Tag Archives: movie

Pacific Rim was awesome

After wanting to see this movie for a long time, I finally watched Pacific Rim this weekend. Others had told me mixed things about the movie. It didn’t live up to a lot of expectations. I’m not sure what anyone else was expecting, because I watched an amazing two hours of giants robot suits fighting giant monsters.

There were subplots and character development that might not have been deep enough for some people, but honestly, they were just there to justify fight scenes, and they did a good job. I jokingly told my friend after the movie that my favorite scene was the one where the jaeger (German for hunter) punches the kaiju (Japanese for monster) a bunch. I couldn’t really pick a distinct favorite scene. I can say that there was a lot more humor than I expected. Multiple characters served as comic relief. And if you haven’t seen the movie, stay for a scene midway through the credits.

As an immense Portal fan, how could I not like Pacific Rim? It even features Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS, as the jaeger AI. Guillermo Del Toro got permission from Valve to use her voice as an homage, using Valve’s filter at first. After finding it too distracting, he created his own for the final version of the film that’s a little different.

I’m ready for a sequel now or perhaps a simple game. I’d like a “bad” game, but I’d like an old-fashioned bad game. A simple fighting game with jaegers and kaiju would be cool, but the trend currently would likely be for the game to try to be amazing, making it bad in a bad way. Something like the old Godzilla video games would be fun!

Frank Miller’s Sin City

gem had never seen Sin City and wanted to watch it, so I borrowed it from my brother on Sunday. We watched it last night. Wow, I forgot just how good it is! It’s like a dark, film noir playground in which Miller can explore his fantasies.

The first thing I notice is how great the casting is. Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis were all great. I didn’t even notice that Kevin was Elijah Wood, who also did an excellent job, until gem pointed it out to me.

I love how the film captures the feeling of a comic book. The stylized use of color to highlight and accentuate was obviously used throughout the film. Even the stark white bandages on Marv’s face stood out from the rest of the scene. I absolutely loved the large, fat drops of white rain on a dark background, coming down almost like a solid sheet. Noir fiction couldn’t be noir without heavy rain, right? I just loved the style.

According to Wikipedia, Sin City 2 will be released this coming October. I really need to read those graphic novels.

The Amazing Spider-Man

While the Amazing Spider-Man was quite entertaining, I also found it strangely flawed. Before I even gave it a chance, I have to admit that I was annoyed that it was being rebooted so quickly. It seemed really soon to show Spider-Man’s back story as well. Most people are already very familiar with Spider-Man, so did we really need to learn how he got his powers? However, showing it helps reinforce the idea that this is a reboot. I suppose in this respect there was just no winning.

I liked the actors in the Sam Raimi trilogy, especially Tobey Maguire, and I didn’t care for Andrew Garfield’s look at first. Having now seen the movie, his appearance does seem to match the character as he’s written, but he’s not written as I know him. Peter Parker is supposed to be a smart, nerdy kid. He’s an outsider because of that. In the Amazing Spider-Man, Parker is still an outsider, but I don’t really see him acting like a nerdy loser. He seems smart, sure, but he also has the self-centered attitude stereotypical to teenagers. For example, after a teacher tells him not to use his skateboard in the hall, he waits until out of his sight, drops the board, and continues skating. Perhaps things have changed since I was in school already, but weren’t the skaters the cool kids? Peter Parker is definitely a different Peter in this film, but it still works for him. The intelligence is still there, but the nerdiness isn’t as highlighted. As he’s younger in this film as well, it seems only fitting that he’s filled with angst. He’s a rebellious teenager at this point, and it shows.

The Lizard was an interesting and memorable villain but not quite as memorable as some from the Raimi trilogy. I didn’t find Sandman or Venom very interesting in Spider-Man 3 (despite really liking Venom), but I still found the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus more interesting than the Lizard.

On a less important note, there’s a scene in which Spider-Man jumps off a balcony without his backpack and later has it. I caught it immediately and have to wonder how no one attached to the film caught it in time to fix it. The security at Oscorp is ridiculous. How they don’t manage to notice Parker going where he shouldn’t seems like flawed writing to me. At first I wanted to say that it also seems unbelievable that Parker would touch the things he did, but I might be projecting values of the Raimi Parker on the new Parker.

The film is darker than I’d like Spider-Man to be, but there’s still humor. I particularly liked Spider-Man’s use of his cell phone. In once scene, he plays a game on his phone while waiting. In another, he sits atop a building in costume talking to his aunt about picking up groceries for her. As minor as it is to the story, it sets the mood quite well and is my favorite scene of the movie.

To reiterate, things definitely weren’t all bad. I really enjoyed the film, and there were some excellent parts. Gwen Stacy wasn’t very important in Raimi’s films, and I didn’t really care about her. She’s portrayed and written well in the Amazing Spider-Man. She’s cute and a good love interest for Parker. It was a little odd that she dressed so provocatively at work, but she’s a teenager, so I suppose that’s realistic. It’s also odd that a high school teenager has time to intern at a large corporation, but I’ll accept that. Her father, Captain Stacy, was also an important role in the film. I enjoyed Parker’s interactions with him.

I came into my viewing biased against it, so I was looking for problems. The Amazing Spider-Man was actually a fun superhero movie and has a lot of things going for it. Parker is a little less nerdy and a bit more angsty and angry. This is different, sure, but it works. Emma Stone’s portrayal of Gwen Stacy was great, and I’m happy to see her heavily featured. I’m looking forward to the sequel!