Pacific Rim [spoilers]

[Jim]

We don't agree on much...

1 Avatar
Quite unoriginal. Dances with Wolves in space. There was a cartoon move a few years ago with aliens that floated... can't remember the name, but it was the same plot too.

2 Titanic
The effects were good, but that was about it. Bitch, move over so the guy doesn't have to freeze and drown... seriously.

3 The Avengers
Decent mix of action, comedy and story. Holes shure... but overall fun enough that you didn't care.

4 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
Not bad, about what you expected from the franchise.

5 Iron Man 3
Ruined the Mandarin. Ruined him!

6 Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Too much "look at me while I stick my chest out and make a speach" but the robots.

7 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Very well done set of movies. Except for the ghosts...

8 Skyfall
It was Bond.

9 The Dark Knight Rises
The new Batman movies are grossly over-rated. I can not get past Nolan's choices for voices. You don't have to do a caricature of these movies because they already are one.

10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The only one of all of these that was actually made as pur fun with no intent to take itself seriously. Well done and fun.

I am 3-4-3 for the top 10.

[IanKennedy]

I'm sure the lack of clear shots is to help with the fact that if it were still frame and easier to see it would look more... unreal.

Yes, that's what I said. Bad special effects.

Take Avatar for example. It didn't have to wave the camera around like it had epilepsy. It showed you what was happening. It allowed to revel in the quality of the world they had created. You can freeze frame on anything in Avatar and love what you see. That includes the battle sequences at the end. A job well done. This is nothing of the sort.

[IanKennedy]

We don't agree on much...

1 Avatar
Quite unoriginal. Dances with Wolves in space. There was a cartoon move a few years ago with aliens that floated... can't remember the name, but it was the same plot too.

2 Titanic
The effects were good, but that was about it. Bitch, move over so the guy doesn't have to freeze and drown... seriously.

3 The Avengers
Decent mix of action, comedy and story. Holes shure... but overall fun enough that you didn't care.

4 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
Not bad, about what you expected from the franchise.

5 Iron Man 3
Ruined the Mandarin. Ruined him!

6 Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Too much "look at me while I stick my chest out and make a speach" but the robots.

7 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Very well done set of movies. Except for the ghosts...

8 Skyfall
It was Bond.

9 The Dark Knight Rises
The new Batman movies are grossly over-rated. I can not get past Nolan's choices for voices. You don't have to do a caricature of these movies because they already are one.

10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The only one of all of these that was actually made as pur fun with no intent to take itself seriously. Well done and fun.

I am 3-4-3 for the top 10.

That's not the point. I was accused of not liking things just because they where popular. These are the facts that prove that is wrong.

[IanKennedy]

I'm sure the lack of clear shots is to help with the fact that if it were still frame and easier to see it would look more... unreal.

and another thing. Shakey cam is unreal. You have evolved to have built in steady cam. You can run, jump and spin quite fast without loosing what's going on around you. If you couldn't you wouldn't have a chance against a predator. (no not the ones from the film, lions and tigers and bears, oh my).

[IanKennedy]

This string HAS to be worse than my anti-Game of Snores, er Thrones posts... and that was my own thread started to be a relative anti-show thread and people bitched and cried about me being negative until I realized that the show wasn't worth the time that I was putting into detracting it.

What so your saying I'm bad for giving my opinion on a film you are raving about. I didn't realise anyone around here was that touchy. I can't see a problem saying the film is crap when it is. Especially when I gave good reasons for it.

[McAvoy]

This string HAS to be worse than my anti-Game of Snores, er Thrones posts... and that was my own thread started to be a relative anti-show thread and people bitched and cried about me being negative until I realized that the show wasn't worth the time that I was putting into detracting it.

No this string is a review and not a bashing thread. I do not see the title of his thread as 'Pacific Rim is the most boring Movie ever'.

Big difference.

[IanKennedy]

This string HAS to be worse than my anti-Game of Snores, er Thrones posts... and that was my own thread started to be a relative anti-show thread and people bitched and cried about me being negative until I realized that the show wasn't worth the time that I was putting into detracting it.

No this string is a review and not a bashing thread. I do not see the title of his thread as 'Pacific Rim is the most boring Movie ever'.

Big difference.

Actually, no, that makes no sense at all. If this is a review thread then my review is it's crap. For all the reasons specified. It's utterly pointless to have one thread to say somethings good and have to have another to say it's bad.

[McAvoy]

No my point was basically he created a whole thread on almost juvenile reasons why he felt the series was boring and overrated. It wasn't a review or he didn't create one since I do not even think there was a Game of Thrones review thread. He went straight for the bashing and kept on bashing it. People can hate TV series all day long and make a negative review about it. It happens you can have a perfect movie or TV show and you will have someone give it a negative review on because its too perfect.

This is a review thread on Pacific Rim. Not a let's bash Pacific Rim because you found it boring and overrated.

Not to mention the way he described his thread vs. Your reaction to Pacific Rim. His thread in his view was better versus your reaction is not. Also that we bitched and moaned about him doing it to him.

[McAvoy]

I'm sure the lack of clear shots is to help with the fact that if it were still frame and easier to see it would look more... unreal.

and another thing. Shakey cam is unreal. You have evolved to have built in steady cam. You can run, jump and spin quite fast without loosing what's going on around you. If you couldn't you wouldn't have a chance against a predator. (no not the ones from the film, lions and tigers and bears, oh my).

Shakey cam is a style of recording a movie or a clip like someone has a home video recorder in hand or a cell phone handy to record an event. It has nothing to do with using a camera like how a human views it.

The stabilizing effect of how we view things is our eyes as we can naturally lock onto things with them regardless of our motion. However impacts shake things up.

My two cents about it.

[IanKennedy]

No my point was basically he created a whole thread on almost juvenile reasons why he felt the series was boring and overrated. It wasn't a review or he didn't create one since I do not even think there was a Game of Thrones review thread. He went straight for the bashing and kept on bashing it. People can hate TV series all day long and make a negative review about it. It happens you can have a perfect movie or TV show and you will have someone give it a negative review on because its too perfect.

I'm not following your logic at all. If he made a thread to basically whine about something that's much worse than commenting on a thread about the pros and cons of a films to do just that provide pros and cons on that film. I don't get how that's worse?

This is a review thread on Pacific Rim. Not a let's bash Pacific Rim because you found it boring and overrated.

So I still don't get it. A bad review is still a review. It would be totally insane to have to create new thread to say something is bad, rather than good.

Not to mention the way he described his thread vs. Your reaction to Pacific Rim. His thread in his view was better versus your reaction is not. Also that we bitched and moaned about him doing it to him.

I don't get this bit at all. I just don't follow it.

[IanKennedy]

Shakey cam is a style of recording a movie or a clip like someone has a home video recorder in hand or a cell phone handy to record an event. It has nothing to do with using a camera like how a human views it.

I know perfectly well what it is. First, movies are not made using camcorders, at least good movies are not. In this movie it's utterly ridiculous to suggest that these giant robots where followed around by people with a camcorder or a cell phone. Given that what point is there to use that, very flawed, technique. So you are then left with the question of why they did it. The answer is that their CGI wasn't up to the job.

[McAvoy]

No my point was basically he created a whole thread on almost juvenile reasons why he felt the series was boring and overrated. It wasn't a review or he didn't create one since I do not even think there was a Game of Thrones review thread. He went straight for the bashing and kept on bashing it. People can hate TV series all day long and make a negative review about it. It happens you can have a perfect movie or TV show and you will have someone give it a negative review on because its too perfect.

I'm not following your logic at all. If he made a thread to basically whine about something that's much worse than commenting on a thread about the pros and cons of a films to do just that provide pros and cons on that film. I don't get how that's worse?

This is a review thread on Pacific Rim. Not a let's bash Pacific Rim because you found it boring and overrated.

So I still don't get it. A bad review is still a review. It would be totally insane to have to create new thread to say something is bad, rather than good.

