• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Pacific Rim confuses, enrages internet narcissists

Status
Not open for further replies.
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Calling it unwatchable is hyperbole, but it was definitely a mediocre-to-bad script. There's no reason that an action movie "has" to be dumb and have bad characters, but the standard defense of this movie is "but man, giant robots!"
Click to expand...

Yea, that kinda bugs me. Characters are the viewer's link to the heart of the movie. Mako and what's-his-face are supposed to be that emotional connection, but that aspect just didn't work for me. And as I said before, the Father-son duo was supposed to be another emotional connection for the viewer, and that just tripped and fell flat on its face.

There are lots of action movies with dumb premises that deliver on fantastic leads. I wished Pacfic Rim would be able to stand toe-to-toe with the classics in that way.

I like Pacific Rim regardless, but it's a pretty significant fault in my eyes.
 
Shamrock7r said:
There were multiple scenes where the jaegers were clearly seen wrecklessly running into populated areas and buildings, and throwing the Kaiju into populated buildings and cities as well. Aren't these pilots of the jaegers supposed to be heroes and protectors of the human race? Instead they show little regard for human life. Death and destruction everywhere at their hands and then they don't even care at the end. The two main characters decide that sharing a smile and a kiss is more important than mourning for those lost and a city destroyed. EL OH EL.
Click to expand...

Maybe pay attention next time? The characters at the end don't kiss. The Jaegers only resort to fighting in cities once the Kaiju have broken into city perimeters. The Kainu are smart in that they deliberately move in-land and every battle is a struggle to stop them from reaching land.
 
I didn't find the "good" parts of Pacific Rim good enough to be worth slogging through the bad parts.

I was there to see robots and monsters punch each other and not boring -0,2 dimensional characters saying bad writing at each other for 3/4 of the movie.
 
Kitsunebaby said:
Oh, it's definitely not the worst action movie I've ever seen, just the most disappointing considering my love for the director and subject matter. I expected a lot more from del Toro.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is, Pacific Rim is the only del Toro film I like, in large part due to my love for the subject matter. Beyond that, a lot of the criticisms people are leveling at this film in this thread are exactly the same ones I'd level at all of del Toro's movies. Shouldn't have been a surprise there, in my opinion.
 
PR was disappointing indeed, the action isn't good enough for me to overlook everything else(which is totally awful). I don't agree that it's unwatchable, but it's certainly not something I'm interested in watching again.
 
Superflat said:
I wouldn't call Pacific Rim a satire. Self-aware is more like it. They know they built an impractical world and make nods to how crazy it is, but not to the extent of sarcasm and highlighting ironies that satirical pieces do.
Click to expand...

Giving it some more thought, yeah, you're absolutely correct, satire was the wrong term to use. My bad.

It's still baffling to me that people can't understand that the ridiculous and cliched elements are 100% on purpose.

I'm not trying to say the movie is 2deep4gaf or anything -- it isn't, at all! It should be extremely obvious after ten minutes that Pacific Rim isn't trying to be serious or grounded.
 
Monocle said:
Quoting for the new page, because seriously people. Subjective opinions do not erase the content of the film.
Click to expand...

"I thought it was really cool how Mako dyed her hair to match her jacket that she wore in the flashback scene. It was like she was still thinking about that day and carrying it with her."

Damn, that is a nice catch.
 
Monocle said:
For people who call Pacific Rim a dumb movie:

The Visual Intelligence of Pacific Rim

I'm not suggesting that post ends the argument, but it makes a lot of good points and highlights a number of often overlooked details that are rather important if you're interested in evaluating the movie on its actual merits.
Click to expand...

I started reading this and my eye started twitching and then I stabbed myself to death. There were similar pages dedicated to why Prometheus was a good movie.
 
I agree with the the OP, with a little bit of the hyperbole removed.

I think maybe I was the problem. the characters didn't make me care about the flimsy plot. Not caring about the flimsy plot didn't let me fall into a delicious state of disbelief suspension. So I was stuck with the thought, 'This is so pointless.' When I think about it, a movie pitting impossible monsters against equally impossible robots in a blue-bloody and oil slicked crumbling cityscape the plot and characters should only be there to allow the cool action. Perhaps it is that it tried to do so much more, and failed (at least for me) that I found myself unalterably bored by the time the second kaiju robot fight began.

Things that shouldn't matter because you wouldn't get a monster vs robot fight otherwise began running through my head.

"Why don't they just put a bunch of turrets right at the mouth of the rift?"

"Why don't they use some kind of small UAV that drills into the kaiju's skull and explodes effectively lobotomizing it?"

"Why is a wall sealing off the entire pacific ocean considered the only other viable option for dealing with the kaiju? I mean they will still be out there in the ocean even if the wall works, just growing in numbers."

