Pacific Rim

Guillermo del Toro + kaiju + mecha + Idris Elba + the voice of GLADOS = I am so, so there!




One thing that impresses me in the trailer: at least in those brief clips, the monsters and the mecha have a real sense of scale. One of my biggest beefs with CGI is that way that creatures seem to lack a feeling of mass, weight and size, partly because the animators cannot resist the temptation to make them move too quickly. But the shots in this trailer have real feeling of size and mass.

Of course, I can't view the trailer right now. I will check it out tonight.

Get 'er done!

Looks like a bit of fun. I agree that the CGI looks promising. Movement does look realistic when compared with other CGI efforts.

That is the one advantage that man-in-suit effects have had over digital effects: the sense of mass. Done well, with approprate undercranking and well-chosen camera angles, suit effects can get a pretty impressive sense of weight and size. The Nineties-era Gamera trilogy especially excelled at that, despite being even lower budget than the Godzilla films.

If Pacific Rim can have that kind of look even with digital effects, then I pretty much will not care in the slightest about any deficiencies with the story!

Perhaps. But I would be happier with a somewhat decent story.

Story is always good. But kaiju fans have their priorities!

I ordered Godzilla vs. Biolante on Blu and should have it this week. Since most of the series has still yet to see an HD release in this country, that Eighties-era title was an interesting choice, but it may partly be due to the fact that it has never been released on disc in this country at all.

I must confess that I am not a huge fan of big-monster movies just because of the big monsters. So a somewhat decent story certainly makes a difference to me.

For a kaiju fan, story is the icing on the cake. Great story + lousy monster action = good film, but not a good kaiju film. Lousy story + great monster action = weak film, but great kaiju film. Both = classic. Doe not happen often!

I probably shouldn't ask this, but where does the 1998 remake of Godzilla rank for a kaiju fan? I will reserve my opinion for now.

It does not even rank. Most Godzilla fans, myself included, do not even consider it a Godzilla film. Emmerich & Devlin completely misunderstood the appeal of kaiju eiga -- frankly, they misunderstood the appeal of giant monster movies in general. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, despite being very dated, is a much more entertaining film. There was not necessarily anything wrong with changing the mythology of the character, since it has been played with constantly over the decades in the Japanese movies, but they literally drained any and all mythology out of it and were left with a big lizard. Not a very cool-looking one, either. I have MUCH greater hopes for what Gareth Edwards can do with the character.

My general opinion is the movie sucked, but I'm not looking at it from the viewpoint of a kaiju fan, just a fan of movies. I didn't want to prematurely insult just because I didn't get the giant-monster thing.

Hardly an insult not to like something that I do!


See, for all of its basic flaws, such as lousy dialogue, acting, settings, and plotting, most kaiju eiga fans would still be more forgiving of the American remake of Godzilla if not for its worst flaws; namely, the conceptual ones. The single most important criterion for giant monster films is that they be fun, and Emmerich & Devlin managed to somehow completely suck the life out of an otherwise fairly bulletproof genre.

Gareth Edwards did put together a teaser trailer for his new remake of Godzilla exclusively for ComicCon last year, and somehow or another it managed to stay that way, with no version of it having leaked onto the internet anywhere -- and I tried to find it, to no avail. Unusual in this day and age for something to stay a secret! But despite the fact that it was really sort of a demo reel, as they had not (and still have not) shot a frame of footage for the film yet, but all reports of those in attendance said that it was truly spectacular, and most importantly, very, very cool.

Dumb question time: Do movies like Cloverfield and Monsters qualify as big-monster movies, given that you don't see the monster (particularly in the latter film) for much of the film?

Certainly. There is no hard-and-fast rule regarding screen time; the 1933 version of King Kong is undisputably the greatest giant monster movie ever made, and you see nothing of Kong until nearly 45 mintues into the film (though the movie makes up for lost time by keeping him on screen, or at least "substitute" monsters on screen, for the balance of the film.)

Cloverfield is unquestionably a giant monster movie; just one that grafted the whole "found footage" style on to it. I do think that they may perhaps have erred slightly by keeping the monster off screen TOO much; on the other hand, Alien is unquestionably one of the greatest monster movies of all time, and you barely see the adult incarnation of that thing for more than a few seconds of total screen time. Monsters is kind of a different case, I suppose, in that the title itself is a bit deceptive, as the movie really is not about monsters at all -- which is why I think that many people do not care for it; their expectations are wrong.

I suppose you could argue that Monsters is as much about alien monsters as it is about our inner monsters. Inner monsters don't qualify as big monsters though, at least not in the traditional sense.

Where would you put Jaws?

Classic monster movie. 25ft long or not, it really fits that mold -- although I suppose that you could argue that the film is a borderline Seventies disaster movie, with a shark instead of an earthquake, so in that sense it has a touch of the "giant monster" to it, as they generally qualify as disaster movies as well.

A movie like The Host is way more complicated; that movie is a hybrid of so many genres that it is hard to pin down. Whatever genre you choose for it, it is a stellar film!


Regarding Monsters, that is how I see it; in some ways, the giant monsters are just McGuffins to drive the plot. But the moments with those monsters, especially in the final scene at the gas station, elevates the movie to something else entirely -- it achieves a moment of true poetic beauty.

Glad you mentioned The Host. The first time I watched it, I made the mistake of watching it with English dubbing and I hated the movie because of it (pretty sure that was the default setting, and I just wasn't paying attention). At any rate, I decided to watch it again and this time I did so with English subtitles. What a difference. Suddenly, the actors were acting. I could hear their fear, angst and torment, even if I couldn't understand the exact words they were saying. I loved the movie after that viewing and it reminded me how dubbing absolutely ruins a movie. I picked up a copy on Blu, but I have yet to watch it in that format. Is it a vast improvement over the DVD?

I agree regarding the final scene of Monsters. To me, it is almost the next chapter to the climax of Close Encounters, in terms of poetry and our metaphysical philosophy of life.

Fantastic comparison! I had not thought of CE3K in reference to Monsters, but the endings both contain a similar sense of awe and wonder that few science fiction films have ever equalled. (I would include 2001 on that list, though its effects are a bit more intellectual and less emotional, whereas both Monsters and CE3K teeter more toward a raw emotional response.) Both films combine that sense of wonder with completing a dramatic arc; in the case of CE3K, it is not just the sense of awe at seeing something nearly mystical, but it is the sense of completion in that he is coming to the end of his arduous journey and finding a "purpose." Similarly, in Monsters the two characters find a moment of emotional connection after all their adventures, all while watching the very things that they have been running from finding their OWN connection.

The Host looks and sounds great on Blu-Ray. Well worth the re-watch on that format.

Have we all seen the WonderCon trailer yet? "Jaw-dropping" does not even begin to describe it: