Pacific Rim: Guillermo Del Toro Mates Iron Man And Godzilla, Make A Gem

There’s nothing at all pretentious about Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. It’s what you get when you mix Iron Man and Godzilla, and throw in homage after homage to the great giant monster movies of the past.

Pacific Rim is the much-anticipated science fiction movie that had audiences at Comic Con and Wonder Con cheering during every second of action sneak peaks, brought all of that promise home when it was officially released Thursday.

The premise of Pacific Rim is simple: in the very near future, the World’s major cities are attacked by giant monsters called Kaiju. In order to battle the Kaiju threat, the World’s nations banded together and built giant robots to fight them: The Jaeger Program was born. Two pilots controlling one large human-like fighting machine. And all to defend the human race.

That’s the basic story.

What lays behind it is a compelling tale of people overcoming their own personal demons to become eff ective teams, operating the Jaegers to destroy the monsters.

The star of the movie is Idris Alba, who, in playing General Stacker Pentecost, finally has the big-budget leading role he so richly deserves. Alba gets all the great lines like “First, don’t touch me, again. Second, don’t touch me again…” Or: “We are canceling The Apocalypse!”

Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi work well as Jaeger Pilots Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori respectively, and who’s personalities and mental structures meld well in something called “The Drift” – a state of conciousness one enters in order to operate a Jaeger.

And then there’s Ron Perelman, who’s role as Kaiju body-parts dealer Hannibal Chau is something to see. Mr. Perelman is more than just an actor – he’s an experience alone. Charley Day and Burn Gorman are the two campy scientists, who’s outrageous approach turns out to save the day toward the end of the film.

In all, Pacific Rim is a see-it-again, big-budget, bigger-than-life giant monster movie, who’s success will spawn a new generation of movies like it.

Next up from Legendary and Warner Bros: Godzilla.

Stay tuned.