As long as the lead character shouts “let’s do this” at least once in a movie then I feel as if I got my money’s worth.
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A dying Earth left to society’s remnants not a reboot? Sometime you should check out Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, I think you’ll enjoy it.
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The thing about Pacific Rim was that yes, it was formulaic and predictable (and far more so than its obvious main influence, Neon Genesis Evangelion, where the basis of Pacific Rim’s plot and robot functionality was lifted from).
But as much “meh” as is getting poured on it here, Pacific Rim is an enormous hit… in certain circles… and I don’t think it matters that more general audiences lump it in with generic blockbuster tripe. I thought it was the best of its type possibly ever, because I am square in its target audience - not a comic book fan but a fan of Godzilla movies and anime etc. - silly as those things often are. It’s the only time Hollywood has done something in that vein and got it not just right, but as good or better than the source material.
Anyway in context of this discussion, the reason Pacific Rim works is because while it’s formulaic and predictable, it isn’t boringly strung together. There are interesting, fresh characters (for Hollywood), played very well. The action scenes are truly imaginative and new (again… for Hollywood) and it’s just a lot of fun. That’s what blockbusters were always supposed to be… not necessarily great art, but good filmmaking and lots of fun (think classic Spielberg as the ultimate examples). Blockbusters are now wholly forgettable and usually not even any fun in the moment!
Pacific Rim did it right… and unfortunately I won’t be surprised if there’s some truth to this weird anti-Elysium rant, but from the trailers it does look like it’s certainly far better than the usual blockbusters of recent years.
Will Pacific Rim and Elysium (if it’s actually any good) prove to studio execs that people want a little more out of their blockbusters? Joss Whedon’s Avengers already proved that (to some extent) so I think we’ll see more and more risk put into these big-budget movies in coming years… along with plenty of tripe, as usual… which is great. Part of that though is that not every movie will please everyone - which is why I don’t care that not everyone loved Pacific Rim as much as I did. Not everybody should love everything good. Again, the jury’s still out for Elysium, but I’m going to give it a chance.
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I’m not surprised Elysium is very violent. District 9 was very good (if flawed) but it was far more violent than it had to be – and this comes from someone who likes action movies.
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LEEEEROY JEEEEEENKINS!
(this space only filled out to be more descriptive per the small pop-up’s request).
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I’d just like to jump in and say how much I love the idea that advertisers and marketers pay us to say terrible things about their movies.
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a ‘The Producers’ style scam?
The most enthusiastic person I’ve come across regarding Pacific Rim is William Gibson. His twitter feed is still full of stuff about it, weeks after he saw it.
Elysium, I wouldn’t mind seeing, but I simply don’t have the time/opportunity these days. It looks better than After Earth and Oblivion, but not by much. Pacific Rim was the first film I saw at the cinema since The Hobbit.
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I saw Pacific Rim. I will probably not see Elysium. Pacific Rim was exactly what you expect from the “Summer Blockbuster” genre, and done well. There’re no surprises - you know from the first screen moments exactly how everything will fall out. There’s a whole lot of gearporn. The CG is among the best I’ve seen. And yet, for all this, the movie does seem to have more heart than your average Bay explosion-fest. It was earnest about its subject, it was almost reverent in its tips o’ the hat to the genre, and it didn’t snark.
Could it have used some additional intellectual depth? Hell yeah, but then it woudn’t have been the same kind of movie. It wasn’t pretending to have depth, just to be a fun ride.
I think it may well be the last of the Great Hollywood Summer Tentpole Action Movies.
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bummer, i was hoping for another movie along the lines of district 9, even if it had been the same story as district 9 with different characters i would have been happy 
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Thanks for the review. I kind of expected the movie would be more of the same. I’m sad there have been almost no good action movies in decades. Aliens 2 is a good movie in my opinion. So is Terminator 2. The Matrix has its holes but at least it left an impression. What’s really stuck out since then?
Certainly this year’s movies have been mostly forgettable. I saw Star Trek, I remember almost nothing about it except it had too much action, not enough story. Same with Man of Steel. Totally forgettable. I enjoyed Pacific Rim even if I don’t consider it good. It’s also mostly forgettable but robots punching monsters carried it a little.
