David Edelstein on Pacific Rim

This is good.

Best line: if you can geek out to this movie, you're doing a lot of the movie's work for it...

I was kind of excited to see Edelstein make a suggestion that also occurred to me: that Pacific Rim is a sequel, and not much good without its prequel. I really want to see Pacific Rim 1, the Alien to Pacific Rim's Aliens. The fighting back is less satisfying without the initial running away in terror...

I disagree about Ron Pearlman's character. I thought that the movie would have been better without that whole nerds-n-capitalists subplot. But he's right about Idris Elba. Dude did amazing work with crappy lines. As Edelstein points out, you're-too-mavericky speeches are usually used to show how awesomely mavericky the mavericky maverick hero is. Elba's you're-too-mavericky speech makes you think that the recipient thereof ought to slink off and get his damn shit together...

Spoiler alert!

I also forgot to add before that I didn't like the the-monsters-are-sent-by-invaders bit. Not to mention the bit about it being the fault of global warming...  Fuuuu.... Can't we have one sci-fi movie without liberal preaching? And I ask this as a mostly-liberal...  They should have added: and if Obamacare is repealed, an even bigger rift will open!