Can't have a big-budget summer tentpole about giant mecha and not have a thread about it here.  Fifteen years ago who would've thought we'd see Hollywood throwing around millions and millions of dollars to make a live action anime.

I read a story the other day about how it threatens to be a Battleship-sized box office disaster though and I have to say I can see it happening.

Looking at the trailer I will say the sense of scale is seriously impressive.  Both the CG animation and Del Toro's framing really capture the sense of these colossal beings stomping about skyscrapers bashing things up.

Where it looks suspect is unsurprisingly with the humans.  Something about it just looks cheesy, from the costumes to the way they look like they're doing aerobics to control the robots.  Also the no-name cast is probably going to come back to hurt them.  You could argue that nobody cares about the actors in a movie like this, but it needs one really recognizable face to anchor the proceedings and get people besides anime fanboys and fangirls into the theaters.

If I were Warner and I wanted a return on my money I'd blitz the airwaves with commercials that half show really big robots beating up really big monsters and half show some drama on the human side - even if it's little more than machismo and bravado - to convince people the whole thing won't be utterly ridiculous.

That said I know I'm gonna watch it, and if I'm gonna see this movie it needs to be in the theater, so I'll be posting here again in a couple weeks.

I'll definitely be in theatres to watch this as well.  While the cast may not be AAA, they are a solid bunch of up-and-comers...  Idris Elba is a pretty big name in the British acting world, and Charlie Hunnam has done well for himself on Sons of Anarchy, and i think he's done a couple of forgettable movies but this might be a big break for him.  I think the only real big name they have for this one is Charlie Day.

I saw the full trailer in the theater the other day and I have to say it had me pretty pumped to see it.  Of course that trailer was 80 percent robots and monsters but that was enough to convince me.

It's a shame they didn't get Masamichi Amano to do the score.

Ramin Djawadi isn't untalented (as his work on Game of Thrones has proven) but we just know exactly what he'll be delivering for Pacific Rim.

Agreed.  Djawadi does shine when he's allowed subtlety.  I love how thematically dense his work in Thrones is.

As for Pacific Rim, kaiju and mecha aren't really my cup of tea -- but it's del Toro, so chances are I'll be checking it out eventually.

This year has so many big movies for me and this is right up there as one I really want to see. Huge monsters versus giant robots with a big budget? Sign me up. Kaiju movies should have hit the west a long time ago (I mean beyond Syfy's Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus type) and this looks like it is going all-out to do just that.

I just hope I get a chance to see it. With work and kids, I haven't even had a chance to see Man Of Steel yet and that's probably higher on my list and World's End is out either now or very soon so Pacific Rim may end up getting lost as a result. It looks really promising though.

I did just notice the Pacific Rim score is up on Spotify so I'll be giving it a listen tonight. Clemmensen gave it a shocking four stars!

I liked the explanation that justified the origin and purpose of the monsters (it made sense). The human solution, however, did not make sense. I understand that would negate the purpose of the movie had the humans not responded the way they did and I feel one must relinquish rational thoughts in order to come to terms with it.

Very disappointed with this one. Adored the mech/kaiju scenes and loved how the kaiju really felt true to Japanese kaiju movies. They looked amazing.

But the tone, characters and dialogue just didn't work for me at all. Some characters were played so over the top they took me completely out of the movie and it was like Del Toro was going for some weirdly comic tone in many places. And that felt completely at odds with the painfully basic dialogue and scenes that seemed like we were supposed to care about them if the rousing soundtrack is to be an indicator.

The film just didn't engage me in any meaningful me and I found myself spending most of my time frustrated by the performances rather than being in the actual world of the film. For me, a waste of some absolutely awesome visuals.

I think the Hollywood reporters that are saying Pacific Rim is a financial flop are being too America-centric. They're journalists, not economists. The international box office numbers are pretty good and it looks to make up to $130 to $150 million in its first week. It should easily make up its production costs and marketing budget. The word of mouth this film generated is also bound to help.

I wouldn't even call Battleship a real flop if you look at the numbers. John Carter, Jack, White House Down, and The Lone Ranger though...

Anyway, I really want to see Pacific Rim. pity I'm working in Germany for a month, where everything is surely dubbed in a language I can't understand. But I do wish they chose another composer, to make it more of an audio-visual feast (not just visual feast) like Tron: Legacy or Oblivion.

Agree that the visuals and robots/kaiju were pretty sweet but story definitely lacked substance but I feel tha del Toro did that by design. He gave you just enough info to make the story have a humanity relation to it and nothing more. No idea if that's what he was going for but I'm not necessarily disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Saw it today. Thought it was meh. Story was exceedingly predictable and unimaginative. I liked the visual design and the sets, but otherwise I wasn't impressed.

The story was predictable (if you're gonna copy a sci-fi movie's plot at least don't make it Independence Day), the acting was mediocre, the characterizations were mostly cliched (Kikuchi's character especially) and the comic relief was more pain than relief.

But damn those robots and monsters looked impressive and the action was really well done.  It was just like I said about the sense of scale and destruction in the trailers, but thankfully they didn't show all the good stuff in the trailers.  I thought the robot designs were a nice mix of retro and modern, stylized and realistic, and Del Torro did a good job of cutting between interior and exterior shots to make you really feel the impact and sense of danger.

Basically I was geeking out during the fight scenes and patiently tolerating the rest.  Usually action and effects alone aren't enough for me in a movie but in this case they were impressive enough to keep me satisfied.

I think this is what Hollywood is aiming for these days. There are exception, but many of the big-grossing films are just special effects porn, and nothing says that better than "The Avengers".

We're talking about Pacific Rim.