My Review of "Pacific Rim"

Pacific Rim is a giant monster movie that came out back in 2013. Time really flies when you don't realize it. I remember seeing this movie back when it first came out and being floored by how much fun it was. I think this movie is the catalyst that pushed the resurgence of the giant monster movies.

The movie starts off with a quick montage and narration from our hero Raleigh. He's basically telling us the history behind his alternate universe. In their timeline 2013 was the introduction of the Kaiju's. They came out of nowhere and no one really understood anything about them. Kaiju's are basically giant monsters. They came out every so often to terrorize the earth.

In order to fight the Kaiju menace the world set aside their differences and banded together to rid the Earth of these creatures. This resulted in the Jaeger initiatives. Countries would build gigantic fighting robots to defend earth against the Kaiju creatures.

Seven years later Raleigh comes into the big picture. He's a pilot for a Jaeger named Gypsy Danger. These giant Jaegers require a lot of brain power in order to piloted so they require 2 pilots at all times. Raleigh would co-pilot Gypsy Danger with his older brother Yancy. The two are brothers are compatible with one another so it makes for easier piloting.

One fateful mission Raleigh and Yancy go out to fight a pretty tough Kaiju. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances Yancy was pulled out and killed. This shook Raleigh up so much that he walked away from the Jaeger program to live in solitude.

Four years after the horrific Jaeger incident a military man by the name of Stacker comes to visit Raleigh. They need his help as the Jaeger initiative is being shut down. Stacker has one last ditch effort that he wants to attempt before they close up the Jaeger initiative. Raleigh was one of the best pilots he's ever known so he needs him on the mission.

That's basically how the general story starts and it's really quite impressive how they are able to build such a detailed world. They have a whole past storyline to explain the Kaiju and the Jaegers. It almost felt like some sort of backstory similar to Cloverfield.

They have a lot of interesting characters with very cartoonlike mannerisms. It's as though the movie knows what it is and tries to dial everything to eleven. We have the two hilarious scientists that are trying to figure out more about the Kaiju. Then we have the stoic leadership of Stacker and the caterpillar character of Mako. I mention that they are interesting but they are still one dimensional cliché characters. Still they are a lot of fun because the cast really play their characters perfectly.

There are a ton of jokes in this movie that will keep you laughing and most of them come from the wacky scientists trying to discover more about the Kaiju. This doesn't offset the badass tone that the rest of the movie builds up. When I say badass I really mean it because the giant robot and monster fights is really what you came here to watch.

Giant Robot and monster fights are what you will be getting. They do not skimp out on the action in this movie. I liked how each of the fights would progressively get bigger and bigger. I remember watching one particular fighting scene and thinking it was done like an anime TV show. The Jaeger or the monster would constantly be coming up with new abilities that the audience becomes giddy for. With each escalation you wonder what the heck how are they going to top this? Somehow they kept outdoing itself.

You'd think that the action would look dated by now but the visuals still hold up to today's standards. Sure some of the scenes look a little cartoon like but it never takes you away from the movie. They do a nice amount of slow motion. I'm glad they did this because if they didn't it would really be tough to see all the action. There are many clever ways they moved the lighting to help us keep track of what is going on. They also used very dynamic camera angles that help establish the enormity of the fights. The fights are probably the reason why I keep coming back for more.

They wrote this story to fit this type of movie quite well. It's not overly complicated with tons of different things going on so that we mainly focus on the task at hand, getting the Jaegers to beat out the monsters. This simplicity helps make this movie the perfect popcorn movie flick. They don't even have a romantic storyline in this movie which is unheard of. There is an implied relationship but not to the point where they're having a full on romantic relationship. It's a nice twist that I wasn't expecting.

I know I mention that this story is simple and the characters are cliché but there is still a huge level of creativity in this movie. The art direction and the symphony of action is conducted perfectly where you'll be at the edge of your seat for most of the movie.

Overall, I would say that I've seen this movie probably 10 times already in my lifetime. I was never really into monster movies like this back in the day but when this movie came out I changed my tone. There is much fun in a simplistic movie such as this. They were able to put everything in the right places and had me wanting more. I have to give this movie a 9 out of 10. It gets this mark because I could watch this movie over and over again and not get tired of it. This movie is just a blast.