Atlantic Rim: World's End

I got duped and started watching this believing it was the blockbuster "Pacific Rim". It was an impressive experience, my first exposure to a "mockbuster". To my defence, I quickly realized that I was not watching the real thing, so what the heck was I watching? I just couldn't believe that there was a market for this, so I came up with a few theories: * internet spoof: a bunch of movie buffs enjoy recreating scene-by-scene a blockbuster with intentionally minimalist SFX for release on YouTube * film school project: a bunch of students set out to recreate a multi-million blockbuster as quickly and inexpensively as possible, in order to learn the ropes What I finally settled on, was that I was watching an animated storyboard, i. e. a filmed first draft of the original movie script. I had to admire the actors for acting their hearts out, almost like in a real movie, only much more hammy. I sat transfixed through half of the movie. Never in the world, though, would I have suspected that this was an actual inferior copy of the original, made to part suckers from their money. Who would go back to a rental place that had fooled them once?

How can I explain this film? It goes so far beyond words. I simply cannot use words to describe it. Words are simply not suitable, they are not powerful enough to explain the range of emotions one feels when watching this... artwork.

While watching this film, I experienced uncontrollable laughter. It was wonderful at first, but then it tapered off and left me with a general nausea induced by a profound feeling of pity. I felt so sorry for the actors. The shame of being in this movie must surely weigh heavily upon them.

Enough hyperbole. Let's get to the heart of it.

The movie's production value was actually reasonable. But almost every minute of it was an assault on my brain. The acting was atrocious, the CGI was not horrible, but was far from convincing. Think Power Rangers. The soundtrack was utterly miserable, a straight run of "epic-ish-action-ish-wow-you" muzak that never seemed to fit the scenes, but instead served as the only consistent tie between them.

The flow of the plot, the aspect of a movie that ties each scene together into a cohesive storyline, was just deplorable. The director leaps from scene to scene, the actors doing things that make no sense at all, only to end up at the bar drinking as much as possible (apparently this is what the writers feel good soldiers should do). I suppose it's reasonably difficult to outline a respectable plot when the story itself is so full of haphazard clichés. The soldiers don't act like soldiers, the monsters don't act like monsters, the civilians act like cannon fodder (of course. And they do such a good job of it). I can't say the movie was completely predictable because NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE.

I felt like a 5 year old boy was leaping on his bed swinging around his Jedi light-saber telling me, "And then the robots had weapons! And then the monster threw a submarine! And then they drank too much!" And all when while I just want him to calm down and go to bed so that I can think straight and make sense of the world again.

I feel my score is accurate, but despite that, this is a must watch. It will teach you so much about good movie making, using the time honored "See what they did? DON'T EVER DO THAT" method of teaching.

........BA BOOM!!!!! Thing's gone."

Entire cast succeeded in never connecting with a high five, low five, fist bump, hand shake or any other celebratory hand or body gesture. Solid one star acting effort by all, but additional star for consistently bad from start to finish.

Michael Scott's movie "Threat Level Midnight" was probably better than this pile of garbage.

Another Asylum cash-in on a summer blockbuster. Like they did with "Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies" just in time before the release of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" or "I am Omega" as "I am Legend" came out, so again they do it with "Atlantic Rim" in the time of "Pacific Rim".

It is just shameful, isn't it? But still, you know what you get with the productions and movies spewed out by The Asylum. Lower budget version of potential blockbusters, with failing dialogue and even worse CGI effects.

However, I will say that in the more recent time, The Asylum has started to post more money into the CGI effects, and it is paying off. The effects in "Atlantic Rim" were actually quite alright. Though the movie was just suffering from being a cheap knock off of "Pacific Rim".

The storyline in this movie requires no brain activity, just switch into auto-pilot and watch the movie as the three good guys in their mecha armor suits beat up some colossus aquatic monster that came from God knows where.

As for the dialogue in the movie, well it was bad, really bad. I have never heard soldiers talk or communicate in the way that they did in this movie. And some of the things they say was just downright embarrassing to witness.

And the acting in the movie was equally bad. Steven Marlow (playing Sheldon Geise) looked like he had a bad case of diarrhea, while Graham Greene (playing Admiral Hadley) was like a drone totally devoid of emotions at all. And David Chokachi (playing Red) looked like he was trying to do a reenactment of "American Ninja: The Musical" - if there was such a thing.

This is not one of the better movies to make it out of The Asylum's drawing board, not even by a long shot. Everything here was rushed and seemed to be half-hearted. If you are going to copy something and cash in on something, at least do it properly.

For a Sci-Fi movie, then "Atlantic Rim" was a really plain and below mediocre experience. Although I have seen a lot, and I do mean a lot, of questionable and low-budget movies, then "Atlantic Rim" is not the worst amongst those movie, but it is up there on the high ends of the scale.