"Why would an advanced other dimensional alien race create giant monsters to take us out in the first place? A series of microorganisms specifically targeted to kill humans would be far more efficient." (maybe then it would be tiny robots fighting tiny single celled extra-dimensional microorganisms.)

And the list goes on and on. I just couldn't shut my brain off and enjoy the struggles of that one guy, and his boss and his girlfriend and that other guy and his father, and some other guys that are also doing something else. Even when those struggles manifested themselves into building sized robots fighting building sized kaiju.
 
Monocle said:
Quoting for the new page, because seriously people. Subjective opinions do not erase the content of the film.
Click to expand...

The Kaidanovskys are basically the best.

I already kind of loved them for the fact that they pilot Cherno Alpha, a Jaeger that literally has its head transposed with a god damn cooling tower. But they're actually pretty fabulous even beyond having the hottest ride of them all.

For one thing, there's the fact that Sasha Kaidanovsky is, you know, another female pilot, which is pretty notable and cool. What's more, she's the member of her team that is constantly shouting information and orders. She seems to take the dominant role as far as interacting with the outside world, analogous to the dominant roles Raleigh and Stacker take when they pilot (although it's worth noting the complexity of that dynamic in Pacific Rim--the pilots are two parts of a whole, after all). In a way, her relationship with her husband is the mirror of Raleigh's with Mako: she is the expressive, somewhat more dynamic figure to her far more restrained husband who, like Mako, is less vocal and has an air about him of the coiled spring--force held carefully in balance.

Again, my reaction here is kind of colored by my shared experience of the movie with Sara, who is a huge Cherno Alpha fangirl. (Sidenote: this is why I always try, if possible, to watch movies with someone else. A shared experience, I find, is so much more meaningful. I love theaters for this reason.) One of the things we both noticed while watching was the way the two characters are given depth and personality through their body language. Look at the above images: Sasha's movements are lithe and determined... and more than a little lusty. She loves her husband and is quite open about expressing it. A simple gesture meant to beckon him to the place she's found in the mess hall thus becomes a sultry gesture. This is pretty cool, actually, as an affirmation, once more, of a female character's desire.

What's more, she puts an arm around her man protectively, baring her teeth at Raleigh to warn him away! I love this so, so much, because this kind of attitude is sort of stereotypically masculine, but here we've got the lithe, sexy female positioning herself as the protector of the big burly man. It's a funny moment, but it's also cool, because it writes, if not a novel, then certainly a god damn short story about these two characters and their relationship and their love and their connection as pilots, all through the power of body language.

No, Sasha does not get any lines of consequence.

But when the Kaidanovsky's finally decide to get out of the way of the plasma canon that threatens to blow up half the shatterdome, she's the second to start moving along the catwalk, and her body language oozes derision for the bullshit she's being subjected to, like she's doing the plasma fist a fucking favor by not just staring it down until it breaks down and cries.

And when Leatherback crushes the cockpit of Cherno Alpha, it's her scream--a scream not of pain or fear but of hate, pure hate, and boundless fury--that we hear.

Sasha Kaidanovsky is a badass, and she doesn't need to speak for us to know it. Every movement she makes speaks volumes. The Kaidanovskys have a voice in this film. Their voices are their bodies, their movements their words, their gestures their punctuation. If Mako speaks through color--if she speaks through pigment like a painter--the Kaidanovsky's speak through the dance they do together, a beautiful, loving, protective, forceful dance that continues even to the moment of their deaths.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this doesn't read like preaching at all.
 
Halcyon said:
I started reading this and my eye started twitching and then I stabbed myself to death. There were similar pages dedicated to why Prometheus was a good movie.
Click to expand...

Borderline non sequitur. Prometheus' quality or lack thereof is unrelated to Pacific Rim.
 
Jarmel said:
Come on dude, no. The robots very rarely have any sense of actual weight. That's like someone saying the Star Wars prequels are better in choreography than the OT.
Click to expand...
The argument is not that the Transformers fights are better executed, but that the scenarios for the combat are more interesting, which they are. Half of Pacific Rim's battles are a bunch of slow ass robots standing in the middle of the ocean and punching things.
 
Krev said:
The argument is not that the Transformers fights are better executed, but that the scenarios for the combat are more interesting, which they are. Half of Pacific Rim's battles are a bunch of slow ass robots standing in the middle of the ocean and punching things.
Click to expand...

First superrobot mecha experience?
 
I completely disagree with the OP. I find the visuals fantastic, the story serviceable and the fights a mecha fans wet dream. It's ironic being that all my counterpoints are similar to what people told me in the Fast and Furious 6 thread. Did I do as poor a job explaining my stance as the OP?
 
Daingurse said:
Shitty comic explained this better. The mechs were literally made, to beat the living shit outta Kaiju with blunt force trauma, to limit the Kaiju Blue contamination.
Click to expand...

