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| But Rambo 4's action scenes are not THE BEST for their subgenre. by Mischief Maker 05/29/2016, 6:12am PDT | ||||
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| Like I said, I've watched a lot of Gozilla movies. The flaws of Pacific Rim are endemic to the genre. Those movies are all about the giant monster fight and the human scenes exist only to pad the running time to two hours. The human scenes are best when they're completely goofball, like Terror of Mechagodzilla. They're excruciating when it's about pandering directly to little kids by including a Kenny singing songs to the metaphorical embodiment of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like Godzilla vs the Smog Monster. And in the middle are stories about can-do soldiers mounting a new kind of defensive weapon, like Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II. Pacific Rim falls squarely in the middle category and by the standards of the genre it's perfectly fine and could have been A LOT worse.
That said, Pacific Rim's action scenes are THE BEST that have ever been made for the Godzilla genre. It's realistic where it counts (buildings and other collateral damage giving that little bit of resistance before crumbling instead of instantly melting like they're made of water), it cleverly uses the inertia of the robots for the coolest attack forecast and reaction shots. You always know who is doing what and where during the fights. The silliest little touches of the genre are treated with goofy gravitas, like mech pilots doing little action poses inside their cockpits before making the robot do a move, or the eternal question of why doesn't Voltron just start out every fight with the Blazing Sword and get it over with? They say sincerity is the ultimate form of satire, and the sincerity with which giant robots do pro wrestling poses before charging giant monsters in this movie is an absolute love letter to the genre. Compare this to the pig-slop-shoveling of a Michael Bay transformers movie where the robots are flying through the air taking on and losing mass in a jumble of polygons as surrounding metal vehicles and concrete buildings crumble like they're made of toothpicks. Now if someone took your idea and made a modern-day Robocop with Giant Robot action scenes performed at this level of quality? No question the bar would have been permanently raised. But my point this whole time is for where the bar has been ever since someone made the blasphemous decision to make a sequel to the original Godzilla, Pacific Rim is acceptable to exceptional. |
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