Guillermo Del Toro‘s forthcoming “giant robots vs. giant monsters” epic adventure Pacific Rim had its first test screening last weekend in Santa Barbara, California, and after the screening ended those fortunate enough to have attended just had to share their feelings regarding the much-anticipated flick via the interwebs. The early reviews suggest that Iron Man and Captain Kirk will have some mighty stiff competition at the box office this summer. I will share a few of those with you.
Rian Johnson, the writer/director of Brick and Looper, elegantly tweeted his thoughts shortly after the screening :
Go into Pacific Rim prepared to be transmogrified into a 12 year old. And then to pee your pants with joy. I love it so much.
You see, I am a huge fan of Johnson’s movies and I considered Looper to be one of the best movies of 2012 and the single most original science-fiction film released in a long time. So when this guy says that De Toro’s monster mash is going to be a pants-wetting transcendental cinematic experience you would do well to heed his words.
An IMDb user named OriginsOfRuin posted a brief review as well:
Overall, it’s probably the best summer monster movie I’ve seen, and out of summer movies in general, falls behind the new Batman series, but that’s about it. I wrote on their response form that they should be proud of the movie and that I’m glad it’s not another Transformers clone (re: Battleship). They killed it!
Let’s be honest, it’s not meant to be a complex, character-driven movie like the Batman franchise. There are huge monsters, humans fight them with big machines, and that’s your basic story. Beyond that, it’s easy to root for the characters and the action set pieces and monsters are incredible and awesome. It’s the summer action movie Transformers should’ve been, but failed epically at.
I don’t think you can expect that out of him because Avatar took place on another planet. Del Toro can only world build in the sense of envisioning a future on planet earth with crazy, big ass robots defending cities around the globe from giant, alien monsters. He can’t deviate too much from how we know and understand the world already.
If IMDb were to allow me to rated the movie, I’d give it a 10/10. I generally rate movies pretty highly, but that goes with understanding the identity of the movie for me. This particular film wasn’t meant to be anything more than giant robots fighting giant monsters. In that sense, it succeeded big time, and it had a lotta heart to go with it. I was thoroughly impressed and smiling throughout the film.
Now granted just because these guys all seemed to love the movie doesn’t exactly mean you or I will. But there have been many summer movie seasons that pass by delivering metric tons of celluloid action spectaculars that rake up hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and untold millions more in merchandising revenue but leave little impact on our movie-going memories. There have been more than a few: Jaws, Star Wars, Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial, The Thing, Conan the Barbarian, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the former four all released just in 1982 alone), Back to the Future, Batman, Jurassic Park, Independence Day (screw you that movie is awesome), the first two X-Men and Spider-Man movies, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and The Avengers are the big summer movies that are still highly entertaining upon repeat viewings and will always hold a special place in my heart.
E-ticket thrill rides have become as disposable as Kleenex, but every so often one comes along that touches a certain nerve in even the most cynical theatergoer. Time will tell if Pacific Rim is great enough to join the ranks of the greatest summer movie blockbusters, but if these early reviews of praise are any indication we are in for at least one hell of a great time at the movies this year.
Pacific Rim opens on July 12, 2013.
[Source: Comic Book Movie]
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