You don't even need the shit comic.
Saying that the blood creates an enviromental disaster and looking a jaeger punching a kaiju is more than enoght for your INTELIGENCE to DEDUCE why they are punching kaijus and not exploding kaijus =P

Which is why it is so infuriating how "brainless movie" and "why didn't they started with the sword" are ALWAYS next to each other =P

I know the movie has SERIOUS problems (specialy when there is no Jaeger on screen) but the sword is NOT one of then
 
Krev said:
The argument is not that the Transformers fights are better executed, but that the scenarios for the combat are more interesting, which they are. Half of Pacific Rim's battles are a bunch of slow ass robots standing in the middle of the ocean and punching things.
Click to expand...

The original comment had to do with the fight choreography. As for the actual scenarios, the 2nd video starts out with them fighting in a warehouse. Pacific Rim had an underwater fight if you want to talk about the combat scenarios.
 
BruceLeeRoy said:
I completely disagree with the OP. I find the visuals fantastic, the story serviceable and the fights a mecha fans wet dream. It's ironic being that all my counterpoints are similar to what people told me in the Fast and Furious 6 thread. Did I do as poor a job explaining my stance as the OP?
Click to expand...

No, you didn't, IMO. I liked FatF6 but I came away from your OP on that thread seeing how someone could hold that opinion, even if I disagreed. This OP reads like he watched it drunk or something and blames the movie for it.

Halcyon said:
the wall of nonsense just reminded me of it. It's like an opinion man.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you can find that kind of thing for just about any movie on the internet, good or bad.
 
This movie is the Gurren Lagann of cinema. Its over the top awesomeness either jives with you or you go home a sad panda who doesn't get it.
 
MattKeil said:
No, you didn't, IMO. I liked FatF6 but I came away from your OP on that thread seeing how someone could hold that opinion, even if I disagreed. This OP reads like he watched it drunk or something and blames the movie for it.
Click to expand...

Phew. Thanks man I was about to have myself committed
 
Jarmel said:
Come on dude, no. The robots very rarely have any sense of actual weight. That's like someone saying the Star Wars prequels are better in choreography than the OT.
Click to expand...

Like I said, its all about scenario.. Its all that made big robot fight for me, no one really give a crap dogfight in macross made gravitational sense aren't we?

The sense of weight in PR seriously overstated anyway. You can still see the floatiness at Transformers movies, remember when the gypsy doing semi somersault at the fallback cut?

Yeah that really put emphasis on sense of weight amirite?
 
The script isn't bad, it's just banal. It lacks the right energy or uniqueness to really elevate it but it's serviceable for what the movie is doing. What the film is doing is showcasing tropes/homages from others works in its own style. From that perspective, I think the film is absolutely fantastic. The mecha fan in me gets to sit down and look at where these ideas came from and what works it harkens back to while enjoying the visuals and decent characters.
 
Said it before and will say it again. It's a deliberate and clever satire of anime. Watch Overdrift for a shorter and slightly more OTT approach to the same idea.
 
fertygo said:
Like I said, its all about scenario.. Its all that made big robot fight for me, no one really give a crap dogfight in macross made gravitational sense aren't we?

The sense of weight in PR seriously overstated anyway. You can still see the floatiness at Transformers movies, remember when the gypsy doing semi somersault at the fallback cut?

Yeah that really put emphasis on sense of weight amirite?
Click to expand...

wat
 
Jarmel said:
The original comment had to do with the fight choreography.
Click to expand...
No it didn't.
Edit: ah, I see the post you are referring to. My bad.
Jarmel said:
As for the actual scenarios, the 2nd video starts out with them fighting in a warehouse. Pacific Rim had an underwater fight if you want to talk about the combat scenarios.
Click to expand...
Standing underwater and punching things.

Okay, that's a bit reductive, but I found it boring. Transformers fights are usually much more dynamic. Yes, they suck for other reasons. That's beside the point.
MattKeil said:
First superrobot mecha experience?
Click to expand...
No.
 
I really really hate opinionated thread titles.

Maybe I should make a thread about them called "Opinionated thread titles are terrible, unreadable threads".
 
But guys! It was full of cliches intentionally - it's supposed to be bad. Thats what makes it good, right?

except thats not how it works. its still a terrible movie even if its "bad" intentionally.
 
Yeah it was bad, i hated how they glorified the US mecha while having all the other awesome looking mechas dies within minutes of their appearance in battle.
Extremely disappointing movie, I'm a huge anime mecha fan btw.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

AWS is down - internet in shambles
2
58
1K
ForAcademicPurposes replied
"Advertisers" and Self-Censorship of the Internet
14
493
GloveSlap replied
Reddit will block the Internet Archive
News 
28
2K
ChuckeRearmed replied
MacBook Pro (Retina 2014) connected to Wi-Fi but no internet access
15
650
LordCBH replied
Bots surpass humans as most active Internet Traffic
43
1K
IntentionalPun replied
Top Bottom