Pacific Rim

First off, today I learned that Jaegermeister means "Master Hunter".  Actually, I knew a Meister was a master of something, but in the opening seconds of Pacific Rim, they define "Jaeger" as meaning "Hunter".  It connected the dots for me.  That has nothing to do with this movie review post.

Secondly, Pacific Rim is easily the most enjoyable thing I've seen on screen this summer. It might have something to do with being an 80's/90's kid who grew up watching Voltron, Robotech and the like, but judging from the reactions of the younger set in the theater, they were having a damn good a time watching giant robots throw down with giant inter-dimensional alien beasts for 2+ hours too.  I suppose when all you've had in this genre the past few years was seen via a shaky, indestructible camcorder or involved Shia Labeouf saying "no" a lot, this was quite the treat.

The plot, if for some reason you were concerned with such things, is that monstrous Kaiju are coming to earth via a rift in the pacific ocean, wreaking havoc on mankind, and being total dicks to everyone they can get their semi-truck size claws on.  They're each about the size of skyscraper and are really pissed off all the time.  Humanity's (awesome) response to this threat is to build equally monstrous robots called Jaegers operated by two pilots who act as left and right brain lobes within the mechanical behemoth's skull.

It's pretty much a given that anything directed by Guillermo Del Toro will have a vast array of cool beasts and characters to look at, and he doesn't hold back here.  In the blue corner, the Jaegers have cool names like "Gipsy Danger", "Cherno-Alpha", and "Striker Eureka", while their opponents in the red corner bear names like "Knife Head", "Trespasser" and "Leatherback".  The level of detail and care put into designing these things, like everything else in the movie, is top notch, and they managed to give them individual identity without resorting to racist automobiles (I'm going to lay off the Transformers franchise now).

I saw the movie in IMAX 3D, which was worth the extra couple of bucks, even though it literally puts money in George Lucas's already fat wallet and I can see some people feeling a little bit like the early Jaeger pilots in some spots.  Seriously, my eyes were watering from the insane level of stuff flying around during the battle scenes.  There might have been blood coming out of my eyes.  It was pretty rad.  I theorize Del Toro wanted to make the audience get the full experience of being inside a massive robot that's linked to your brain and the brain of your co-pilot while a twenty-five-story Komodo Dragon is bitch slapping you with its tail.

In short.  This was just all out fun.  Strap in and cast off the chains of moody, introspective superheroes for a little while. Keep an eye out for homages to previous giant monster/robot films like Godzilla (and I swear the quick arm motions in one scene were straight out of Power Rangers).  Speaking of which, I've heard there's an upcoming Godzilla movie...  We'll see.