Half in the Bag Episode 58: Pacific Rim

half in the bag [ __ ] movies so Jay did you hear that mr. plinkus house was finally demolished to make room for that new expressway uh well I mean I knew they were going to do it but I haven't talked to mr. plinkus since we left his house last time yeah you know how they're smashing houses now how with giant robot holy [ __ ] that sounds awesome yeah I saw it I was there a giant robot came up and smashed his house smashed the house next to it the house next to that and then they started building the expressway oh that's great by the way have you seen grownups too first kaiju made land in San Francisco the second attack hit Manila the third one hit Cabo not gonna stop Pacific Rim is the latest film from visionary fantasy and horror film maker Guillermo del Toro the story takes place in a futuristic world that's been ravaged by giant Godzilla monsters that travel to our world through a magical portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to stop these violent creatures humans decide to watch the movie robot jocks and tons of anime to get a few ideas what follows is lots of punching destruction horrible fake foreign accents and unnecessary close-ups of Ron Perlman's face so Mike what did you think of Pacific Rim Jay I thought Pacific Rim was a very very very good Asylum movie oh no actually that's pretty accurate concept and certain scenes just some of the shooting like the way the look of it in in like the control room with the martial character and he's got the Sioux the military uniform on I just kept thinking of those scenes in the submarine okay if you don't know who the asylum is the asylum I believe was responsible for sharknado most recent Asylum production but they'll make a copycat movie extremely low budget it's a junk movie it's a piece of crap they'll make a copycat movie of a Hollywood movie and they have a submarine set and they use it in every movie yes it's like Sharktopus shark appleís giant squid versus so and so and everything you could possibly imagine they'll whip it out they do have a knockoff of Pacific Rim as well that thing just touchdown South New York he is a reckless slide of Bill is the best book on called atlantic rim which doesn't make any sense but whatever no it doesn't they don't care I don't care I think some of it had to do with the fact that the cast was all kind of no names mm-hmm and there were two guys that looked similar to each other yeah like yes you talk about the main guy and then the Australian guy yeah it's it looks like the exact same person yeah they look like generically handsome soap opera actor man one was doing a bad fake Australian accent while the other one was doing a bad fake American accent yes yeah and I was like who's who after the beginning I didn't know which brother got killed the younger one of the older one I just knew someone got pulled out of a robot um and then some some of those scenes that were kind of lacking in a real like visual style they just felt really kind of flat even color temperature on the film and it just looked everything just kind of looked kind of dull but overall the movie was was good well I would say I thought the movie was really really good I liked it a lot I did not love it and I kind of wanted to love it I was I was rooting for this movie and there's a lot of people that are really into it and do seem to really love it they're calling it like a modern-day Star Wars and things like that which i think is a little overblown there were a lot of Star Wars references there there's lots of references to a lot of things but I think it comes from the idea that they're sort of a building entire universe in this movie it takes place in later in this ongoing war with these creatures it's not in a more conventional movie I think the the opening prologue establishing how the world has become what it is like that would have been the whole movie yeah I like that this takes place later down the road we're in bad shape the program the Jaeger program the robots that are designed to fight monsters that's being shut down because everything feels futile so I like where the movie takes place in this sort of larger story yeah I like the fact that I wasn't expecting it i sat down to watch it in the first three minutes the prologue is is here's what happened over the last and and that kind of um because we talked about disaster porn and that sort of took that element away from it because you're you're sick of see in movies or it's like here comes the creature Oh No look it's destroying the Golden Gate Bridge Oh No look it's and and so they the fact that they skipped all that and went straight to the the post plot as far as echoes like they were in the midst of a war and everything's the whole world economy has changed the whole structure of how everyone lives has changed because of these monsters kind of um it it it changed the dynamic of the story it's like this is about this it's not look shocked oh gosh look at this monster coming well it almost seemed to be I don't know if it was intentional but it almost seemed to be sort of making fun of the disaster porn movies or it's like you'd see the Golden Gate Bridge get destroyed but it's just in a quick cutaway because they're talking about other things or establishing this larger world we have our time each other but what kept me from really really loving the movie was the extremely thin characters when I watched a monster movie the big money shot for me was a monster which is not bad in and of itself you could have I mean the whole movie sort of feels like it's very simple sort of a throwback movie the characters have very simple dynamics and that's fine but there's lots of bizarre things or it feels like things that are set up that don't pay off there's things where there's like a bizarre payoff to it but it's not something that was set up an example of that would be there's the the Australian characters the father and son and the father gets injured at a certain point so he can't go on the big final mission at the end of the movie and there's this whole scene where he says to the marshal character like take care of him he's my son my son and it's like are they supposed to be saying like he finally trusts his son it's like one of those things where you would establish earlier and earlier in the movie that he doesn't have confidence in his son or something like that but that's not set up there's like one line reese's something about eight things as kids