JULY 13 — The summer movie season is almost over and despite the presence of mega budget hot tickets like Man Of Steel, The Lone Ranger and their many other compadres, it is only now that the geeky fanboy inside me has finally found a summer blockbuster to truly geek out to.

What I mean by “geek out to” is to get all excited about going again to the cinema for repeated viewings.

Quality wise, I’d say Monsters University remains the best film of this summer’s whole blockbuster bunch. Never mind that it’s an animated movie, because Pixar has again proven that when it comes to strong scripts, wonderful performances and solid film-making nous, they’re one of the best studios out there, if not the best. I still get shivers down my spine whenever I think back about how great Toy Story 3 was.

While Monsters University is nowhere near the melancholy and dark themes of Toy Story 3 (check out the landfill incinerator scene and you tell me if you still believe that it’s not “dark”), its greatness lies in the subtle ways it pushes its themes of positivity and individuality. It may be a kiddie movie to the eyes of some people, but you’d be surprised at how wise it is too.

But let’s get back to the topic at hand. Monsters University may be the more complete film quality-wise this summer but Guillermo Del Toro’s latest attempt at a popcorn movie, Pacific Rim, just makes my heart race like only his popcorn movies can.

I’ve waited ages to see it ever since the trailer for the movie popped up online and in the cinemas. After seeing the movie, I can safely say that the trailer doesn’t lie. The trailer promises a monsters vs giant robots movie. There’s no signs of romance, no signs of plot twists and turns as well, just a good old fashioned series of battles between monsters and giant robots. And how the movie delivers!

A few disclaimers first, though. If as a kid you thought that Ultraman and all those rubber suited monsters (obviously influenced by Japanese monster movies like Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Gamera, etc that we fanboys call “Kaiju” movies) were cool, and if you’re one of those adults who was giddily excited to see the first Transformers movie because as a kid you loved the cartoon series, then most likely watching Pacific Rim will make you feel like a kid in a candy store.

It’s a monster mash movie made by a fanboy (Del Toro is very much well-known for his fanboy tendencies) for all his fellow fanboys out there.

And nowhere is this any clearer than on the movie’s very first title card, in which Del Toro basically lays out what the monsters are called in this future world — Kaiju. The giant robots designed to fight the Kaijus are called Jaegers.

In the movie’s pre-credits sequence, it’s told that a crack somewhere in the Pacific has become a sort of a pathway or bridge between the world of the Kaijus and our world, and the Kaijus have been appearing with increased frequency whilst adapting to the tactical manoeuvres of the Jaegers, resulting in the defeat of so many Jaegers that there are now only four Jaegers left to defend the planet.

We are then introduced to the movie’s main characters — Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam from Sons Of Anarchy), an ace Jaeger pilot recalled for duty; aspiring pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi from Babel); and their commanding officer, the stupendously named Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba from The Wire).

Between them we get a few touching backstories and comic relief comes in the form of wacky scientists Newton and Gottlieb. But the human elements are not what this movie is about. They’re there to keep things interesting, of course. But one probably has to be deluded to expect anything else than awesome fights between the Kaijus and the Jaegers from a monster movie.

And it is in that department that this movie wildly succeeds. Or, to paraphrase Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, it is “Transformers transcended.” I’ve long complained about the influence of the Michael Bay style of staging and editing action sequences, wherein things are so rapidly edited that we barely manage to even see who’s doing what to whom.

All that we can see are blurry motions, aided by loud clangs and bangs as sound effects, resulting in a big loud, blurry and tiresome mess masquerading as an action sequence. Just check out the finale to Man Of Steel to see what I’m talking about.

Thankfully there’s none of that here. The Kaijus and Jaegers may often fight in the rain or in the sea, and usually so much water will mean that things will be visually murky and confusing, but that’s not the case here at all.

Every single punch landed is clear, and the consequence to every punch, hit or shot matches. In short, you get to see everything that’s happening as the Kaijus and Jaegers battle each other, and as a result your excitement levels will amped up considerably.

And when you add that adrenaline rush together with the aforementioned human elements, it makes for a summer movie that’s never short on exuberance. And in a summer movie season that’s been more grim than fun, a bit of joy is always a good thing.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.