It's especially great because I learned that it's kind of a tribute to Evangelion. Looking into its history, it seems like it was originally greenlit as the live action Eva movie that's been in development hell for years, but got changed into a Spiritual Licensee when they realized that the audience for it wouldn't justify the budget needed to make it a truly great film. I like to imagine that the crew was excited and then disappointed. "Hey guys, they're finally gonna let us do the live action Eva movie!" *CHEERING* "Oh, never mind. They want a new IP instead." Needless to say, I'm going to be very disappointed when the real live action Eva movie comes out and can't even hold a candle to its spiritual adaptation. You know, like how Hercules is a better Superman movie than any of the actual Superman movies.
It's actually more of a tribute to giant robot vs. giant monster anime in general than JUST Eva. They even came out and said so. Besides that, it is the closest thing we are ever going to get to an Eva movie.
Yeah, but the setting is pretty much directly lifted from Evangelion. The only difference is the actual plot that's applied to the setting. Somebody probably came up an extremely Adeptus Evangelion campaign by sheer coincidence long before Pacific Rim was ever thought of. Really, I think the best evidence that it was supposed to be the live action Evangelion movie is that the tagline of, "To fight the monsters, we created monsters," works better with Eva than it does with Pacific Rim.
It was inconsistent. Almost all of the cast was underdeveloped, with many of them being blatant racial stereotypes. Not much of anything in the plot was surprising. Basically Top Gun with mechs and giant monsters. And I love it.
Eva isn't exactly the first and only anime to do "Evil monsters outta nowhere. We need Giant Robots to stop em" Del Toro has stated that he's never even watched Evangelion however he wants to.
That's why I said it lifted Eva's setting rather than its plot. To quote from TV-Tropes: Didn't Del Toro only direct the film? I was under the impression that the writer was Travis Beacham, who has stated that he loves Evangelion and took a lot of inspiration from it.
WAitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait. Racial stereotypes? Also, I wouldn't equate Pacific Rim to Top Gun. PR isn't gay enough.
I stand by what I said when it first came out and give it a 3 out of 5. It was a decent movie, but they cut out a lot of the plot for more needless fighting. As for the Evangelion thing, literally the first thing my sister did when we got out of the theater was turn to me and say, "You know, that reminded me of Evangelion".
The American pilot is the best of the lot. The Chinese pilots are basketball players dressed in red and they die first. The Russian pilots are big and burly, and their Jaeger looks like a nuclear reactor. The Australian pilots were crazy. The Japanese pilot fights to honor her family and uses a sword. American pilot is seen as a hot shot. Australian pilot says "You're gonna get us all killed," literally in the same context as in Top Gun. The Russians are switched with giant monsters and the planes with giant robots. I could go on but eh, it's plain to see for me. I don't mind though. And you know you wanted to see Mako playing beach volleyball...at least I did...
I thought Godzilla was leaps and bounds ahead of Pacific Rim in every way possible except for music. Neither had memorable music. But then again, they are movies so it's not really a minus.
Godzilla's protagonist (not Godzilla; the character we follow throughout the story, Ford Brody) was hella boring. Not saying Raleigh Becket was character of the year (far from it) but he still had some personality and I liked his narration. Godzilla himself only gets like, 2 fight scenes (I am NOT counting the airfield,) while Pacific Rim had like 4 & 1/2, which wouldn't be a problem if the MUTOs had more interesting scenes. Godzilla had a great ending but a boring midpoint, while Pacific Rim never (to me) got dull. I liked Gareth Edward's direction of the film and all, and I really liked when Godzilla actually gets screen time (love the new look,) but to get there we had to slog through an hour of Boring McSoldierguy. Watanabe and Cranston were both far more interesting, and I wish the film followed one of them instead. That said, I'm getting it on Blu-ray to relive the amazing Godzilla scenes and skip every scene with Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It's been his most unimpressive performance for me.
I didn't care too much for the protagonist either. He had like...one decent scene(when he was on the subway offering to take that kid back to his parents). But at the same time, I didn't care for any of Pacific Rim's protagonists either. Since I grew up watching Godzilla movies(and before watching the new one I sat through four old Godzilla movies to get in the mood) and the one common theme among just about every Godzilla movie ever made is the fact that Godzilla is there about 10% of the time. The difference this time was the fact that in the new movie, Godzilla gave one of the coolest FATALITIES to another monster I've ever seen. Hng. That moment when he uses his atomic breath for the first time. That scene alone completely crushes anything I saw in Pacific Rim. Not to mention most Godzilla incarnations would have no trouble destroying a Jaeger. >>
It's not really nationalistic if every nation is contributing and being portrayed in a positive light. Godzilla did suspense all wrong in my opinion. They build him up a lot just like you're suppose to but then they fully show him and his trademark scream and it's really cool and all but then they IMMEDIATELY cut away to something else and it's like well what's the point? You're not building up to him anymore considering you JUST showed him and we JUST heard his scream, at that point it seemed the movie was just trying to keep Godzilla away for the sake of keeping Godzilla away. And Gozilla's enemies in this movie were all kinds of lame, it really goes to show you that Americans have no idea how to design kaiju without all looking the same. Also bwoa ****, Aaron Taylor Johnson is a BAD actor.
