PACIFIC RIM (2013) Pre-Release Discussion - Page 5

It looks cool, especially the rocket punch. The movie will probably be a blast. I hope they do more (in the marketing) to differentiate it from crappe like Battleship, though. I can see some mainstream folk going "Another one of those movies?".

 

The quick shot at the beginning of the corpse on the aircraft carrier was cool as well.
 

Yeah, I need this movie.  I understand cutting the trailer similarly to a Transformers trailer (gotta get the mainstream in somehow), so I can forgive that.  And it's pretty much a trailer, so I don't expect them to show everything.  I did laugh at the GLaDOS voice though.

 

I got a real Monsterpocalypse vibe from the design of the kaiju.  Er, I guess it's capital letter Kaiju.

 

 

Guy Davis of the BPRD comic was one of the production designers.  You can see his influence all over that Kaiju: the multiple blue glowing eyes, the blue glowing energy coming out of the weird maw/mouth, everything.  That last shot was practically a panel out of the comic.

Looks amazing.  Only gripe: Charlie Hunnam's voice over delivery is so damned flat.

 

Yeah, I thought the same thing-- that's Katha-Hem-inspired, and make no mistake. Reminds me of the Elemental in Hellboy 2, also, but that's baaaaaasically Katha-Hem anyhow. 

I hope Ramin Djawadi brings some A-game to this.  The score for this has to feel as grand and adventurous as the robuts!  Not droning, po-faced, and BWAAAARM like everything else.

I don't know why I haven't read this yet (I love Hellboy), but I need to now.

But I can also see some classic Tsuburaya in the monster designs, albeit modernized. They could all fight Ultraman!

It certainly looks awesome. My only concern/hope is that seeing it in higher res, on a big screen, and probably with tweaked/more finished effects gives it a more real, or rather a more... tactile visual texture. I know GDT loves practical, and tried to use it when possible, so I'm hoping that feel carries over to the finished CGI as much as possible. Just the man-in-suit-smashing-model-city kaiju movie fan in me talking.

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Again, this is coming from a hardcore Godzilla fan, but I really hope it's orchestral, or at least some of it is. Sweeping, adventurous, and triumphant for the people/robots, ominous or downright scary for the monsters, all of it grand, epic, and even bombastic. And with distinct themes.

I don't necessarily expect it to be all of that, but it would be the best case scenario.

Sigh... but you know it won't.  Because the plebs find it too cheesy!

 

Maybe I'm nuts, but I'm as happy for this as I am for robots vs. Cthulhu monsters.

Yeah, probably not, but maybe Del Toro can push a little through.

Double

 

Most probably wouldn't agree with me, but this is the kind of score I want!!!

(go to 1:38)

 

The corresponding sequence (ignore the awful English dub)

 

Start with the run when Mignola started writing with John Arcudi and Guy Davis drew.  That's when the comic got good.

mcnooj82, The music of Giant Robo is...Too Tame!  Sign me up for the...Best tunes of Superrobot Anime...Shunsuke Kikuchi, whom composed...Ufo Robo Grendizer, Gaiking, Getter Robo G etc!

As long as it's orchestral duke!

 

I honestly don't think the music needs to be so heavy when the visuals and the sound design are already bringing that weight.  I want something like this to have a sense of adventure (which I think is missing from most of these genre flicks).  So I think the 'tameness' would be of nice balance to the rest of the aggressive stuff.

mcnooj82, Kikuchi composed alot of Toei's Super Robot Scores, Sister Street Fighter and likely much more!  Check out the intro to...Force Five, to listen to his Score in all it's Instrumental Glory.  Kikuchi worked with...Go Nagai, whom created the...Piloted Super Robot Genre that GDT is bringing to theaters next summer!

 

Fair enough, but I don't want it to go the route of the score to The Mummy Returns which was discordantly cheery and "adventure-esque". 

Forget all this anime crap, IFUKUBE!

 

I could cite so many pieces he wrote over the years, but this one is owning me right now the most.

 

Insanely excited for this flick. And love that Elba doesn't have to hide his accent.

"Oh great, another Transformers rip-off."

 

If heard on Facebook: Delete "friendship" immediately.

 

If heard in theaters: "Accidentally" spill soda on while going to bathroom.

I liked it a lot more when I got the 1080p version from Apple. Easier to make out the Kaiju features in the rain and such.

 

Showed it to my 5 year old son and he thought the best scenes were the three Jaegers in the water and the Rocket Punch. I wonder how suitable it is for little ones since it's predominately robots punching monsters (ie. No blood, no shooting people with guns).

 

Aw, I really liked Silvestri's score for that!

"Waaahoooo!!!"

 

It might have been a decent score, but I felt it was horribly mismatched with what was happening onscreen. Far too jolly and zingy, for lack of more technical terms. For me, it drained the villains of any menace and the scenes of any tension. 

