Though “Pacific Rim” beat “Age of Extinction” to location shooting in the former British colony, the lurid images Guillermo del Toro served up made the ultra-modern city look like Chinatown. Kudos to Bay, then (despite the surreally ubiquitous lanterns), for capturing the city’s gleaming high-rises and seedy alleyways with lively verisimilitude. In several scenes, the dull, rusty hues of the man-made Transformers blend especially well with the grimy tenements, which resemble stacks of matchboxes. There’s even one stunt that may or may not be a reference to an incident that took place during production, when local gangsters demanding a “turf fee” reportedly threw an air conditioner at Bay (an indefensible act nonetheless in keeping with the spirit of the franchise’s electrical-appliance fetish).