Not to mention the way he described his thread vs. Your reaction to Pacific Rim. His thread in his view was better versus your reaction is not. Also that we bitched and moaned about him doing it to him.

I don't get this bit at all. I just don't follow it.

I may have worded it wrong but you are saying exactly what I was trying to say. He made a thread just to complain about the series and provided nothing but juvenile reasons like icky incest and boring talk and no action.

You are reviewing a movie in a review thread. We all are talking about the pros and cons of the film. You happen to have the negative review overall.

[McAvoy]

Shakey cam is a style of recording a movie or a clip like someone has a home video recorder in hand or a cell phone handy to record an event. It has nothing to do with using a camera like how a human views it.

I know perfectly well what it is. First, movies are not made using camcorders, at least good movies are not. In this movie it's utterly ridiculous to suggest that these giant robots where followed around by people with a camcorder or a cell phone. Given that what point is there to use that, very flawed, technique. So you are then left with the question of why they did it. The answer is that their CGI wasn't up to the job.

Its a style just like lens flare.

From what I have seen in the movie the CGI was definitely up to the task. IMO, the shakey cam style is just that, a style. Just like lens flare, moody lighting, the spinning camera around an object or person. I think shakey cam just got a bad rep because of it being over done in movies like Transformers.

[Graham Kennedy]

Shaky cam always bothered me. I gather the effect is intended to make it seem like you are really there, or at least make it seem like the cameraman is really there. To me it generally has the opposite effect because it just calls attention to the camera work. Our eyes and brain are really excellent at steadying images... seriously, try it - run and jump around all you like, you will never see your field of view shake around like shaky cam work. So it just pulls me right out of the action and into "oh look, a camera technique" territory. And when combined with super fast cutting... ugh. It peaked for me during the second Bourne movie when I found myself drifting off trying to work out how many seats were in the theatre during the action scenes, because I literally gave up trying to work out what was happening on the screen. And then there was the end of the first Transformers movie when they talk about the Transformer who died, and that was the first clue I had that a Transformer had died.

Pacific Rim isn't as bad as Transformers for the fast cut shaky cam work... but it does stage the fights largely in the dark. All in all I got a sense of what was happening in about about half of the individual moves... but no real sense of the overall flow of the battle, no connection between the moves.

And it was such a shame that you couldn't see the monsters clearly in most cases. Reminds me of the Wrath of the Titans movie, where the Kraken was kind of part big head, part loads of legs, part tentacles... but no real sense of the overall shape. In Pacific Rim you see bits here and there... but rarely do you get an idea of the actual shape of the monsters. Like I remember hearing in advance that one of them looks kind of Scorpion-like, with an arched over tail. I kept waiting for that, but if it's in this film I never saw enough to tell. The only one you get a real clear view of is the Sydney wall attack, and that's just something the characters watch on TV for a few seconds in low resolution.

No, for a film which relied so heavily - let's face it, almost ENTIRELY - on "Whoa, cool robots fight cool monsters!" then the actual fights were just a serious letdown.

[IanKennedy]

Shakey cam is a style of recording a movie or a clip like someone has a home video recorder in hand or a cell phone handy to record an event. It has nothing to do with using a camera like how a human views it.

I know perfectly well what it is. First, movies are not made using camcorders, at least good movies are not. In this movie it's utterly ridiculous to suggest that these giant robots where followed around by people with a camcorder or a cell phone. Given that what point is there to use that, very flawed, technique. So you are then left with the question of why they did it. The answer is that their CGI wasn't up to the job.

Its a style just like lens flare.

Ah, another issue that I would kill the director for if I could catch them. STXI is almost ruined by this.

From what I have seen in the movie the CGI was definitely up to the task. IMO, the shakey cam style is just that, a style. Just like lens flare, moody lighting, the spinning camera around an object or person. I think shakey cam just got a bad rep because of it being over done in movies like Transformers.

It got a bad rep because it's a flawed assumption. It isn't want would happen if you where there in person. That's what steady cam (a machine) was invented for.