about "Pacific Rim." As a whole, the movie is absolutely unbearable to sit through. It escapes me how sequences of robots and aliens fighting each other could be so uninspiring that I literally dozed off at points.

The design of the Kaijus are completely unoriginal and nothing we haven't seen before in a dozen other sci-fi movies. The Jaegers are basically souped-up giant robots that resemble what we've seen in "Power Rangers" dressed in "Halo" armor. Booooring.

Now we move into character development. The entire middle of the movie is one big, long, drawn-out attempt at developing characters we will feel emotionally tied to. I completely understand the writer's motivation for doing this.

The problem is that every character in "Pacific Rim" is so annoying you actually want them to die or exit the screen as quickly as possible. Add to this the fact that not a single one of the actors seem to give a crap about their stereotypical role in the film and you have a serious problem. In a nutshell, the acting is absolutely horrid.

"Pacific Rim" is a tired conglomeration of clichés we've already seen in way better movies in the past. There are so many recycled ideas mashed up in it that you could almost put them down on a call sheet as bullet points. Character who lost his brother in a past battle and retired? Check. He's being called back into duty by his old military leader? Check. Military leader gets a chance to be the hero and sacrifice himself in one last battle? Check. Military leader gets to give long rousing inspirational speech just like the one the President gives in "Independence Day?" Check. They're all here for your predictable enjoyment.

Let's just call "Pacific Rim" what it really is. It's Guillermo del Toro's failed attempt at making what he wished was his essential "Ultraman vs. Godzilla" homage. As I was running out of words to use in place of "unoriginal," I came across several synonyms that describe this movie to a tee: dull, unoriginal, corny, heavy-handed, humdrum, ordinary, phoned in, stale, uncreative, unexciting, unimaginative, unimpressive, uninspiring, uninteresting, and uninventive.

I'm giving parents a warning in closing. There's no way any child under the age of 12 will sit through "Pacific Rim." Absolutely nothing exciting happens for 45 minutes in the middle, at which time they will get uncontrollably antsy and beg you to leave. This won't bother you because you'll be ready to run out of the theater screaming by then anyway.

If you are not in a coma or if you are over the age of 8 don't go see this movie. It is terrible. On the other hand, if you are under the age of 8 I think you will like it! In short, this is a movie for kids, not for adults.

So what is wrong with it? Everything.

1. Acting is terrible.

Mostly poor acting. The relationships in the movie are hard to relate to. The characters are impossible to relate to. Actually, the acting of the two scientists is so bad it makes the others seem not so bad after all.

2. Most details of the plot are terrible.

Giant monsters come through the ocean floor from another dimension and kill millions of people. That seems like something that could be a fun science fiction action movie. But, how did they get there? How do they survive the pressure and heat? How do their skeletons handle the enormous weight of their bodies when they come out of the water? Well, apparently they did and they do all of that. Let's just accept it.

How do the smartest men on earth decide to defend against these monsters? By building giant robots called Jaegers that punch them. However, the monsters have skin and horns that are tougher than steel so nothing much happens when they are punched. So when you build your robot you make sure it's steel has the appropriate strength, right? Wrong. Let's make them really fragile so the hull can easily be breached. Yes!!

It turns out (somewhere in the later parts of the movie) that the monsters can be cut in half with knives and killed with fire. Wouldn't it then be a good idea to kill something like this with something that actually works, like an appropriately sized bomb instead? No, let's punch them with these fragile robots. Yes!!

During the debriefing after a fight, let's use the knowledge we have gained during the fight to prepare for the next fight. Wrong! Let's not learn anything. Yes!!

When the monsters are attacked by airplanes and helicopters they fly so close that the monsters can punch them. Who, with just the tiniest amount of survival instinct, would fly a plane like that?

Most of the fighting takes place in the ocean. Since the hulls of the robots are so easily breached let's protect the pilots with at least some sort of oxygen mask! Wrong! Let's not do that!! Let them instead drown. Yes!!

Some fighting takes place under water where vision is extremely poor. So let's equip the robots with state of the art systems to detect monsters, so pilots aren't surprised by monsters sneaking up on them. Wrong! Let them use their own eyes. The result is they don't see much and are constantly surprised by attacks they were unaware of. Yes!!

Since fighting can be tiring for the pilots, shouldn't we try to make the way they control the robots as effortless as possible? Wrong! Let's put them in heavy suits of metal and attach them to giant mechanical constructions. Yes!!

Why are the pilots inside the robots to begin with? Because wireless data transmission doesn't work in the future, right? Well it turns out it does work. But let's try and make a system where if the robot is destroyed the pilots are killed. Yes!!

Robots are controlled partially with the mind by something called "drifting". One person using all of his brain for drifting would put too much strain on him. This is just the way the robot "drifting" system works. Let's not rebuild that system. Let's instead rebuild the entire robot so that we need two pilots in each. Yes!!

To pilot a robot it seems you need to use "drifting". However, nowhere in the movie do you see any pilot controlling anything through the mind. But let's keep it because it is cool. Yes!!

Since we are equipping the robots with a few weapons shouldn't we try to make the launch mechanism fast? Wrong! Let's make sure there is enough time for the monsters to rip the weapons from the robot before it fires. Yes!!

Let's lift these 2000 tonne robots with 8 helicopters. Because 5 tonnes of lifting force x 8 helicopters = 2000 tonnes of lifting force and that will work, right? Yes!!

When fighting in a city let's walk over a few hundred cars and through a few buildings because that is a really funny thing to do and hopefully there are no people there anyway. Yes!!

Sometimes when they need to talk or reflect on life or whatever the monsters will wait for them to finish before they attack again. On the other hand, how else could the actors finish what they have to say? Yes!!

In the very beginning of the movie, the leaders of the world have realized how ineffective the robots are. So they instead decide to build walls to protect cities from the monsters. Because monsters can't climb, right? And people only live in cities, right? The construction is based on extensive analysis of the monsters bone and muscle structure to make sure the walls are strong enough, right? Wrong!

CGI effects in this movie are realistic and cool. The visual effects are extremely well done. However, since the plot and the story and some of the acting is so poor it really makes you wonder. If there are all these talented people doing CGI effects, why were there no other talented people involved in making this movie?

To summarize. Mankind is portrayed as extremely stupid. Good CGI effects. Poor directing. Poor acting. Poor story-line. Avoid.