PACIFIC RIM.
So I went in with lowered expectations... and really enjoyed it. More so than MAN OF STEEL.
First things first, rated against Guillermo del Toros back catalouge its more a Blade 2 than a Pan's Labarynth but thats ok. I was expecting the former more than the latter in terms of content and quality and wasn't dissapointed.
While it references both Kaiju films such as Godzilla and big robot anime, in terms of content it favours the latter. It has all the hallmarks of a lot of the 26 episode series like evangalion, raxephon and all that came in their wake. The mechs all have specialised looks and weaponry and for an otaku like me it even had a rocket punch! Given the films about two hours (though felt a lot shorter to me) it dosent go into as much depth with the characters as a series might and the main problem if I were to identify faults with the film is theres so much detail and so many characters its all a bit crammed in for a single film.
The comparison with Michael Bay is WAAAY off the mark. It would be like someone watching Deep Red and saying it was a bit like Giallo in Venice without the mysogyny. Theres big robots in both and thats the ONLY similarity. I sat through Transformers 1 and disliked it immensly, I sat through Transformers 2 and actively hated it to the point I wished someone would find the negative and rape it. Pacific Rim is more like a textbook example of how to handle these scenes correctly. Michael Bay edits the s**t out of his action scenes to the point of giving me headaches, its like he read up on Russian montage editing technuiques and took it to mean just cut everything really quickly and skipped the notion of juxtaposing shots because he didnt know what Juxtapose meant. The action scenes in Pacific Rim are clear and easy to follow while at the same time feeling kinnetic and intense. Unlike Transformers I wasn't struggling trying to keep up with a style of filmmmaking that feels like ADD mixed with Red bull.
Essentially the films the product of an anime geek trying to fit all his obsessions into one film and barely leaving any room. Its not perfect, no film is but compared to a lot of summer blockbusters its still got a lot of style and origionality to make it feel fresh and interesting.
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