"Pacific Rim" (2013)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The plot is that giant monsters, known as Kaiju, have been appearing through a dimensional rift under the Pacific Ocean, so giant robots called Jaegers have been built to combat them. But now things are getting desperate.
I can't vouch for how good a tribute this is to the giant monster and mecha genres, but I can say how well it succeeds simply as a piece of entertainment! This is more what the Transformers movies should have been like. The characters may be archetypal, but they're still effective and well-executed archetypes. And the action scenes are terrific. The effects work is absolutely top-notch, and although I sometimes couldn't tell what I was looking at, at least there's no shaky cam making it worse.
On top of that, the movie is actually witty. For example, the Jaegers are controlled by two mentally linked pilots, and I like how they actually do address how delicate and dangerous mind-melding is.
However, there was one major letdown for me. The dialogue was pretty hard to follow at times. It may be for that reason that, during the climax, I was actually sort of burned out; I no longer cared much about what was happening.
Still, on a side note, the idea that this lost to Grown Ups 2 at the box office is just sickening!
While I might need to see this movie again to understand it better, I can definitely say that it's a very solid summer blockbuster. It's fun but not brainless.

My rating: 75%