While it's preferable to leave aside the movie politics and the
Internet hype that surrounds any film, it's tough to do that with a summer
blockbuster the size of Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific
Rim. To put it bluntly, a lot of people have saddled his sci-fi juggernaut
with a ton of expectations, some good and some not so good, that are unfair in
a number of different ways. Whether it's the negative and vastly out of whack
notion that it's little more than a Transformers knock-off, or that it's the most
important original property in ages and must be supported (lest it flop like
analysts project), it's tough to not walk into the film without some opinion
already formed about it.
The simple truth of the matter is that Pacific Rim is way smarter than Transformers, and
even though it's not the most original of concepts, through sheer size, scope,
and audacity it stomps every other summer blockbuster flat. Nothing else
compares to the gargantuan Colossus-inspired scale of giant monsters slugging
it out with equally massive robots. It's truly impressive what Del Toro, who
just a few years ago was the guy who made really cool creatures for Hellboy and
Pan's Labyrinth, can do when his imagination is allowed to run unfettered. So
even if the script co-written by Del Toro and Travis Beacham, riffs on many
familiar war movie tropes and takes liberally from the likes of Top Gun, the line of American
movies that look anything close to Pacific
Rim is extremely short. Which
is to say the line doesn't exist at all.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of Robotech, Gundam, Voltron, and other Japanese pop
cultural phenomenon, Del Toro lovingly and enthusiastically lets his geek flag
fly. What's more, this isn't just a blind clashing of clunky robots with all of
the grace of a garbage compactor. Pacific Rim is gorgeous, glittery, and the
over-sized battles choreographed with operatic precision. Under any other
director's hands this could have been a logistical nightmare, at worse an ugly
assault on the senses, but Del Toro is always in complete control.
Less promising is the storyline itself,
and the lack of human characterization that gets lost while you're in awe
watching a Jaeger wield a battleship like a katana. A brilliant intro clues us
in to the fate befalling humanity in the near future, when towering creatures
known as Kaiju began emerging from a rift in the ocean floor, destroying
coastal cities and wiping out the population. To fight the threat, the world's
governments put aside all of their petty differences and began the Jaeger
program creating skyscraper-sized robotic warriors to combat the Kaiju. In
full-on Maverick mode, Charlie Hunnam plays Raleigh Beckett, a hot shot Jaeger
pilot whose reckless stunts got his brother killed, forcing him out of the
program just when he's needed most. Six years later, the Kaiju are stronger
than ever, and the governments have grown tired of funding the failing program.
But that doesn't sit well with the awesomely-named General Stacker Pentecost
(Idris Elba), who decides to round up his few remaining Jaegers and mount one
final assault. To do it, he'll need Raleigh back, and he'll also need his old
washed-up Jaeger to be brought back from the scrap heap. Because every
story like this needs them, there are a couple of goofball scientists (Charlie
Day and Burn Gorman) to provide comic relief and explain things. There's also
the General's troubled right-hand woman, Mako Mori (Oscar nominee Rinko
Kikuchi), who shares a past with the General nobody knows about.
So you have all of the familiar archetypes
in place, and it's impossible to escape the fact that some aspects of the film
are riddled with clichés. Raleigh needs to learn how to be a team player and
put his ego aside, and as he does so he squabbles with a fellow pilot (Rob
Kazinsky) who has a chip on his shoulder. Mako has vengeance on her mind but
must overcome her fears to ever have a real chance at it. We've seen it all
before, but there's nothing really wrong with that, and in some ways it’s
comforting that the script bothers to make this a story about humans as much as
it is about monster brawls. The simple story also leaves plenty of room for a
few brilliant ideas to take root. The best by far involves the Jaeger pilots
needing to form a neural bridge and meld minds to fight effectively. It
involves the unrestrained sharing of memories, can make or break a partnership
real fast. The Kaiju design, mostly taken from various forms of lizard and
aquatic animal life, draws from the story's other surprising idea. It’s
probably left unspoiled, but Del Toro and Beacham clearly put a lot of thought
into why the Kaiju look the way they do. And of course, at times of tragedy
there are always those seeking to make a dollar from it. Enter the gruff and
eccentric Ron Perlman as a black market dealer and Kaiju aficionado. Most of
the performances are functional at best, with Hunnam only coming to life when
he's throwing punches. Elba is as cool and authoritative as ever, but his Braveheart-esque "we're
canceling the apocalypse" speech feels forced and uninspired.
This is Del Toro's show, though, and he
does a masterful job of creating a sense of awe around every single Kaiju
encounter. They're so huge that we never see one in full, but we can see of
them is spectacular. The mecha design is even better, with each Jaeger adopting
traits specific for their locale. The American 'bot Gipsy Danger has an Art
Deco model reminiscent of New York skyscrapers, while the Japanese one will
have Robotech fans salivating. Most of the fights take place at night, but even
with 3D it never gets murky or tough to follow. The amount of destruction would
give Man of Steel a run for its money, but unlike Zack
Snyder's film it never slips into repetition.
Clearly, Pacific Rim has a very specific target
audience, and it mostly consists of folks who are packing their bags for
Comic-Con right now. But those who pass it by because they think it will
be too geeky will be missing out on what is definitely the biggest movie of the
summer. It may not be perfect in the way it handles characters, but Pacific Rim is fun, epic, exhilarating, and
the reason why we get excited for this time of year.
