In a summer with a fair few dicey bets, “Pacific Rim” might be one of the riskier ones. While the “Transformers‘ comparisons are easy, this is an original concept, with some heady sci-fi ideas at work, and a distinct lack of big names (the film’s led by “Sons of Anarchy” lead Charlie Hunnam, “Babel“‘s Rinko Kikuchi and “Horrible Bosses“‘ “Charlie Day, leaving Idris Elba arguably the most familiar face involved. And while he’s beloved by the geek crowd, director Guillermo Del Toro has never been a big commercial name.
So a bit of an uphill battle in the face of better-known rival movies like “Iron Man 3,” “Fast & Furious 6” and “The Wolverine.” And it doesn’t help that the marketing campaign, in its early stages, was a bit faltering, with unfinished effects, and a slightly uncertain sense of exactly what it was selling. But things have been improving over time, and now the full trailer’s just landed, and it might be one of the best spots we’ve seen all year.
We’re still a little concerned at the amount of CGI, but we suppose that’s par for the course for a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. But this is an improvement of light-years from that first clip, with an awful lot of awesome packed into a couple of minutes. Have we found the movie of the summer, the one that we dreamed of when we read the pretty great script, and learned that Del Toro was on board? There’s always room to be disappointed, but we’re a lot more optimistic than we were when we woke up this morning. We’ll find out how it turns out when “Pacific Rim” opens on July 12th