Pacific Rim

[Margalis]

Nerds are extremely generous to nerd movies.

While I don't doubt that this movie is better than Transformers both the praise and excuses made are identical. It's just that this tickles the nerd fancy in a way Transformers doesn't. The positive reviews are putting me off of seeing this as they are basically "it wasn't good but I liked it anyway because someone made a movie for me."

It's very similar to what you see out of gay and lesbian films - gay people mostly agree that they typically aren't good but they (sometimes) like them anyway just due to the subject matter. I make this comparison very purposely because a lot of nerd/geek stuff these days is bizarrely centered around identity politics.

A lot of the praise for PR is worded like "if you're a true geek you'll love this movie" or "del Toro has made a movie for us geeks to enjoy."  Geeks seem very concerned about who is a true geek and who is faking, need their own websites and entertainment options, are specifically marketed to, etc. A lot of the stuff around this movie is in-group / out-group centric. Do you like this movie? You're one of us! Do you not like it? Probably a jock!

If you can't tell I find the whole geek culture thing really annoying.

[jgsugden]

The thing that pissed me off: Every review I read praised the storytelling and complex character development.  I wasn't expecting a miracle, but I was expecting to see a character journey on par with Avatar. 

 

Hey, I'm not claiming Avatar was a masterpiece of character driven storytelling, but it is when compared to Pacific Rim.  I said I was expectiong something on par with Avatar - I didn't say I was expecting something great.  Passable would have been fine in a spectacle pic like PR.

[Threash]

The Kaiju is getting it's ass kicked and all of the sudden goes "oh yeah, well i have wings i should've been using from the start!" and the robot responds with "oh yeah? well i got a sword i should've been using from the start" is so perfectly and blatantly straight out of anime that it baffles me people didn't get it.  Did they need someone to actually say "this isn't even my final form"? You were watching a live action cartoon.  The russians? the scientists? Ron fucking Pearlman's character? not sure how much more obvious they could have made it we were watching anime.

[Paelos]

While that's probably true in anime, it doesn't mean you should continue the absurd plotholes for inside joke value.

[Rendakor]

What Threash said. This is not a movie for geeks, its a movie for weeaboos.

[schild]

WEABOOS DON'T GET NICE THINGS

THIS WAS ESTABLISHED YEARS AGO

NICE AS DEFINED BY DOLLAR AMOUNT TO MAKE, NOT QUALITY

[jgsugden]

What Threash said. This is not a movie for geeks, its a movie for weeaboos.

I beg to differ - the movie is for the target audience, and this movie's target audience was geekdom.  

Go back and read thee reviews on AICN and similar sites.  Go look at the posters.  Go watch the trailers.  This movie was pointed at geeks - and it failed that audience with cliches, poor character development, and lazy story-telling.  Nothing was earned.  

[tazelbain]

Whatever, you guys are just have to live the fact that you guys are the kind of wack-a-dos that goes to a movie about giant fighting robots and leave disappointed because, although it greatest giant fighting robots movie ever created by every measure but boxoffice, it has plotholes and its unrealistic. Of course it does. Of course it isn't. Knit-picking Ninnies.

[Teleku]

Yeah, seriously, I know of nobody personally who didn't enjoy this movie.  You people are broken.  I haven't heard anybody telling people to go see it as a 'true geek' movie.  They've been telling people to go see it because it was fun/awesome.  And it's way the fuck better than anything that's come out of Japan in this vein for a long time (though maybe that's damning with faintest praise.   ).

[Threash]

While that's probably true in anime, it doesn't mean you should continue the absurd plotholes for inside joke value.

That's the thing, it's not an inside joke, it is not a "nod", it is exactly what it looks like.

[schild]

Just coming in to say AICN is the worst collection of reviewers for any medium on the internet.

[Ingmar]

Also, their site Jesus Christ my eyes.

[schild]

Harry Knowles is the only person on Earth who I will openly make fun of for being a fat bastard.

Hell, made fun of him in person at Fry's once when I bumped into his fat ass wheelchair carrying around his fat ass.

Edit: As a former fatter dude and current overweight dude, I feel for the fatties. Really. But I don't feel for Knowles. Fucking gremlin.

[Velorath]

Just coming in to say AICN is the worst collection of reviewers for any medium on the internet.

