The narrator’s voice at the beginning of the movie was like nails on a chalkboard for me and I was hoping that it would be the only time I would have to hear his voice. However, I was soon to find out that the narrator is in fact the main character, so I was forced to listen to it throughout the entire movie. That being said, I still enjoyed the movie. It reminded me of “Godzilla vs Megalon” and “Robot Jox.” I like that the helmet of the robots served as the piloting center, although referring to them as “Jagers” had me thinking of the alcoholic beverage, and I would have preferred the term “Juggies”, but maybe that’s just my “Call of Duty” way of thinking. 🙂
I enjoyed the music and I really liked the fight scenes as well. The CG was fantastic in my eyes and I loved the work they did with making the “Shatter Dome” such a believable background location.
Many of the fight scenes reminded me of human vs. human fight scenes from other action movies. For instance, one of the fights reminded me of a bar fight. The Jagers and Kaiju (monsters) would grab different items that were lying around as they fought. However, instead of getting punched in the face and grabbing the beer bottle lying on the floor next to them, they get punched and find the naval ship/office building/shipping containers. Which they then use to clobber their opponent. At one point I do believe the cargo containers represented a brass knuckle of sorts. It was very fun to watch and see these kinds of parallels to a human vs. human fight.
The interactions between the characters was very overacted, and I first thought it was due to goofy acting and screenwriting, but after some consideration I have decided that it must have been done purposely to create that campy/goofy feel. For instance, the main character looks as if he is about to laugh at everyone else’s lines and some of his more “serious” faces look as if he may need a restroom break. Believing that this type of acting was done on purpose makes the middle scenes, such as the training and candidate selection scene, a lot more bearable.
As far as the characters go it was a little confusing at first to tell some of the pilots apart since several of them sounded and looked similar. There was one set of pilots that reminded me of “Superman II” villains with bleached hair. One of the scientists reminded me of Rick Moranis and sent me back in time again. And I absolutely loved Ron Perlman’s “Deep Blue Sea” moment. This moment really made the movie for me and when I saw it wanted to immediately pre-order my DVD copy.
I also loved all the little quirky scenes like the bird disturbed on the dock and the Newton’s Cradle. All-in-all a good movie to watch for fun and one of those that you could play over and over at home as a “background” movie while you are doing other things. Entertaining but doesn’t require your full attention the whole time once you have seen it once. I think Guillermo Del Toro did a fine job on this one 😉
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