10 Greatest Monster Movies Of The 21st Century

Pacific Rim is perhaps the most honest, no-frills monster movie ever made. It’s a goofy creature-punching epic, set in a world where people have grown accustomed to the existence of extra-dimensional kaiju, and the giant armoured Jaeger machines designed to defeat them.

Scenery gets chewed by the actors about as much as the kaiju themselves, but underneath the wacky monster punching and the ridiculous premise lies a surprisingly competent story.

There are heroic sacrifices, scientific and military rivalries, and some interesting questions raised about how society would (and should) deal with such a massive threat to our safety. There’s even some stuff about erecting a wall to keep the kaiju out of America, which seems rather prescient in hindsight.

But at the end of the day, Pacific Rim is a movie about robot pilots kicking aliens to death. It’s hard to imagine a director other than Guillermo del Toro making that concept into such a visually interesting film.