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GrahamKennedy wrote:Not to mention that there are also flying Kaiju. Whups, so much for the wall idea.

Clearly they simply need to build a taller wall, one higher than the Kaiju can fly. After all a wall is the only viable solution.

Under the Dome!

Jim wrote:Under the Dome!

Ooo, bendy walls a perfect solution

Or a flying City...

Teaos wrote:Or a flying City...

You've still got to have a wall though. I suppose if your city is fast enough you can do without one.

Giant fly swatter?

Teaos wrote:Or a flying City...

Bring the Ancients in! ("The did everything 'big'")

Sonic Glitch wrote:

Teaos wrote:Or a flying City...

Bring the Ancients in! ("The did everything 'big'")

Mmmm... yes. Spreading gates all over the place like they did makes flying cities seem trivial. Oh perhaps the most efficient shield system in all of sci fi.

Jim wrote:The people in charge of defense must have been French.

Our last wall was built before 1940 and was more than a wall but a weaponised wall. USSR, Israel and USA have both built simple walls after that

Ok, finally saw it and my finally verdict that it was an enjoyable popcorn movie. But probably utterly forgetable in the long run. It could have been a classic but even if they make a sequel it will never be a "cult" classic.

Now I won't go into plotholes since they probably have been discussed already to no end, nor will I address all the suspense of disbelief you will have to bring to the table for this one. (Suffice to say it helps if you watch it with at least two to three beers in your stomach....aehm).

What prevents this movie from being a great one however, imho:


Story. There hardly is one. All the story we NEED to know is basically covered in the trailer-like intro, the rest is covered in two sentences. Now it's a monster-mashup so I am not expecting some cool plottwist or anything but they could at least have us provided with enough backstory for the four crews to actually....you know CARE about them at least a bit. But - alas - we only get to know the highly cliché "backstory" of the Gipsy Danger crew which is so generic...well it runs on autopilot. For the rest of the characters there is hardly any time since:

Why is the film so RUSHED? It is the same evil that plagues the new Star Trek movie. All happens WAY to fast. There is no time for meaningful dialogue except some few standard exchanges and lines which are probably only there because they sound good......in a trailer....! We have jumps of 7 and 5 years...and suddenly EVERYTHING happens at one time. Now altough this is not a problem per se, it just wasn't necessary. The WAR CLOCK reads three hours between the Gipsy Danger crashing into the football field and them being off on their suicide mission to the RIM. Why is this so rushed? After this huge action scene you would have needed a breather, showing them prepare for the next mission, time for a bit character development etc. etc. . Heck THREE HOURS just for servicing normal TODAYS military hardware would be insane not to mention after what those robots went through..... . But everything feels way to rushed and this is one of the reasons it feels rather....unepic. There is a time when you need high levels of action, there is a time for a trench run a la star wars....but before that you need a breather, you need a story and you need people to get to care for the characters. (On that note, altough I said I wont talk about it.....I was able to suspend my disbelief throughout the whole movie...except once when the flying monster takes off with the gipsy. That didn't bother me, what did bother me was that is almost achieved orbit in about 5 seconds just with wings. WTF. It flew into orbit with WINGS. In about 5 seconds straight. WTF?!)

The other reason would be the monster fights. Sorry but they look like crap. Honestly, some old Godzilla movies made a better job making them look epic. Why is that? Well because the monster are all moving way to fast and in a way you would EXPECT a much smaller animal to move. The only cool scene is were they deploy their elbow-rockets to accelerate their punch. This is great not only because it looks cool, but also because this is the only time you got a sense of how big and heavy this robot is, and how large a mass it has, which needs to be accelerated. The fights do not look like huge monster and robots fighting...it just looks like a guy fighting some weird alien. It does not look epic, no matter how many CGI buildings and cars they smash in the process. Take a todays main battle tank. It is extremly heavy and extremly powerful. It accelerates incredibly fast for such a large vehicle. But you never once doubt it's mass and when it starts towards you at full acceleration, well believe you me it is enough to give you pause. Not so here....they all move like they are much less heavy than their size would suggest. It's like an elephant with the movements of a horse. But that is not the worst about the fights, the worst is:

The shacky cam. Now we have 150 metres or so monsters fighting each other and we STILL need a fucking shacky cam? Are you fucking kidding me? Now it is not as bad as it could have been, but honestly, I am so fed up with shacky cams that I do prefer the crew of the old enterprise being comically thrown around the bridge than this damn shacky cam.


So all in all......enjoyable movie...but imho rather forgetable. Which is a shame since the visuals are - as always with this director - great and obviously they put a LOT of creativity into this universe - as can be climpsed from all the background-art, props etc. but alas we hardly get to know it, since the movie rushes you along to the end without pause or breather.


ps...the suits they were wearing looked great and more or less exactly like Mass Effect suits. If they ever make a movie they'd better contact their costume department.

Odd that you said that they don't look like they are not that heavy.

To me it they seemed heavy. They even went out of their way to make them move like they were heavy.

Well they did a better job with the robots than they did with the monsters imho, who were far to agile for their size imho. Especially under the water and every time they got lifted and bodyslammed...

Now I know that is just my opinion and can be explained away with that they are just that strong and agile even for their size etc. etc. I think it would have just looked much more epic if they'd moved slower, to bring across how huge they are and if they'd used more sumo-like wrestling moves instead of lifting them overhead like nothing and throwing each other around.

Last night I watched the BluRay. When I watched the movie in the theater I was actually taken back by the acting chops of the little girl Mako. I think mostly because the rest of the acting, while not bad, was nothing special. I thought that little girl did a great job with the fear and crying and emotion. In the blueray, there seems to be less of the young Mako. I think they cut her screen time nearly in half.

I just watched it a third time last night as well.

Maybe its just me but I hardly saw any shakey cam. Fight scenes are not as bad I thought. Its just instead of being far away to see the monsters and robots in full view, the camera was placed up close like the camera man was in the middle of the fight.

I also decided last night to look up to see if there was any more info of the Jaegers. Interestingly the mk. 5 cost 100 billion dollars and was the best and strongest of them all. The Gypsy Danger was slightly better than average.

So... supposedly before the Wall 14 Jaegers were lost in a single year. It is common for a Jaeger to be destroyed and more common to see a team of Jaegers go after a single monster.

Pentecost's decision making when the two level 4's came through was ridiculously poor. They were the biggest level 4's ever seen and he sends a Mark 1 and a Mark 4 to go 2-on-2, even though he had two other Jaegers available. With his strategy, losing both the Chinese and Russian Jaegers was a given, not a possibility. His poor leadership should have spelled the doom for humankind right there.

I understand the need/desire to keep Striker safe so that it could deliver the bomb, but if these two level 4's get through it is OVER.