Calling them reviewers is pretty generous. They're pretty much P.R. for the studios at this point. Harry in particular has about one negative review for every ten positive ones, and the bad ones (I see the most recent are RIPD and After Earth) are about as safe as you get.

[jgsugden]

AICN reviews are generous, but if you know that, you generally get the truth in the meat of the review.

It is just in the situations in which you end up saying, "What the %#$@ were you smoking?" that piss me off.  And this was one of those. 

The ads and previews promised characters and story.  They made a huge deal of the drift and how it was an essential character driven aspect of the movie - and it was essentially meaningless.  No story points really triggered off it.  No characters really changed because of it.  They could have written it out of the script with relative ease and the movie would essentially have been the same.

And, to be honest, the monster/mecha fights were kind of disappointing, too.  They were so dark and stormy (or underwater) that you couldn't see the details.

[schild]

you couldn't see the details.

Details would've make it cost $300M.

[Megrim]

The ads and previews promised characters and story.

ahahahahahahahahahahahhaa

what previews were you watching?

Oh man, seriously, this thread.

[Merusk]

Sh, sh.. let them keep talking, it's amusing.

[Venkman]

I finally saw this last night. In IMAX 3D because I figured that'd be the best way to see it.

This was the dumbest movie I've ever liked.

I struggle not to overthink it. Shit, "overthink" is too generous. So I'll get this off my chest first.

This was the most fuckstupid premise I've ever seen.  PR makes Iron Man 3 look like Memento. I don't know nearly enough about anime to say this is like/not-like it. But if it is liek anime, there's probably a good damned reason I don't know nearly enough about anime.

Giant robots and linked brains in an age of normal cars and boats where the second best plan the planet can come up with is a wall that doesn't even have defenses on it, and long after they could just manufacture torpedos so frequently they could gattlin-gun that rift like someone sprays water at a cat until they get the fucking hint, and then the master plan is to walk to the rift instead of just carrying the mech via helicopter and dropping it straight in?

And the storytelling was equally insulting. No mere coincidence I see this movie on the same day I read this Slate article. I want to rip the whole movie to disk and replace any scene with people with the equivalent scene whatever Top Gun through Armageddon scene they used. Worse, I felt less like they were knocking off characters as much as they were knocking off actors, from Steve Buscemi through Dwayne Johnson.

But...

Once I put that aside, I rather enjoyed it. The fight scenes were fun, if themselves underutilizing the established premise of unique fighting styles and even more indvidual mechs. And the resolution of the film was fantastic on IMAX, surprisingly so for 3D. Sound was equally good. I can see this winning some type of technical award, though it is up against some pretty good stuff this year.

And once I re-turn my brain off, I am happy I saw it. Because if it was just anime, I never would have.

[Furiously]

Engels, Wayabvpar, my son and I went to see it today. 3d and Imax. Wish there was a none 3d Imax. Sound was deafening. My son liked the movie.  I thought it was a bit too similar to NGE.

[Mattemeo]

For those who came here because they actually enjoyed the movie and haven't hilariously had their time and/or money wasted by it, you might be interested in the accompanying art book, which is excellent. Really well put together, stuffed with character notes, stats (not joking!) actual inserts of blueprints and Del Toro's notes and the like. Everything is SO FUCKING PRETTY!

[Margalis]

Oh god Save the Cat.

For those who came here because they actually enjoyed the movie and haven't hilariously had their time and/or money wasted by it, you might be interested in the accompanying art book, which is excellent. Really well put together, stuffed with character notes, stats (not joking!) actual inserts of blueprints and Del Toro's notes and the like. Everything is SO FUCKING PRETTY!

This stuff sounds more interesting than the movie. I love the idea of well-considered different monster designs, mech designs that reflect regional differences, etc.

[schild]

Wayne Barlowe (the guy who designer the hammerhead monster) is the man. That has no relevance on the movie.

[Ratman_tf]

The thing that pissed me off: Every review I read praised the storytelling and complex character development.  I wasn't expecting a miracle, but I was expecting to see a character journey on par with Avatar. 

 

Hey, I'm not claiming Avatar was a masterpiece of character driven storytelling, but it is when compared to Pacific Rim.  I said I was expectiong something on par with Avatar - I didn't say I was expecting something great.  Passable would have been fine in a spectacle pic like PR.

