Review by Dustin Hall
For many this summer, this is the one we’ve been waiting for. Pacific Rim. Giant monsters flashing us back to Godzilla’s glory days, mechs reminding us of Mazinger Z, carnage to the extreme, and finally, FINALLY, a movie that isn’t a remake, an adaptation, or a sequel.
And they said it would bomb. But I, like many of you, believe in Guillermo Del Toro.
Guillermo is one of my favorite filmmakers working today. His films are inventive, often daring, and he’s got the balls to take some risks in order to tell a good story. And his fingerprints are all over this thing. The movie plays homage to the old Kaiju films from Japan without being weighed down, burdened by references. It builds characters and relationships, becoming something more than just a big dumb punching match. The visual effects, the sound, the look, the feel, are all painstakingly crafted into a tremendous cinematic experience. Every inch of Pacific Rim is quality, quality, quality.
And yet, I will say, I wasn’t blown away.
Pacific Rim is the story of a pair of misfit Jaeger Pilots, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), and their training to pilot the mech Gypsy Danger, one of the last four Jaeger bots, on a final stand at the end of the world. (The Jaegers must be piloted by a paired team due to the mental strain of being linked to a giant robot’s computer systems.) The two of them don’t really fit in with the rest of the pilots, despite their exceptional skills, as Raleigh is reluctant to fight again after losing his brother to a Kaiju on a mission, and Mori is soft spoken and prone to freezing up in the cockpit. The pair have to learn to work together as a team, not only with each other, but also the international assembly of other Jaeger pilots, as they desperately try to find a way to permanently seal the portal in the ocean before an army of giant monstrosities pours out. Charlie Day runs around as quirky comedy relief science guy, all the while, basically just handing a PhD to his Always Sunny character. Also, Ron Perlman, so, score.
Up front, Pacific Rim just wasn’t quite the film I thought it would be. Every hero’s journey is a tale told in three parts, first of the hero’s origin and ascension, then of the glory days and triumph of that hero, and then finally the declination of that hero; their end, either dying, or going lame and being put out to pasture. And while I expected the film to be a big, fun, uplifting tale about the rise of the Jaeger robots and their heroic pilots, instead Pacific Rim is about the end of the program, when there are only a few of the old robots left, their pilots already abandoned by the public, their days as heroes already consigned to a sad end. Because of this, many of the moments I was looking forward to seeing in the moment were relegated to a series of news clips and flashbacks at the beginning of the movie. The first Kaiju attacks, the impotence of the army in trying to repel their unrelenting attacks, the invention of the first ‘Jaeger’ robots, and the almost comical way in which society begins to idolize the very monsters that threaten to destroy them, turning them instead into action figures and video games. Really, much of the things I’ve liked and have missed in the old Godzilla and Jet Jaguar flicks. Even much of the politics of a world under siege by giant aquatic monsters is just barely touched upon. The rich moving inland, starvation, collapsing economies; I would have liked to have known more, but they are just window trappings, really. I felt those elements were too quickly bypassed, and a lot of the interesting bits of the world building were swept aside for the end of the world scenario we are presented with. Sure, we get enough origin stories as it is with all the franchise reboots out there, but that’s because it works so well to introduce us to a new fictional landscape.
Expectations aside, there’s still a lot to love in the movie. The action scenes, of which there are surprisingly few, are tremendous. The film’s highlight is definitely the battle at the end of act two, which sees all four of the Jaegers engaged with two Kaiju at once, ripping the city to shreds and generally just reveling in mayhem. In a summer already rife with city-leveling disasters, Pacific Rim is no exception. Where this movie is likely to succeed over its summer contemporaries Star Trek and Superman, though, is that unlike those films, despite how dark and downbeat much of the surroundings are, it never loses its exuberant, triumphant, and overall fun spirit. Pacific Rim remains fun, and that positivity is likely why it will end up winning over most audiences.
Pacific Rim seems to lack a lot of elements of a ‘great film’. The world-building, I feel, was left a little shallow. The characters are all caricatures pulled from the tropes of other films: the insecure and brooding hero, his cocky and angry for no reason rival guy, quiet girl who needs self esteem, a gruff but lovable drill sergeant, all of these guys we’ve seen before… and in fact, like three of the actors look so similar and bland (re: whitebread), I had trouble telling them apart. The American and the Aussie could have been clones, aside from their accents. It comes across as a stripped down Evangelion, a monster movie that doesn’t revel in the triumphs of its predecessors, but neither does it add anything that would make it a true cinematic wonder; both emotional depth and real science application are thrown out the window. But maybe that’s not what Guillermo was going for, anyway. It’s reminiscent of Lucas’s eventual alterations to the original Star Wars, wherein many of the heavy sci-fi elements were stripped away to make a simple, approachable, space opera. Pacific Rim seems to have done the same. A smash opera, then? And maybe that will be the trait that makes the movie into an enduring classic, a light, fluffy bit of popcorn fun that just stands out enough from its peers for being different and reveling in its own inventiveness.
Pacific Rim is a movie that has little flourishes, touches of everything, character development, science, politics, philosophy… all of them done well, but none of them taken to any great level of achievement. Rather, they are all so subtly used as to be of no consequence. And yet it’s just smart enough to work. If you love giant monster movies, then make no mistake, you’ll love the movie. And if you’re on the fence, it’s definitely worth checking out. Maybe it’s not the brilliant, mind blowing epic I had hoped for, but Pacific Rim IS fun, and it IS probably the blockbuster of the summer that ends leaving the audience feeling the most pumped, the most upbeat, and most inspired.
Pacific Rim is out in cinemas just about everywhere now, from Warner Bros.