**It could be so much better with some logic.**
Guillermo Del Toro is a good director, but he seems to be learning too much from Tim Burton instead of forging his own path. I really liked some of his films, especially “Pan’s Labyrinth”, but this film, despite its merits, has nothing to do with that and doesn’t even seem to be from the same director.
The best thing about this film is the extremely high production values. Visually, the film is amazing and it's really nice to watch. We've got great visuals, stunning cinematography, and an absolutely immersive dose of high-quality CGI. In addition, the film has very well-made sets and costumes, thought out in detail and indisputably expensive. The special effects department, despite all the computer graphics used, also had a series of good opportunities to show its value, and it never failed to do so. The editing is good, the cuts are barely felt and the pace of the film is extremely pleasant. All good reasons to see the film, which was a great blockbuster.
Director Del Toro, I have no doubt, had the courage to take a risk on a film that looks like nothing I've seen of him. However, and as I said, he is good, he is creative, and he is a perfectionist in his work, assuring us of an impeccable job in this film. The cast has great actors, and all of them were at the best level. Idris Elba is, for me, the most notable and the best of them all, but I also appreciated the efforts of Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day. The worst performance came from Ron Perlman, but this is largely due to the poor conception of the character, who is a crude caricature of a common drug dealer with no taste. Charlie Hunnam, honestly, was an actor that I completely missed. I felt that not only did he lack the charisma and ability to hold the audience and be the protagonist, but he also lacked the skills for the task.
I deliberately left the script for the end because, for me, this is where all (or almost) of the film's problems lie. The script is based on an alien invasion of Earth: coming from the bottom of the sea, aliens take the form of gigantic monsters, forcing the entire planet to unite and create metal monsters capable of breaking their faces. The first problem is the illogicality of these premises: how and when did aliens arrive in our world, and how could they penetrate the Earth's crust? This is not explained, nor how countries funded the construction and maintenance of such metallic machines, nor how they manage to walk and fight in an ocean as deep as the Pacific. How did they withstand the heat of the planet? How did they withstand the pressures on the ocean floor? The battles against the monsters almost always take place in the coastal area next to the big cities, threatened, in a clear allusion to films like “Godzilla” or “Transformer’s”. The dialogues also lack any kind of authenticity. The movie simply makes up for it all with tons of action.