 

[Ratman_tf]

Nerds are extremely generous to nerd movies.

While I don't doubt that this movie is better than Transformers both the praise and excuses made are identical. It's just that this tickles the nerd fancy in a way Transformers doesn't. The positive reviews are putting me off of seeing this as they are basically "it wasn't good but I liked it anyway because someone made a movie for me."

It's very similar to what you see out of gay and lesbian films - gay people mostly agree that they typically aren't good but they (sometimes) like them anyway just due to the subject matter. I make this comparison very purposely because a lot of nerd/geek stuff these days is bizarrely centered around identity politics.

A lot of the praise for PR is worded like "if you're a true geek you'll love this movie" or "del Toro has made a movie for us geeks to enjoy."  Geeks seem very concerned about who is a true geek and who is faking, need their own websites and entertainment options, are specifically marketed to, etc. A lot of the stuff around this movie is in-group / out-group centric. Do you like this movie? You're one of us! Do you not like it? Probably a jock!

If you can't tell I find the whole geek culture thing really annoying.

The geeky part of me was riding high, but I found the rest of the movie was palatable as well. I liked the characters, and I liked the story. I would think it'd appeal to a much broader audience. You don't have to know Evangelion or Godzilla to "get" this flick.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I hate to be THAT GUY but....


Can we stop comparing this to Neon Genesis Evangelion because you know, they are nothing alike.  There are giant robots, there are monsters, end of similarity.  Whether you like the movie or not, comparing this to NGE just sounds like parents complaining about "the rock and roll" all sounding the same.

If anything it's more like the super robot shows of old, mazinger, getter, dangaioh and a dozen more giant robot anime that were all about robots punching monsters.

[MediumHigh]

I enjoyed this waaaaaaaay better than Star Treck, a good extra two showings than Man of Steel. Iron man 3 is a close call, I liked 9/10ths of it, while I liked 11/10 of this, despite iron man having waay better actors, characters, and dialogue. For example in Iron Man 3-
- war machine flies away to never get seen again after saving the president, despite the large battle with terrorist super soldiers still going on
- pepper pots pulls of ninja kungfu panda shit out of her sweaty titts
- tony stark invented skynet
- you can hijack warmachines armor, get someone unauthorized to pilot it, have them fly it effectively, and push the president inside the armor, pre-program it to fly directly to the bad guys base, and render it completely inert once in your custody
-bad guy goes through the trouble of shooting is very valuable subordinate instead of killing tony, only to try to kill him anyway 60 minutes later. Also murderous psychopath doesn't kill rhodes either....

[Furiously]

I hate to be THAT GUY but....


Can we stop comparing this to Neon Genesis Evangelion because you know, they are nothing alike.  There are giant robots, there are monsters, end of similarity.  Whether you like the movie or not, comparing this to NGE just sounds like parents complaining about "the rock and roll" all sounding the same.

If anything it's more like the super robot shows of old, mazinger, getter, dangaioh and a dozen more giant robot anime that were all about robots punching monsters.

Totally...if you ignore that both are about giant mechs fighting monsters and that the drift is a lot like the pilot/Eva interface...oh wait...they are a lot alike.

[Furiously]

Oh yea..take it to politics if it is that big of an issue to you.

[Ratman_tf]

If anything it's more like the super robot shows of old, mazinger, getter, dangaioh and a dozen more giant robot anime that were all about robots punching monsters.

Spider Man?

[rk47]

I can't even remember a single character's name except for Mako.
But I do remember the robots names. 

[Samwise]

I can't even remember a single character's name except for Mako.
But I do remember the robots names. 

Hannibal Chow, motherfucker!

But I just thought of the main character as "Jax" throughout the movie.

[MahrinSkel]

Where's my god damned shoe?

--Dave

[Abagadro]

Can't we all just get along and wait with anticipation for Elysium and World's End?

[rk47]

I can't even remember a single character's name except for Mako.
But I do remember the robots names. 

Hannibal Chow, motherfucker!

Hannibal Chau (Perlman),... OOOH THAT GUY.
I really don't remember, 2 week after the movie my mind is wiped ^_^