From the mind of Guillermo Del Toro, the man who wrote the screenplay for the Hellboy series and The Hobbit Series and one of my favorites, Pan’s Labyrinth, wrote and directed this robots meet alien monsters movie, Pacific Rim.

I enjoyed this movie. It’s a great story with an original story line and great robots and monsters.  Two thing that sealed the deal for me in picking this movie as my second favorite of the year (IronMan3 is #1 if you’re wondering) 1, most of the movie took place in Hong Kong, which is a city I spent a lot of time in when I lived in Asia and 2, at the end, the male and female protagonist are shown in the final scene and they didn’t end it with a kiss.  (Thank you, I hate that, see Speed).

Let’s get to the quotes:

Raliegh Beckett (so cute): I’ll let Raliegh explain this movie.

“We always thought alien life would come from the stars but it came from deep beneath the sea, a portal beneath dimensions in the Pacific Ocean. Something out there had discovered us. The first Kaiju made land in San Francisco. The second attack hit Manilla. Then the third one hit Cabo. Then we learned this was not going to stop. In order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own. We needed a new weapon. The Jaeger Program was born. Two pilots, our minds, our memories, we were connected when man and in machine become one. We started winning, then it all changed. They counted on the humans to hide, to give up, to fail. We never considered our ability to stand, to endure, that we would rise to the challenge.”

You can’t blame Raliegh for being reluctant to fight, but you can’t deny Stacker Pentacost’s (great name) powers of persuasion.

“Two things, one, don’t ever touch me and two, don’t ever touch me.”

“Haven’t you heard? The world is coming to an end. We need a pilot. I need your fighting skills.”

“This is the end of the world. So where do you want to die? Here or in a Jaeger?”

“Today we are canceling the apocalypse!”

The dark movie needed some comic relief, and this time it came in the form of a short, nasally tattoed scientist who had a unique admiration for the monsters; meet Dr. Newton Geizler.

“Their sole purpose was to aim for the most populated areas and take out the vermin, us.”

“If you’re going to stop them, you have to understand them.”

“Ten Thousand Five Hundred tons of awesome.”

The movie was ten thousand five hundred tons of amazing and I only touched the surface.  Go see it. If you need help keeping some of the concepts straight, I’ve included a little Pacific Rim cheat sheet.

Jaegers – robots created to fight the monsters.

Kaiju – alien monsters who pass through a portal in the depths of the pacific ocean to take over earth.

Pilot to Pilot connection – the Jaegers are controlled by two pilots who must enter each others minds to share the viral load in order to control the robot. Only two pilots have been able to control a Jaeger solo without ending up as a vegetable.

Neural Handshake – the process by which the pilots connect. (This connect seems to work best with relatives; brothers or father/son, but doesn’t have to.)

Last but, the opposite of least, let me introduce you to the robots.

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re not a sci-fi fan, still go see this movie. If you are a sci-fi fan, hold on to your geeked out mind, this is a good one.

Have you seen Pacific Rim?  What did you think?