Unread postby Chuckg » July 15th, 2013, 2:27 am
Go see it. Its beautiful. If you loved giant monsters or giant robots, this movie is a love letter to your childhood.
This is not 'Transformers with Godzilla'. The CGI is better, and the camera work is infinitely better (no shakycam! clear fights!) The characters are standard archetypes without much variation (in a summer blockbuster? Who ever heard of such a thing?) but very well-executed and written with cheerfulness and wit. Furthermore, they are leavened with touches of humanity and uniqueness that make their stock archetype-ness even better, like how just a touch of seasoning makes the whole dish. (The fact that Mako Mori is convincingly tough-minded and badass while still acting like a traditional Japanese young woman instead of a stereotypical hardass 'action chick' was just a delight to me; likewise, how the situation where a love interest would be stereotypically rammed into is instead not given one.)
... OK, let me put it this way. In a movie that utterly fails the Bechdel Test, the female lead is still neither put in stripperwear (the outfit you see her wearing in the one trailer where she's martial-arts sparring with the male lead? That is the skimpiest thing she wears in the entire movie), or forbidden to have a healthy emotional relationship with a man not her father without also falling in love with him. It had an honest-to-God sincere friendship between the male and female leads, without layering over 'And now you must KISS!' at any point. For that alone, this movie should be lauded.
And the fact that she's a woman is of no import to anyone around her. People who criticize her job performance criticize it in exactly the same way that they would if she was a six-foot-six guy named Billy-Bob. People who applaud her do the same likewise. The one person who treats her differently and with even a touch of patronization is her father, who... um, he's her father. So, yeah. :)
But there is so much more than that. In an age of cynicism, this movie spits on it. In an age of grimdark, this movie sets itself on the very rim of Hell, on the literal day of the Apocalypse, and still holds out hope. In a world that is so beaten down that everyone is stripped down to the barest essentials of themselves out of sheer survival, the cast is still selfless and heroic. This movie has no existential angst. (Individual characters have personal tragedy angst, but even they get over it.) There is no 'are we really the monsters? is mankind worth saving?' Like the Dark Knight, this movie answers the question 'Is mankind worth saving?' with a simple and resounding "HELL YES."
At the edge of their hope, at the end of their time, people do choose to believe in each other. And their belief is rewarded.
This is a movie where two pilots in a disabled mech can unhesitatingly crawl out of the exterior hatch onto their mech's shoulder and shoot a 200-foot tall monster in the eye with flare pistols, willingly courting certain death to distract the monster away from a city full of people for just one more minute, and nobody finds this behavior remarkable. Other characters neither gape incredulously at their valor nor berate them for their foolishness. What they did in the name of duty is simply noted as 'yeah, that's how Jaeger pilots get it done', they get their manly nod of respect, and they move on.
... oh, do they survive? Watch the movie. :) (Punchline: This isn't our heroes I'm talking about. The supporting cast members get to be this balls-awesome and HOT BLOODED. Try to imagine the epic shit the two lead characters get up to. Better yet, don't try, just go see.)
It is a movie about courage and selflessness and determination and coming to peace with tragic loss and having faith in each other and all the things alien invasion movies go on about. Its not new, but it is fresh. Its not original, but its still unspoiled.
In conclusion, this movie is a massive and pure act of love from its creators, to its genre and the fans who loved that genre.
So yes, everyone should go see. Because its beautiful. And kickass.
One-Sentence Review: If you loved "Avengers", this is a movie for you.