Thoughts on Pacific Rim

So, I finally got to see it last night.

It was...refreshing. It was a summer popcorn movie that made no pretense of being anything else, but it did manage to avoid becoming, as I say, "Mecha vs Kaiju Porn" - that is a string of fight scenes stuck together with only the vaguest semblance of plot.

True, the plot was not exactly deep and was, in places, highly predictable - but this wasn't a movie I went to for amazing plot and deep character development. It was shamelessly exactly what it was.

From the artistic point of view, this is the first time really BIG mecha have been seen in a live action movie - and they pulled it off great. (The Transformers are A. Smaller and B. Robots not mecha). It was considerably better than Transformers, for that matter.

Fans of the genre will probably do better than I did at recognizing the various kaiju. The only one I pegged was Rodan - and I can't even swear to that identification. (The codenames used in the movie were different, no doubt for copyright reasons).

And yes.

They do trash Tokyo.

The only real "theme" in the movie other than beating on kaiju is the relationships between the pilots. Pacific Rim's mecha require two pilots to operate - linked through a sort of machine telepathy. This requires two "drift compatible" pilots - and the majority of the pilot pairs seen are blood relatives. The relationships give the movie a bit more depth than just monster smashing.

If you haven't seen it yet and are a fan of kaiju, mecha, or that kind of anime - better get to it, as the movie is already starting to disappear from theaters. I think it's in grave danger of turning into a cult classic...