That’s partly what I don’t get though. Really good action movies continue to make money for years and years. Crappy ones don’t do they? So it would seems like they should at least try to make the next T2 instead of the next Transformers.
I also don’t get why it’s so hard to write better. I’m not asking for great writing, just someone to go over the plot holes or the obviously bad ideas and fix them with something better. Example of the day, “Olympus has Fallen” (spoiler alert!) which I watched on a long plane flight. I wanted to like it. I went into it just hoping it wouldn’t totally suck. But, I didn’t buy for a moment we’d pull out of South Korea to save the President. I didn’t believe for a moment any of the people in charge would give up their launch codes. It was like some video game writer wrote this shit. How hard would it have to been to figure something out that didn’t require it to be absolutely unbelievable?
Sigh…
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Huh?
Get it straight – a movie can still be a great movie and not pass that test. It’s just not AS great a movie because it doesn’t. The Bechdel test is just one of many measures of any movie’s deployment of objectionable vs. laudable character types and situations.
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For me, it’s if they announce, “I’m going in!”
Or if someone is warned, “GET OUT OF THERE!!!”
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Ciminey. Reading this is like reading a review of, I dunno, The Godfather, and complaining that it didn’t deliver any fully belly laffs, or reading a review of a Pixar movie and hearing that it doesn’t deliver really good scares. Or hearing about the guy in crutches who failed to win the footrace.
A movie about explosions and outer space and a head-shaven Matt Damon doesn’t deliver surprising sotrytelling and oh-so-relatable characters? What did you EXPECT, man? Must all films aspire to this unattainable ideal of nonsensical innovation and assumption-challenging or can a thing just be kind of fun and kind of interesting and still be worthwhile?
It’s gotta be awful hard to go through life being so very disappointed that everyone isn’t always acting as intelligent as you assume they should be.
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It’s the whole hero-concept that’s put me off most movies. Always about a hero, and always about revenge. Even one of Disney’s fundamental concepts is revenge, often by proxy.
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Ditto. It’s bloody boring, and safe, and predictable. There are so many other ways to use the same settings and characters while creating more interesting and even revealing stories. But that just wouldn’t make as much money, and so we get boring, safe, and predictable.
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and jumping out of the way of a 900mph bomb pressure wave puts the final icing on the enjoyment cake
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So… It’s an adaptation of Battle Angel Ailita? Honestly, everything I’ve heard so far convinces me that this is a shallow rewrite with gender swapped casting.
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Most, not all, but definitely most indie films are dense, boring, and incomprehensible. I spent two years going to virtually every movie that showed at the UA theater behind my apartment, or to the college campus theater that showed mainly Indie movies while between classes. I can’t remember half of them. Which is my way of saying that Indie film has a long way to go. That’s why it’s still Indie film. Otherwise, it would be Establishment film by definition.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Primer, absolutely. But so many of these movies are an idiotic rehashing of the same lovelorn themes of Sensitive Guys Who Just Aren’t Appreciated Enough By the World and That Girl They’re Into. Sure it gets packaged into something that vaguely resembles a plot, but it’s still vapid numbness. Speaking of that incredibly low bar called the Bechdel test, whose minimum requirements are still not sufficient to certify anything as being remotely feminist-ish*: All those protagonists are such terrifically Nice Guys ™.
Look, I’m all for funding movies with interesting plots and originality. But let’s face it, Indie movies that are financially viable DO become blockbusters. Little Miss Sunshine broke a $100 mill at the Box Office and is enshrined as a classic.
*Yes, I’m aware Primer doesn’t Bechdel. I’m also not a critic of the test in itself, but it was intended to be a starting point- not a gold star.
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Yeah, I’m not crazy about the revenge theme. Much as I liked The Count of Monte Cristo as a kid, there’s only so many times I can watch that movie or read that book, and it seems like all these movies are the The Count on crack.
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movie violence is a spreading disease on culture…
As true now as it was when it was “comic book violence.” If I wanted to read movie reviews with this depth of logic and understanding of the medium and its place in our culture, I’d go to the Family Research Council’s website.
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