I come out of Pacific Rim incredibly pleased. Not everyone is as big a fan of giant robots as I am, but my entire group LOVED the fight scenes. They were weighty, well-paced, awesome and terrifying at the same time. The Kaiju were almost straight out of a Japanese monster movie except it traded in realism for interesting camera action something which I was okay with. I liked it the most, one person says "It was good, but needed more fights" the other says "Holy, that was shit. It was only slightly better than Transformers 2. Oh, the fights were super awesome, but that doesn't excuse the rest of it."
The movie was about as close to an anime as you can get in live action. Hell the main tech guy on the bridge has a small pompadour and suspenders and is extremely cool. The characterization is simple and broad, easy to grasp and overall I'd say it was really good. I know not all anime is like that, but I mean it was very cartoony and simple. Unfortunately it comes attached to pretty lame characters. They are campy and fun and one or two of them are legitimately great, but the two lead characters are not only the most boring characters in the film the two leads don't have the personality to carry it. Hunnam is a good leading man and his character has a Cpt. America sense of good that I like, but his fake-american accent is really bad and he has no real arc other than falling in love. There is a flashback that is extremely awesome for the main characters co-pilot Mako Mori(and love interest), it is just too bad that the actress can't pull it off. Idris Elba as the Marshall was the star playing the experienced, self-sacrificing military leader really well. The smartest move they did was have his character as the center of the film and have all the other characters revolve around him. There are two fun goofy scientists that are maybe a little bit too much out of Godzilla (1998), but are easy to like especially because one of them is played by the always great Burn Gorman.
In many ways the film is like Star Wars. The characters don't have a lot of depth, but they embody their archetypes really well. There is a fun, real world that seems great to explore in it's history with all of the different robots and monsters that fought over a period of years. The story has a fun prologue although the story is very by the numbers. Depending on how much you can stand campiness (Ron Perlman is campy in any movie, but he is EXTREME in this movie) and a simple story depends on how much you can stand the wait until the second half of the movie which is ALL fights.
I will hum and haw about the score, but generally I think I can say 5/7. But when I was in the moment it was perfect.