Cranky T-Rex's Blog

For a while there it didn't seem like we'd actually get a sequel to Pacific Rim despite its obvious sequel potential, and then along came Uprising with its new cast and more importantly, new giant robots. The original Pacific Rim is by no means a great film, but it is the kind of fun, popcorn shlock that makes for a nice night out at the theater with your friends, so on the whole I enjoyed it. After all, where else can you watch a giant mech smash a Godzilla-wannabe with a boat like a baseball bat? Even the Transformer movies don't get that creative with their giant robot battles. That's not to say the idea of a sequel to Pacific Rim thrilled me, but I had hoped with all the setup out of the way, we might have time for a more interesting story. To some extent, I got that, but unfortunately the movie falls down in a few other important ways that makes this one far less fun than its predecessor. Here's some of the reasons Pacific Rim: Uprising just doesn...

"They are all...perfect." Typically when I sit down to write one of these reviews, I take a quick look around the Internet to see what others have said so as not to sound repetitive and help crystallize my own thoughts. With this new Godzilla film, it seems opinions are all over the place. I, for one, thought it was awesome. Perhaps the most commonly cited criticism is that we don’t get to see enough of the titular monster wrecking stuff. They’re not wrong that the big man’s actual screen time front and center is rather limited, but in this case it’s actually a good thing because destruction porn is getting old. The reliability of CGI has shattered any limits as to what a filmmaker can put on the screen, and unencumbered by those limitations, they’re never forced to figure out how to sell the movie’s world to the audience. Instead of trying to one-up each other with better stories, characters, or emotional moments, they do it with longer, more explosive action sequences...