kind of an [ __ ] but that's it there's the dynamic with the main character where he they make comments about how he's a loose cannon you know the typical that type of character but that doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the movie so it's things like that where it's like you can have these thin characters but at least and give them an arc of some sort instead of just elements of characteristics yeah I think that's that's one of one of the things that stood out to me like a lot of technical things that are great with this movie and that's where it really shines is the Uchitel Guillermo del Toro was really fond of the movie he was making it didn't feel like a Michael Bay Transformers movie there there's not an ounce of cynicism in this movie and that's the best thing about it yeah it's um it's the the subject matter is taken seriously and it's unlike transformers you could tell what's happening on the screen it's a robot fighting a monster and and you can see what's happening and it's handled very well and it's um it's it's enthralling and exciting at times you know when they when they finally get that punch in now on the monster it's well it's so awkward and slow like there's a weight to it which makes it fun it's not all like what noise and he was like oh stop and that's all there but it the in addition to that you wanted more clear characters you wanted more realistic characters and and the whole like your loose cannon father-son and that's where it starts to feel like a sci-fi channel movie yeah well I think I know what he was going for he was trying to make these sort of classic movie archetypes but as I said there's things that are set up that don't pay off and vice-versa so that sort of deflates that a little bit in the movie the robot takes two pilots because it's too hard for one person to do it it's too hard on the brain because you have to mind-meld with yeah but you have to have some sort of connection with your copilot in order to make the robot work and that was of course two brothers are perfect you know they're very similar people or whatever and and then this one since his brother died he goes running off and doing other things and then he has to find a co-pilot and instead of like there being some sort of hesitation with the Mach Oh character he's like a gung-ho for her yeah to be the co-pilot and that that could have had some interesting like conflict those two characters not really liking each other wanting to work together and then the end they do yeah um it's a movie about teamwork mmm whole movies about teamwork whether it's Charlie and the British scientist guy working together yeah to to tap into the the kaijus brain or to two pilots it's movie about teamwork and loyalty it's also a movie about punching giant sea monster there is so much punching in this movie I wonder if if they were going for like a cornball type script or characters you know well the movie is corny but it's corny in a way where it's not like wink wink like we're being over-the-top and silly it takes some material serious enough but the concept is so goofy that it makes the whole movie fun yeah and there is that you mentioned teamwork there's a lot of it's a really positive movie and as we talked about a lot of movies lately or so like brooding and dark and the heroes aren't really heroes and this is a movie where it's people working together to overcome an outside threats it's it's characters that's at the end of the movie like all the main characters of the movie are basically willing to sacrifice their lives to for the greater good in a way that doesn't feel like schmaltzy or stupid or pandering it's a real matter of fact in its approach yeah like here's what would probably happen if giant sea monsters came out and start smashing everything and there's a little bit of politics in there where like the the the the spineless politicians want to build the wall as opposed to the the vulgar robot program but you know and they're like [ __ ] you are gonna keep punching these things with robots oh there was something I was hoping that they showed early on I was hoping there'd be more of that can I had a Robocop vibe to it where they established like oh the Jaeger program is failing so we're gonna build this giant wall and then all the people that are building in giant wall see on the news a giant wall that they're building in Sydney Australia and then the monster just just burst through it immediately and they're like why are we wasting all this time yeah they're sort of a satirical element to that that I wish was in the rest of the movie but yeah yeah I would have been happy if they focused on more of the economical political element of of how do we survive in a world where every so often a giant sea monster comes on so it's smashing everything is that that part I was more interested in that than the interplay between the stock characters yeah but then you know you have to accept the cornball nature of it because I'm the whole time sitting there watching like if building giant robots to punch the sea monsters is pretty cool but they could expelled all that effort and building millions of very small planes that could shoot highly powered rockets at these things now instead of one giant robot and probably work better but the movies about giant big-ass awesome robots exactly country money exactly we need a weapon that can react and grapple with the kanga we read the entire sets to vibrate to shave to give you the real perspective of what it would be to be in silent robots so this might be the first big movie in a long time where I actually it was very excessive the action was there's lots of destruction and things like that but where I actually wanted to see more of it yeah it's such a weird thing because usually I'm like oh goes on forever there get tired you know you get tired of him but with this one is like I want to see more cities get destroyed I want to see more robots defending these cities I wish there was more of that in the movie yeah they give you a little tease and they don't overdo it now you see some of the other robots some the other will about pilots and and there's a long stretch in this movie without action hmm which they take time for character building unfortunately it's not the strongest character building I appreciate the effort but the execution isn't the best and there's a nice little moment I noticed during there's a great extended fight scene in Hong Kong which is sort of the big centerpiece