‘Pacific Rim’ Earns Very Positive Reviews From Critics

Pacific Rim, the highly anticipated summer blockbuster directed by Guillermo del Toro, has been met with largely positive reviews from movie critics.

Pacific Rim, due in theatres July 12, tells the story of the earth in the 2020s as the human population fights against the Kaiju (a Japanese word meaning “strange beast”) — aliens risen from a portal in the Pacific Ocean floor. To fight them, humans use Jaegers — giant robots controlled by two pilots locked into a neural bridge.

Jon Blistein of Rolling Stone says that the film is, literally, tons of fun. “Packed with all sorts of massive, glorious destruction, the film finds Earth under attack from an onslaught of undersea alien invaders that can only be beaten back by man-helmed machines,” Blistein writes. “It's '2,500 tons of awesome,' as Charlie Day (who plays Dr. Newton Geiszler) puts it.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Pacfic Rim is a spectacular movie. “Guillermo del Toro's paradoxically derivative yet imaginative sci-fi epic is everything that monster movies since the beginning of time might have wished they could be,” Todd McCarthy says. “In no way pinched budget-wise, it's got first-class special effects, crafty behemoths that calculate and react to circumstances in non-dumb ways, a smart director who injects a sense of fun and surprise whenever he can, a fair percentage of characters you don't mind watching, and a few decent plot twists. In this genre, that's saying something.”

The film gets high praise for its actions scenes from Time Out New York as well. “The copious battle scenes are what many viewers will want to see, and they more than deliver in all their digitally augmented glory: Alien behemoths are hurled into buildings, an abandoned ship is used as an impromptu cudgel, and battles rage in both the skies above and the oceanic depths below,” Keith Uhlich writes. “But though everything we see is pure, pleasurable comic-book absurdity, Del Toro somehow lends a plausible humanity to the proceedings, one lacking in most of this summer’s city-destroying blockbusters.”

Pacific Rim recieved a perfect score and staggeringly high praise from NY Post’s Lou Lumenick, who writes that this film, which could have easily gone overboard on the action sequences, hit the perfect balance. “For all the humor and clever twists in the script that Travis Beacham wrote with del Toro, a film like this rises or falls on its action sequences, and there are some real doozies here as the Jaegers square off, again and again, against Kaiju who can hurl electricity and deadly acid against them,” Lumenick says. “Director del Toro keeps the fights clean and coherent, which (as we saw with “The Lone Ranger”) is not easy when working on such a gargantuan scale. The whole thing builds to one of the most stunningly eye-popping and exciting climaxes in years.” Lumenick also insisted that people see the movie in 3-D, a rare suggestion from him. “It so effectively immerses the viewer in the action. The Kaiju are computer-generated wonders, and the Jaegers make the Transformers look like … well, children’s toys.”

Speaking of Transformers, Jordan Hoffman of film.com claims that del Toro did far better with his action film than director Michael Bay did with his action-packed series. “They don’t let 14 year-old boys direct multi-million dollar feature films, but somehow, perhaps through years of Ramtha-like training, Guillermo Del Toro has channeled the interests, attitudes and fears from that mindset with a clarity that far surpasses contemporaries like Michael Bay,” Hoffman writes.

Pacific Rim stars Charlie Hunnam, Day, Idris Elba, Rob Kazinsky and Ron Perlman.