Movie Crush Monday: Little C and Pacific Rim

Happy Monday fellow nerds!

CT gave you a rundown of her favorite smart girls of the summer. It's been an excellent summer for smart girls. But it's also been a great summer for uber nerds. It's no secret that CT and I love a good bit of world building. Take a story set in a thoughtfully crafted world where every detail of life has been carefully thought out and shown... And there are very few people who manage this in films. Most of the great world building happens in TV shows or comic books. Which makes the movies that achieve a great world all the more special.

Which brings us to this weeks MCM, the incomparable Pacific Rim.

When this came out it didn't do as well as it could have because judgy, small-minded people were quick to scream "TRANSFORMERS FIGHTING GODZILLA!!!" before running away with their arms raised in panic. To this I have a three point argument. 

1) You say "Transformers fighting Godzilla" like it's a bad thing

2) The visuals are stunning but the heart of the story actually has very little to do with either the robots or the monsters

3) Idris Elba. Don't bother arguing with me any further. Idris Elba is a trump card. I've won.

I would follow this man to Hell. 

Seriously, if the world that this movie was set in wasn't enough (It is) and I didn't have a deep set love for big scale comic book style visuals (I do), Guillermo del Toro's ability to drag you into his story is unparalleled. He's taken a disaster on a world-wide scale and told it through the experiences and losses of three people. You see the damage that the monsters are capable of often enough not to lose sight of the war that's being fought, but you also get to see the after effects of these attacks. 

The actual battles are freakin stunning though, so don't skip those.

The heart of the story is Raleigh, played by Charlie "Swagger" Hunnam. He plays one of the operators of the giant robots (Jagers: after the German word for Hunter *melts into a puddle of happy geekiness*) who in the first scene loses his big brother/co-pilot in a Kaiju attack. He gets called back into the Jager program when the final battles of the war are being lost and gets paired off with rookie pilot Mako (Rinko Kikiuchi). That's all I'm going to tell you plot-wise because I don't want to accidentally get spoiler-y. 

I do want to take a quick moment and recognize the supporting cast. A little ways into the film we are introduced to two scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman who are both staples in the nerd world. Their sudden introduction had me slapping CT on the arm because I wasn't sure if they were actually there or if my mind had reached peak-nerd-saturation and had projected their faces on lesser actors. But there they were, in all their glory, sciencing all over the place. So when Ron Perlman showed up halfway through the film and I nearly passed out from happiness. 

Ugh, and with the goggles. Ron, tone it down. 

So if you're up for some stunning visuals and a well told story, I can't recommend this enough. 

Happy watching,

Little C