OK, so a while ago I was bemoaning the fact that apparently
Hollywood canNOT come up with any original ideas anymore (I think it was the Snow White & the Huntsman
review). This trend continues with the release of Pacific Rim.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the movie. It’s just that they pretty much stole from
everything possible. Ever since the
first trailers for this movie came out (which is about the time I started
planning this blog post), I’ve been referring to it as “Voltron vs Cloverfield”
– but thinking that surely it wouldn’t be so OBVIOUSLY Voltron vs
Cloverfield.
It was.
But they also stole stuff from a LOT of other movies. Case in point: not 1 minute into the film,
and they give you a line plucked straight outta George Lucas’s mouth: “Hey, kid…don’t
get cocky.” Cripes, the actor even gave
the same LOOK that Harrison Ford gives just about everybody. Of course, we’d already seen a couple Cloverfield
monsters and a few Voltrons – and then they do the “and I’ll form THE HEAD!”
bit when they drop the head down onto the big giant robot thing.
The neural-bridge thing was reminiscent of Avatar, too – along with the fact that
the main character’s brother dies. And
then he gets all reclusive and stuff. Yeah. Seen that before.
Any-hoo, so we end up with Nick Fury gathering the Avengers
to combat the big giant aliens coming through the spacial rift. Oh, sorry – I mean Nick Fury gathering up the
teams of pilots for the big giant robots to combat the big giant aliens coming
through the spacial rift. Somewhere
along the line he lost his patch as well.
A word about the big giant robots: they are referred to as Jaegers, which is apparently Japanese
for “hunter” – but what it really tells you here is that after getting a
beating from one of those (or, receiving a beating while driving one of those)
is similar to the feeling you get after consuming Jaeger. But I digress.
On to the story. The Cloverfield monsters keep showing up and
keep beating the crap out of the Jaegers
and the big walls and the coastal cities and what not until finally Nick Fury
tells the traumatized main character to co-pilot with his adopted Asian
daughter and waste some monster butt.
Which works for a while until one of the beasties sprouts wings and
flies out of the atmosphere with them.
A word now about Voltron.
Remember Voltron? Remember how
the witch Hagar and King Zarkon and Prince Lotor would send the robeasts after
Planet Arus? And how the Voltron Force would
get in their lions and get knocked about for a while until they FINALLY
remembered they could form Voltron? And
then they would – after getting thoroughly trounced again – remember they could
form the Blazing Sword and chop the robeast in half? Which made you wonder why they just didn’t do
that in the first place?
Yeah. Same
thing. “Oh, by the way, we can form a
sword!” (Gee, that would have been nice….oh….about
TWELVE YEARS AGO.) So they chop it in
half and return to earth. Voltron saves the day again.
Meanwhile, two scientists, played by Dark Helmet and Dr.
Who, manage a neural-bridge with a secondary brain of one of the beasties,
figure out how to defeat them, and then Nick Fury and a pissed off Aussie
commit suicide to clear the way for our heroes to send a nuclear payload through the spacial rift right to the aliens (I
cannot believe they passed up the opportunity to refer to this as a Jaeger-bomb. Just sayin’.)
Hello, Avengers?
Hello, Independence Day?
If it’s one thing this movie taught me, it’s how it’s not so
bad living in Kansas – you don’t have to worry about giant Cloverfield monsters
ever making it this far inland. (Or
Sharknados, but that’s another story.)
Oh, by the way: No, Ron Pearlman, I do NOT know where your
shoe is.
