2. The Cop Out Of An Ending
This point sort of ties in with the incredibly predictable story. The whole film built up to this massive super bomb, which would apparently blow up the dimensional portal. So at the end of the film, they decide that the best course of action is to drop the bomb into the portal and hope that it blows up inside, closing it. Stuff happens to complicate things and they decide to send Raleighs Jaeger inside instead because its nuclear. Why that wasnt the plan in the first place is beyond me, but well get to that later. As soon as he went into the other dimension on his own, it was quite painfully obvious that he wasnt actually going to die. We knew he wouldnt and its a shame, because killing the main character at the end would have been a ballsy move and would have actually redeemed the film somewhat. It would have been a pleasant change from the basic plot we had seen up until that point. However, while that is a disappointment, its not the big cop out. The big cop out is the Class 5 Kaiju. The film had built up the whole class system and how they were getting progressively bigger, then when the Class 5 came through it actually seemed like it mattered, like this was something that would be nearly impossible to kill. The Class 5 survived a massive super bomb and it looked like a genuinely daunting task. Then they killed it with a sword. The whole encounter with the Class 5 lasted a good deal of time less than the Hong Kong fight and it also seemed about five times easier to kill. All it really came down to in the end was jumping at it and putting a sword in it. It was a ridiculously quick and easy way to end it, especially when you take into consideration how much the idea of a Class 5 Kaiju had been built up.