Big Screen Breakdown: Pacific Rim

August was an... awful month. Barely had time to remind myself to breathe, much less write a lot of blog posts. I actually watched this movie several weeks ago, but never got around to writing it up. And that's a pity, because I was looking forward to Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim more than any other movie advertised this year.

• If you know anything about Guillermo del Toro, you know he makes really good-looking films. I fully expected this movie to be dumb, but I also hoped it'd be really pretty. And, yeah, it looks really good.
• Part of the visual appeal (for me, at least) comes from the fact that one of the guys who designed the monsters was a man named Guy Davis. Davis is not really all that well known, I don't think, but he's one of the artists from the comic book B.P.R.D., a Hellboy spinoff by Mike Mignola. I love me some Hellboy, but Guy Davis's work on B.P.R.D. is just as good. Maybe even better.
• The monsters look great. That's all I'm trying to say.
• I'm harping a lot on the visuals, because the story itself is kinda lacking. Okay, not "kinda" lacking. There's more substance to a waterlogged saltine cracker than to the plot of Pacific Rim.
• Among the leading roles, Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi are easily the standout performers in Pacific Rim, both because they handle their roles very well, and because the rest of the lead characters are just a bunch of generically pretty white people.
• When you get to the secondary characters, things get a little more interesting. There's a pair of doofy scientists that have "trying too hard" tattooed all over their faces. Sure, they got a little grating, but they're far more interesting to watch than the generic "shooty shooty" military crew.
• Also, Ron Perlman is a boss actor. His character is just completely gaudy - he wears gold-plated shoes, for crying out loud. Yet Perlman brings exactly the right level of restraint to the performance that makes him easily the best character in the show.
• There are two big mistakes Pacific Rim makes. The first is trying to get us to actually care about the characters. Other than Ron Perlman, they're all kinda bland. Spending so much of the second half of the show focusing on the characters feels like "too little, too late." I haven't cared about any of them before, so why should I now?
• The second mistake is waiting until the middle of the movie to deploy the gian robot chain sword. Seriously, when that thing appeared, I may have cried a little.
• Best way to sum Pacific Rim up is with an experience I had while watching the movie. One of the giant monsters throws one of the giant robots over its shoulder. As the robot flies through the air, some kid sitting behind us in the theater shouted "Wheeee!" Got a HUGE laugh. It was awesome.
• Verdict: "Giant robots punching giant monsters." You already know whether you'd like this or not.