action scene of the movie and there's a part where the giant robot is walking down the street and there's like an overpass and I was just waiting for him to break through it to just plow through it he takes the time to step over it it's a little silly because right when he steps over it whereas foot lands just completely destroys the street underneath it but the fact the fact that he's thinking about that violence our minds on memories man and machine become one thinking of the robots they're called the Eggers in this film they're called Yeager's which they tell you means as in German means hunter yes so of course we brought out our bottle of Jagermeister hmm and if you didn't know Jagermeister means master hunter and German hence the picture of the deer so let's have a shot of this alcohol beverage I think a fun drinking game for the Pacific Rim movie is every time they say the word Jager you take a shot of Jager you'll be drunk within the first five minutes you'll be dead you'll be dead by the end of the movie so caution please don't place a drinking game so drinking game was not authorized by red letter media incorporated hmm I mean lightning-fast VCR we hold no responsibility if you try said drinking game but J Ballman mentioned yeah lots of robots and the robots are cool huh I think I think this movie is a winner it is it's it's a breath of fresh air it's okay with being corny and and I don't want to say a smaller story in a larger universe because the whole thing is sort of wrapped up at the end but it is at least an established universe and there's a nice little touches like Hong Kong there's a section in the slums where years ago a kaiju had been defeated and the bones just stayed there and they rebuilt the city around it you've got Ron Perlman is like a kaiju black market guy and and lots of nice little touches like that yeah it does a good job of establishing the environment and the history and everything feels lived-in yeah nothing feels shiny and new right right that's that's that gives it that Star Wars equality and it has that kind of like what Star Wars yours you always watch it and you go I wish I lived in that universe and even though this is a world where robots are and monsters are destroying everything you kind of feel like hey I wish I was a robot pilot and it almost just just brings back a little bit of that childhood excitement well this yeah this is definitely a movie for 12 year olds 12 year olds will [ __ ] love this it's not really super ultra violent or scary or anything like that it's a it's a good what is a pg-13 I assume yeah um it's a good movie and toys of Pacific Rim should be flying off the shelves but they're probably not no they're not because the bigger movie was grownups too so maybe Adam Sandler poop toys of why not to shop his entire set would shake and would be able to drop 15 feet really rapidly for the drop of the head the actors were in for a ride it was like a little amusement park simulator so Mike would you recommend Pacific Rim abso-fuckin'-lutely we probably should have recommended it a week ago when it maybe would have helped because now the movies not doing great go see Pacific Rim if you haven't seen it already if you were on the fence about seeing it go see it it's good it's entertaining and a movie like this deserves to do better and you may even feel some emotion at the end yeah yeah for the characters who sacrifice themselves to save the world for characters that have become intact attached to each other you you may feel something in your heart unlike a Transformers movie where all you can feel is Eugene Levy's bowel movement Eugene Levy isn't in those movies yeah well I appreciate that the designs of their robots weren't too crazy there was only one where it was a Japanese robot I think and there were three operators because it had three arms right and one of the arms the hand turned into spinning blades or there's a little but it wasn't like it's happening right and they don't have an endless supply of weapons and things they can do the most exciting part of the movie is when they realize that they have a sword hmm they say [ __ ] let's use the sword I don't know what what it is it's missing from this I think I think as far as audiences go and watching this movie it's it's the the reasons why it's not doing really great one is because grownups too came out in theaters and everyone has to see that if you got your choice you go see grown-ups too but I think a lot of it might be big dumb fatigue possibly because you look at this movie and it looks not that it's an intelligent movie but it's it's intelligently made and it's a lot of fun but I think people look at it they say oh it's like another Transformers movie yeah or a battleship yeah or more creatures in the ocean aliens in the ocean are smashing things and yeah and they go oh I don't want to watch that and people are so accustomed to dumb to big dumb that they might stray away from this now that's called Pacific Rim yeah the title doesn't really tell you what it is you know transformers while I recognize that title obviously you know what they should have called this movie well grown-ups too you

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 820,612

Keywords: redlettermedia, red, letter, media, pacific rim, pacific, rim, half in the bag, mike, stoklasa, mike stoklasa, jay, bauman, jay bauman

Id: YacE1h34E4Y

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Krinberry]

I keep forgetting that Jay was still in his larva stage just 4 years ago. Every time someone posts one of the old videos it's always horrifying to be so suddenly and violently reminded.

[u/[deleted]]

Wait, giant robots are the alternative?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm definitely in favor of building a giant anti-illegal immigration robot instead of the Trump wall. Its a much more humane option.

[u/DoctorCroooow]

I feel the need to post this reminder of the "no politics" rule we have here. You can mention politics in a joking way like what has been posted here so far. Just don't get serious/shitty with it. Thanks!

No politics.

Come on. 90% of Reddit is already about yelling at each other about politics. Let's keep it to shitty movies and the stuff RLM focuses on, shall we?

[u/Baramos_]

Exactly. Trump has never said where he stands on giant robots. In fact, one might even say his giant robot agenda is nothing but a blank page.

[u/STUVtheMAN]

Is Mr Plinkett replacing the White House Chief Strategist?