Another positive review from some die-hard kaiju fanatics I follow [REVIEW] Pacific Rim: Uprising Is Far Better Than Abysmal Trailers Would Have You Believe also Spoiler robot spirits of those kaiju-jaeger hybrid drones when? They're so fucking cool looking
This is pretty much my overall thoughts on the movie as well. I don't watch anime so some of it reminded me of Gigan which I thought was pretty cool. and the kaiju towards the end reminded me of Destroyah.
to put it bluntly, the movie in general is a live action anime, compared to the first one's literal and emotional weight. it's a lot less substance and a lot more gimmick, but it's fun gimmicky.
The fact that when asked a question about transformers on one of wired’s Interviewsc John Boyega went straight to bayformers makes me very sad indeed... FOC trypticon would demolish gypsy avenger though!!!
I was expecting this movie to be a bit trash ever since del Toro left but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the trash. Low 7/10. also fuck that one thing you know it
Went to the cinema to burn a couple of hours today expecting to watch Tomb Raider, but saw this instead as it was starting sooner and I had totally forgotten that it was coming out. I really enjoyed it personally. Nothing special, but a solid two hours of fun and a nice change of pace from all the other brightly coloured punching movies that insist on being too long and/or trying to pretend that they aren't just brightly coloured punching.
Wow, very nice blend of symphony & industrial right there... aka my absolute favorite hybrid of styles.
Just saw this and I don't know how to feel about it. On one hand I like how it expanded certain bits from the last movie and a couple of twists but on the other hand it doesn't have that feel I got from the first movie. It felt more like a USA production of a giant monster/anime story whereas the first movie truly felt like a legit strong Japanese styled kaiju movie in a lot of respects but maybe that's what they were going for. not to mention certain scenes and elements I wished could've been delved into more but it's no to the point where it felt bad. Maybe I'll change my mind later on.
Really didn't care for Boyega's part, it kinda killed whole movie for me. Definitely doesn't have the depth and feeling the first one had. Almost felt like a Bay movie. Not terrible but not as good as it should be.
So I read that article that @Tyrannosaur put a link to, and I'm even more excited. I LOVED the first one, but this film kept slipping from my mind. However, every time I saw a trailer, I'd get all giddy. I haven't watched any video reviews, because literally all the reviews I've seen online for ANY movie is ALWAYS just 30 minutes of someone whining. I'm definitely going to see it this weekend, but I'm unsure of which day.
I... hmmm. I didn't love it. And I really, really wish I did. I think I liked it though. I certainly liked parts. Just gonna tag everything: Spoiler It is no Pacific Rim. The tonal shift between the two films is... well it's striking. It feels so removed from the feel and look and everything the first movie was. It's cheap-looking, bright and phony, and the action more cartoonish. The pacing is also utterly awful and, well, yeah, feels like a Michael Bay movie the way scenes abruptly start and stop. The movie's ending is absurd. The title just appears, then cuts immediately to more movie. You have to actually have credits first in order to do a mid-credits scene. There was a lot of unsatisfying parts. Obsidian Fury had two really cool fights then is promptly removed. Newt's subplot feels abandoned, left for a possible sequel. Mako's death is utter bullshit. Seriously, that was insulting. Such a passionate, fiery character from the first film appears as nothing more than a worthless bureaucrat who dies in a helicopter crash. Jake's backstory is a clunky retcon, not really giving a convincing reason for not being mentioned in the first one. He's not actually estranged and apparently he and Mako remained in contact. It's glaring. The characters are rather blah. Say what you will of PR1's characters, they felt far less obnoxious than these. It feels like they're going for a "broader demographic" with many young cadets. See, in PR1 we didn't get to really know Cherno and Crimson's pilots because ultimately they weren't a large part of the movie. They were just outside the scope of the story being told. This film feels overstuffed in every way. Too many characters, too many plots, too many concepts. The first movie is elegant in its simplicity, and only throws in enough twists to keep things interesting. It's so simple, relatively blase ideas like a sword or a flying Kaiju are treated as game-changers. In this the Jaegers are far too gimmicky with guns and missiles and lots of... things going on. Not TF-levels of gimmickery, but it feels unfocused. You don't have the sleek brawler, the swift fighter, the brutish tank, and the... three-armed buzzsaw guy. You've got a lot of mixed signals and similar feeling guys. A lot of the Jaegers are almost too agile. The red and white one with the Indian/Russian pilots was especially weird. It's built stocky, but uses a whip and leaps around. Athena is cool but it's shade of red is garish. I also hated how many "lol random" moments there were. I rolled my eyes at the "that should've been epic" moment. Yeah, it should've been, so why wasn't it? The rather forced bickering at the end is also indicative of, again, the difference between this movie and the first. It's more cynical, more pandering. It forces in jokes and quips where it doesn't fit simply to have them. It over-gimmicks (albeit only slightly) the Jaegers and action because people like shit that transforms and makes noise and does crazy stuff. As for what I liked, I liked Jake. He was pretty good. Not perfect, but I think he's a stronger character than Raleigh. I also didn't hate the little girl. She was actually okay, if not blander than I expected. The action was also very good. The highlights were Gipsy's fights with Obsidian, and the Jaegers fighting the combined Kaiju. The way it just tore them apart was awesome, and the way it was summarily defeated was genuinely badass. It was fucking silly as hell watching Gipsy get pulled by a little rocket like a ragdoll, but the movie had long since established its tone as highly unrealistic. I think it's why the lack of Del Toro grit was missed, because all of this could've felt ten times cooler with his touch. And I just can't express how cheap this movie looked. Especially the interior scenes. The tilted zoom-ins and cheap lighting just make it feel off. I mean. I dunno. It's far from bad. But it's not exactly good. You may like it, but I was left feeling wanting at many parts. I really, really hope Del Toro comes back if a third is somehow greenlit. I need to see this world through his lenses once more. I think a good comparison is the credits sequences. In the first movie, it's just the theme over slow-scrolling shiny black models of the Jaegers and Kaiju. It's reserved, sophisticated, and reveling in the material. Thre's a lot of respect for the subject matter almost like a tour through a museum exhibit. It's classy and cool. The credits here try to go for a similar thing, but the theme isn't as classic, the art style of the assets more generic and stylized, and there's distracting sound effects for everything. It's the same basic idea, just not executed nearly as well.
maybe i missed something, but i couldn't make sense of the Spoiler kaiju combining sequence. so the robot parasite things come out, i thought they were healing the wounds on the kaiju, but no, they're ripping the kaiju apart and someone turning into organic skin? and apparently the other 2 kaiju were in that mess too? the end result didn't really feel like a combination of the 3 except for the split tails, but it was too symmetrical to really seem like a combined monster. especially because the 3d readout showed the three brains as all being in a row on its back
I feel like you answered your own question. Spoiler The parasite things completely broke the Kaiju down into basically raw materials for this new one. They didn't just weld them together, they took them apart like a Lego set and built something brand new. That said, I totally get what you say about it not really looking like a combined Kaiju. Though I feel like this could've been avoided if the component Kaiju had more dominant features. Like one has bigger legs, one has bigger arms, etc. So that when they combined you sort of retroactively understand what's going on. The version we got isn't bad but I agree it could've been realized better. Which is practically the movie in a nutshell. Also, as an aside: Hey, shout out to the Gundam Unicorn cameo.
