Pacific Rim

Short Verdict: More for what it stands for, Pacific Rim succeeds in taking Hollywood blockbusters back to their roots – fun, colourful, self-contained and entertaining as hell.

Hollywood has truly become a cynical, cash-in hungry industry. Not that is always hasn’t been, it’s just in the past 10 years it has moved to producing brands and products and NOT films and stories. The odd blips against this trend (The Matrix, The Dark Knight, The Avengers) have had their iconic images and ideas reaped and stripped for the benefit of lesser products. Desperate to keep up with other mediums, Hollywood has resorted to abandoning original ideas in favour of reboots, sequels and re-branding. The ‘Nolan’ aesthetic, which favours dark and moody tone/cinematography, has been manipulated and altered from its original intentions in order to please mass audiences (and backfired on one of his own projects, the controversial Man of Steel). Any old product is now being revived simply for the hope that an audience may recognise the name (e.g. The Lone Ranger). Films cost a lot, so safety and conformity is being favoured for monetary/marketing/monetary purposes as opposed to actually entertaining an audience. So when news arrived to me that one of the great modern cult filmmakers Guillermo Del Toro was making a Transformers-esque blockbuster, I was naturally concerned for his artist integrity. After all, this is the man who created the Spanish Civil War fantasy films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, the highly underrated Hellboy films and attempted to create a very personal and alternative vision of Middle-Earth. His commitment to traditional filmmaking techniques must also be commended.  So, an over-the-top, $100 million plus, seemingly CGI heavy robot film had me worried. But it took an outsider to remind audiences that mass entertainment can have a good story, characters, pacing and lack of cynicism. 

Pacific Rim succeeds because it successfully tells a complete story free from Hollywood branding. The opening prologue is clear and concise in the information it provides. A rift from another dimension opens in the middle of the Pacific, unleashing giant monsters known as kaiju unto the world. As they begin to rampage cities, the military counteracts by building giant robots known as jaegers. The jaegers are controlled by two pilots, one for the left hemisphere and the other for the right (meaning they must share a deep bond – becoming the crux of the drama). For a time they are successful to defeating the kaiju but soon find that the creatures are adapting. As the looming apocalypse approaches and hope fades, it is up to the last remnants of the jaeger program to find a permanent end to the kaiju problem. That last sentence basically makes up the next 2 hours of the film. We follow the hot-headed Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), the mysterious Mako Mori (Rinko Kikucho), commanding officer Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), bumbling and neurotic scientists Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) as they fight to reclaim earth. Filling out the cast is Ron Perlman as a kaiju black-market dealer, a character who appears to have walked out of a manga strip. The best thing that can be said about the cast and plot of Pacific Rim is its transnational nature. America is not the focus of the disaster (as in many other post-9/11 apocalypse films) and looks to create a trans-global network of terror. Other jaeger pilots hail from China and Russia and the big action set-piece takes place in Hong Kong. Del Toro presents a believable, lived-in world that is collapsing under the pressure of the kaiju attacks. A particular highlight is the world that Chau, the Ron Perlman character, opens: cults worshipping the bones of kaiju, obsessive fanboys, dodgy organ dealing etc. This almost harks back to the fantasy market sequences of the much under-appreciated Hellboy II. In all, the characters form, arguably intentional, stereotypes performing tropes from the various films Pacific Rim is influenced by. Taken as a whole, the cast manage to pull together the inherently silly concept.

Outside of the well-rounded cast and world building, the main attraction of Pacific Rim is the jaeger vs. kaiju fights. Unlike the Transformers films, where the robots are thrown around like weightless constructs, you feel the weight and scale of these battles. In particular, the battle for Hong Kong is an absolute testament to pacing and audacious filmmaking. Shot in bright neon lit colour against the backdrop of torrential rain, the battle plays out like the imagination of a young boy playing with his toys, mixed in with a Blade Runner/Neon Genesis Evangelion aesthetic. The site gags in particular are excellent. The build-up to the fights feels well-earned, for a good hour of the film is spent establishing the world and characters. When that first punch is thrown, the film tumbles down into a spiral of dizzying set-pieces, character revelations, and a trip to space and back down again to the Earth’s lowest depths. In a sense, Del Toro has mastered the art of satisfying a mass audience after years spent making atmospheric art house films. In terms of the special effects, it is surprising how under-used the CGI is (now bad thing, of course). Now there is plenty of it used, mostly in the battle scenes, but not to the extent many other blockbusters do. Del Toro clearly still believes in traditional effects (sets, prosthetics, animatronics) and doesn’t let the CGI steal the show. It is a combination of all these elements, from traditional to ground-breaking filmmaking that makes Pacific Rim feel like it has stepped out of another time; a time when special effects helped to tell a story and not the other way round. 

Above all, Pacific Rim stands for something. In a world of branding, audience-recognition and remakes/sequels/reboots/prequels, the film stands for original ideas. Like Stars Wars or Indiana Jones, Pacific Rim takes influence from older source material (anime, Godzilla, Independence Day) and does something brand new with them. Just as the jaegers feel out outnumbered and out-gunned against a sea of giant, threatening and destructive monsters, Pacific Rim stands against the tide of modern Hollywood. While Hollywood continues to saturate whatever an audience may recognise and search for the latest trend, Del Toro and company have crafted a film that stands proud and tall in a sea of lumbering monsters.  Ignoring trends, Del Toro takes the audience back to a time when Hollywood entertained its audience, through sight, sound, colour and spectacle. As a blurring effect continues to haunt Hollywood, Pacific Rim has already developed something of a cult following. Sites such as http://www.pacificrim-movie.net/  or http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Pacific_Rim_Wiki) that seek to document every aspect of the films’ production and world have begun to appear. It renews hope that those with a unique vision can find a place to present their ideas on the grandest scale possible. 

…Short review: it has giant robots beating the crap out of giant monster aliens. ‘Nuff said. 

Long Verdict: From art-house to the multiplex, Del Toro has successfully delivered his first major blockbuster, using a combination of old-school story-telling and ground-breaking effects to present a film with a clear love for its influences. Essentially, a dumb B-movie has been made exciting, engrossing, satisfying and memorable by a team of intelligent filmmakers. Standing proud and tall against the mass that is Hollywood.

SCORE: 8/10