Matthew Robbins
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Connections, in both directions
And, although the beast is a lot more impressive here than the one featured in 1981's Dragonslayer, not even the thrill of a dragon attack can save this film.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Directed by Taika Waititi
influenced by The Legend of Billie Jean (1985)
Themes
We’re well past Natural Born Killers and The Legend of Billie Jean, but it addresses the social media of it all.
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by The Legend of Billie Jean (1985)
Themes
…think adult women behaving like the teen-girl pop cults of Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains or The Legend of Billie Jean — who rise up against their male oppressors.
A couple years ago at SXSW I saw Guillermo del Toro host a screening of Matthew Robbins’s 1981 Dragonslayer, and after the film he spoke so eloquently about sympathizing with the monsters in monster movies – about finding beauty and otherworldly humanity in their lumbering destructiveness.
I think often of when Hellboy kills the Earth Elemental in Hellboy II, of the enormous moral complexity of that sequence, the peril, the sense of ecology, and the feeling of loss once the monster is vanquished--all things seldom felt at the movies since Dragonslayer, perhaps (making apt del Toro's screenwriting collaborations with Dragonslayer helmer Matthew Robbins on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and the upcoming Crimson Peak), and none of which is especially evident anywhere in Pacific Rim.
Reminiscent of ’80s favorites like Flight of the Navigator , The Last Starfighter , or *batteries not included , this heartwarming adventure is a lot of fun.
The screenplay by del Toro and Matthew Robbins (who co-wrote and directed the grim early ’80s fantasy epic Dragonslayer and co-wrote del Toro’s first Hollywood foray, 1997’s Mimic) hits all the right notes and covers all its bases without ever really elevating the story to the level of the visuals, but the film works anyway because the images have such a powerful force of their own.
I was surprised at the end to see the great Matthew Robbins, screenwriter of Dragonslayer and one of the many script doctors on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (i.e., good movies), credited as a co-writer on this.