For all the bad press Michael Bay gets for Transformers — incomprehensibly edited, poorly acted, overly long, transparently cynical — there is one remarkable thing: Somehow, despite all odds, Bay made giant robot battles a thing of pure boredom. Pacific Rim saves the concept by making giant robots, well, fun again. Maybe it comes down to a subtle difference: Transformers is made by people who think people will pay money to see giant robots fight; Pacific Rim is made by people who genuinely find giant robots to be the coolest thing ever.

There’s no point pretending that Pacific Rim isn’t a $200 million mega-monolith of special effects. Nor should we pretend it reinvents the wheel. Director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) crafts his spectacle of monsters battling humanity from classic archetypes of character and situation. There is really nothing here you haven’t seen in Star Wars or Independence Day, or Homer’s The Iliad, for that matter.

But gawddammit, it’s tons of fun. Whereas Bay soaks his movies in scorn for the theme, del Toro brings childlike enthusiasm and monster-centric glee. For good reason is his tale of hideous leviathan kaiju versus iron giants dedicated to stop-motion creature master Ray Harryhausen and Godzilla maestro Ishiro Honda: Del Toro simply loves what he does.

Nicely breaking tradition from the usual “all-American” route, del Toro goes international in casting, tossing Brit Charlie Hunnam (TV’s Sons of Anarchy) in as the token heroic American who pilots a robot, teaming him with spunky Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) and allowing the towering Idris Elba (Prometheus) the rare privilege of keeping his British accent. Throw in a comedic pair of bickering scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman, both very funny in the C-3P0 and R2-D2 roles) and a slimy opportunist played with aplomb by genre veteran Ron Perlman (again, Hellboy), and you’ve got broad, yet effective characters played at perfect pitch by all.

And as for the real reason most people will watch Pacific Rim? The monsters are enormous, the robots huge, the effects freaking incredible, and the battles directed with clarity and verve. These things have weight to them. The punch-ups are epic, and show Bay how it’s done. Not once was I ever confused as to what was punching what.

So yeah, I loved it, if for no other reason than this: At the reveal of the first kaiju, 30 seconds in, I was grinning from ear to ear, and I never stopped. Except when, no kidding, I honestly choked up when the Aussie father/son pilot combo said their goodbyes to each other. Huge lump in my throat. —Corey Redekop

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Three scenes utterly traumatized me as a youngster:
1. the reveal of the “star child” in 2001: A Space Odyssey (nightmarish!);
2. the rabbit attack in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (that was a lot of blood); and
3. the finale of Disney’s The Black Hole, wherein an ostensibly family-friendly flick suddenly goes medieval and takes a trek through literal Hell. After 80 minutes of cinematic sci-fi — ending with the entire cast being sucked into the eponymous hole — Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell, Deep Impact), imprisoned within the armor of his killer robot, stands guard over a blasted hellscape as tortured souls trudge down pathways carved into a flaming mountain range.

Today, the scene is a cinematic curiosity, a weird and unforeseen side trek into Christian mythology that barely makes contextual sense. But back then? Schell’s eyes suddenly peering out from the furnace-red eye slit of his mechanical beast damaged the 8-year-old me worse than anything. Forget the Bible; the Hell of The Black Hole is what almost scared me into belief.

Past that, The Black Hole is an unbalanced amalgamation of Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney cutesiness and horror. On the plus side, you’ve got an admittedly awesome-looking hole in space, some pretty terrific effects, a terrifying mute demon robot that performs what surely counts as the only disembowelment to appear in a Disney film (bloodless though it is) and a John Barry score better than the film 90 percent of the time and more suitable for Monday Night Football for the other 10.

Veering into the mediocre, there are floating-by-wire R2-D2s (voiced by Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens, and the most interesting characters); a script as thin as watered-down tapioca; robot soldiers that make the battle droids of Phantom Menace seem like crack shots; and one of those Airport/Poseidon Adventure disaster film “let’s give a bunch of B-movie actors some work” casts: the magnetic Schell, the stern Robert Forster, the perky Yvette Mimieux, the twitchy Anthony Perkins, the grumpy Ernest Borgnine and the takes-up-physical-space Joseph Bottoms. And an ending where the filmmakers must have just thrown up their hands and said, “What the hell, I guess you can breathe in outer space, sure.”

On the whole, not great. But still worth seeing for some startling imagery, fascinatingly manipulative scenes (oh, how my youngest sister bawled when old B.O.B. died), and again, that just balls-out crazy ending. I’ll be good from now on, Daddy! I promise! Don’t let the Satanbot kill me!

P.S.: Is it just me, or is Event Horizon a remake? —Corey Redekop

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By all measurable standards, I should wholly love Priest. Take the plot of The Searchers, add a generous portion of cinematic/literary dystopia (equal parts Judge Dredd, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Equilibrium and whatever else you have on hand), throw in some classic Western tropes, blend with actors I admire, top off with monsters and neat visuals, and stir.

And voila! Half-baked mash. I don’t expect greatness, but shouldn’t there be at least a soupçon of pulpy fun watching futuristic holy warriors kick vampire ass? Why is this so limp?

Hard to fault the actors. Paul Bettany (Legion) as “the priest with no name” is terrific (he should play bad-ass far more often). Karl Urban’s human/vampire villain has no real logic, but the Star Trek reboot star is a pro. Cam Gigandet (Pandorum) is a vacuum, but doesn’t have to carry much weight. Brad Dourif, Maggie Q, Mädchen Amick and Christopher Plummer, meanwhile, do what they can with nothing.

It’s all down to script and direction — hey, who’d’ve thunk? The screenplay is all high-concept and soggy-toast dialogue; any true grit has been PG-13’d down to nothing. The vampires don’t make sense; they’re considered intelligent (they’ve been confined to reservations, kind of an obvious analogy), yet here they’re unthinking, feral CGI beasts. It’s a mystery why anyone would want to become one (many do try); it’d be like yearning to be one of the bugs from Starship Troopers.

The direction by Scott Stewart (retiming with Bettany after 2010’s Legion) is all visual flair with no sense of pacing. Priest looks great, but even at 80 minutes (taking out the seven minutes of credits), it drags. When an animated opening is the only section to create any real tension, you’ve got a problem.

Note to Hollywood: I’d like to formally suggest Urban play the gunslinger should Stephen King’s Dark Tower series ever see film; snarling from beneath a flat-brimmed hat, clad in boots and black duster, Urban is Roland to a T. —Corey Redekop

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