Quick Review: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim, set in the near future, begins with a prelude: the world is in peril by Kaiju, giant monsters from another dimension or something that arrive through a portal deep in the Pacific Ocean and begin destroying coastal cities. The countries of the world unite their resources to create Jaegers -- enormous fighting machines, piloted by humans. For some reason, these machines require two humans to work them, and they have to have their minds united by a mental link called "the drift." This, in our current era of drone aircraft, just seems odd. For a time this is a success, until more powerful Kaiju arrive. The Jaeger program is then discontinued in favor of a plan of defense so ludicrous I won't even spoil it. Anyway, there are four remaining Jaegers and the head of the program has a plan to close the rift once and for all...well, enough of the plot. Essentially, this is like a combination of Godzilla and other monsters vs. these guys (and I wouldn't have known of this without having seen an episode of that show a day earlier thanks to my friend Kurt's love of the show) with a dash of other movies thrown in. Both the machines and the monsters are lumbering, and as everything seems to takes place at night, often in rainy conditions, or at the ocean floor, it's hard to see exactly how the Kaiju differ from each other and the fights are at times a bit muddled. That's kind of inept filmmaking to me. It's just a little too derivative to take seriously, considering the prerelease hype. My grade: C-plus.