 

There have been some other films with this issue - a score tonally at odds with the action going on - but I'm blanking out at this point.

 

I've already seen a "omg Inception sound" whine-fest on my wall. I'm just in awe. People watch a trailer for a Guillermo Del Toro movie and immediately they think of comparing it to fucking Battleship? Seriously? Hasboro != GDT. Come on.

 

God that really sounds like a more bombastic version of some of Joe Hisaishi's scores for the Ghibli movies. Thinking about it, there's a real specific sound that Japanese orchestral soundtracks have that I can't quite put my finger on.

 

He's playing a brit but I'm pretty sure this isn't his natural accent either. He's got a pretty thick Brixton accent in real life, but he sounds like a plummy sgt major type here.

 

You'd be surprised appalled at how many people don't know who Guillermo Del Toro is outside of websites like this.

 

Yeah, but the people in question were movie fans. So they should know who Guillermo Del Toro is. And despite that they're still making these stupid comments. 

 

I'd expect that from my coworkers, who turn to me as a reliable source for good TV and movie recommendations (and books, come to that), of course, and I'm here to educate them. 

 

And that's a good thing, just like it's a good thing the trailer doesn't say "From the Director of Hellboy and Hellboy 2."  The point of the trailer is to get people to want to see the movie.

Definitely.

 

I think a huge part is that Japanese orchestral scores aren't afraid of a sweeping earnest melody.  The kind that old Hollywood movies used to have, which is what Masamichi Amano cribs from SHAMELESSLY.  And I LOVE IT.

 

Became a fan of the guy for his score for Battle Royale and found his score for Giant Robo well before ever seeing the anime.  It's great stuff I fully recommend, Spike.  In fact, I think I'll spam your Facebook wall with it!

 

Well he hasn't exactly had a huge hit either.  Del Toro name is not exactly mainstream, yet!

I'm hoping this is the movie that makes him mainstream. Pan's Labyrinth proved a minor hit among art house crowds, and I'd be thrilled to see Pacific Rim raise him to a higher visibility for multiplex audiences.

It's not even the Inception cue is it? It's a far more metallic Transformers/Battleship type cue, which is where those particular comparisons are coming from for the most part.

I guess peeps are so burnt out on these cues that their ears are fucked out to them and now they conflate them into one thing.

Sure they're different, but Inception really seemed like it made it into a THING.  So I can see why people conflate them. 

I can see why people who aren't as cultured and refined as me conflate them too.

I just wanted to point out that I'm cultured and refined.

 

No, you're totally right-- they're not the same, but what Nooj said. Different or not they've been kind of intertwined with one another in popular consensus to the effect of them being indistinguishable from each other.

 

My main problem is that the "omg Transformers/Inception" reactions kind of denigrate Del Toro's honesty and genuine passion and talent as a filmmaker. He's so much better than that kind of flash-in-the-pan reactionary attitude acknowledges.

I don't really even hate the Transfoermers/Inception/Whateverthefuckitis blare horn; I actually find it amusing that it happens to be in nearly every single big-budgeted action film trailer.  

 

And it's a trailer made for people who don't know who Del Toro is.

I don't mind this sound. Airhorns are always going off when huge things are moving around.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/movies/865107/guillermo-del-toros-pacific-rim-trailer-commentary.jhtml

It's a quasi War of the Worlds sound. 

Yeah, the Inception horns have always reminded me of the tripod blasts in WotW. I like to think their effectiveness in trailers is a byproduct of that movie's effect on the public unconscious. But probably not.

 

I'm much more interested in Del Toro when he's in small-scale, intimate fantasy mode rather than blockbuster CGI spectacle mode, and don't know why he would opt to make this movie when presumably his brain is exploding with original ideas. It just seems like a film so indebted to current trends in blockbuster cinema that it's giving off a dead on arrival smell.

 

Mind you, I think it'll be a cool movie that will probably make lots of money. I would just prefer other things from Del Toro.

 

Speaking of which, I assume there's some sort of hand wave where the kaiju are bomb-proof and that's why we've decided to go with punching as our main offense?

 

Wired did an article after Cloverfield that concluded blubber was pretty hard to get through, since it would ablate any weapon hitting it.  So make it super extra-dimensional blubber under boney plates, and yeah, I can see how that would be a tough nut to just shoot or blast through.  At least in sci-fi terms.

The world has had like 60 years of movies featuring giant monsters that are impervious to conventional weapons, often with little to no explanation. I think it might be too late to start worrying about the realism of it. I mean, these guys are from another dimension, that buys you a lot of leeway.

Also, I'm under the impression that the bulk of the film takes place several years after the rift opened and the Kaiju started attacking, but also covers some of the early days when they first appeared, and maybe in those early days humans did successfully kill (a) Kaiju with conventional weapons (the corpse on the aircraft carrier?) and it's just really difficult and being able to physically match the monsters with the Jaegers is found to be the best solution. But I'm just speculating.