Belated Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Going into Pacific Rim, you ought to know exactly what to expect: big robots and big monsters (or, excuse me, “jaegers” and “kaiju”) whompin’ the unholy shit out of each other. If you don’t, you’re probably that all-too-common form of moviegoer who walks into a movie without knowing jackshit about it, and then complains because it wasn’t what they wanted. In any case, back to the jaegers and kaiju: this is a movie dedicated to director Guillermo Del Toro’s love of old Japanese films that feature one or both of the above in rubber suits tearing into each other and destroying not-particularly-convincing scale models of various Japanese cities. Pacific Rim‘s his love letter to a genre of another age, when atomic fears fueled many a silly monster movie: Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, etc. all owe their existence to this ur-Power Rangers wackiness. (Remember the one where Godzilla did a little hoppy dance with the snaps and stuff? Or had a son named Godzooky?) I totally understand Del Toro’s enthusiasm. When I was a kid, around seven, eight, nine years old, I loved the SHIT out of these movies. Every Saturday afternoon, either TNT or TBS or one of those cable channels like that in their ’80s incarnation would air one or two of these, and I’d go apeshit. (My favorite was Godzilla vs. King Kong.)

So here, then, is del Toro, totally acting to recapture his youth in the biggest, tentpoliest way possible. So why, then, does it feel like he’s holding back? One of del Toro’s signatures is his eye for quirky, eye-catching detail that truly draws you into the world he’s creating. But for whatever reason in Pacific Rim, the kaiju are almost constantly shot in various close-ups, moving too quickly for the eye to focus. I couldn’t even figure out what some of the creatures fully looked like for long durations of time because of this, and also because nearly every fight scene is in the dark, and also in the rain. I get what del Toro is going for–the shock (and, yes, awe) of a big monster coming out of the dark to GET YOU!!!! but doing this once would have been more than enough. As it stands, all of the various kaiju come off as more or less exactly the same because we can’t make out their distinctive details. He also uses a considerable amount of near-Baysian shaky cam during the epic fights to simulate disorientation, which ultimately does more harm than good.

So what the hell’s the plot, anyway? There’s not much of one. As I stated from the start, if you’re here for anything other than robots vs. monsters, you’re at the wrong flick. Sometime in the near future, kaiju begin emerging from the Pacific Ocean  and wreaking hellacious havoc, destroying cities and generally making pains in the ass of themselves. Conventional military ways and means aren’t getting the job done, so the various nations of the world put aside their differences to fund the jaeger program, which is to say, to build big-ass robots to rock ’em-sock ’em the monsters. This is beyond silly, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is to have fun, which, when there are tussles going on (the Hong Kong throwdown is fucking AWESOME), this movie really, really comes to life (despite the cinematography issues I mentioned above).

The problems start when del Toro gets hung up in the details. Such as the EXTREMELY-belabored, overworked explanation for how the jaegers are piloted. Because of the massive energy surge caused by the neural link needed by a human to interface with the jaeger and pilot it, two pilots are needed to split the difference. But for this to work properly, their minds must literally be in sync, or as the movie likes to call it ad infinitum, “drifted.” The two pilots’ minds go through the drifting process and suddenly, they are mentally entwined, privy to each others’ innermost thoughts, feelings, and secrets. Gee whiz, what a great plot device! I bet no melodramatic tension is wrung from that! No sir!

Enter Charlie “Don’t Call Me Jax Teller” Hunnam, as jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket. He’s a loner! He’s moody, and doesn’t play well with others! He used to be a jaeger pilot until a kaiju killed his brother while they were still drifted, leaving him scarred with memories he can’t get past! He’s a walking cliche! But at least he takes his shirt off a few times to show off his abs and pecs. Becket is brought back into the jaeger program, which, after ever-increasing defeats, is being deactivated in favor of a coastal defense wall (which of course proves highly inadequate, creating the need for jaegers once more). A shot at redemption! A chance to work past his brother’s death! Holy crap, we’re piling the cliches high now!

You can probably guess the rest. Becket is back serving under his former commanding officer, played by Idris Elba in an exact Xerox of his role in Prometheus; once again he’s bucking authority; the new guys hate him or are at least mistrustful of him. There’s an x-factor chick (Rinko Kikuchi) who’s full of mystery and turns out to be the ideal candidate for Raleigh to drift with. And drift they do: in fact, there’s so much drifting going on, the movie feels the need to talk about it in nearly every! single! scene! to ensure that, yes, we know what the fuck it is. Because it wouldn’t have been simpler to just have two people or hell even ONE person simply pilot the damn jaeger. String after string after string of cliche of some sort or another is on full display in any scene where there’s not a crazy robot vs. monster fight going on.

In fact, the entirety of the cast seems to be on autopilot. As I stated, the great Idris Elba, an actor of great range, is utterly wasted in a stock “hardnosed commanding officer who turns out to have a good heart” role. Hunnam plays every outsider good-guy beat in the book (with zero flair or authenticity) that’s been in play since Tom Cruise shat Top Gun on the world. Kikuchi falls into the strong and silent Asian chick trap, and it’s also worth noting she’s literally the ONLY female in this movie with a speaking part. Charlie Day plays Charlie Day. You get my point. The only actor who seems to be actually having any fun is Ron Perlman, but even he’s playing a watered-down version of any given badass he’s ever played.

You see, as I stated above, it’s when the kaiju and the jaegers aren’t in play that del Toro slips up. For a guy making a mash note to his favorite childhood genre, he sure is conservative with the amount of actual fights to behold. I guess maybe he wanted to save the fights and make them a true highlight–and that certainly are, but at least he could have had the courtesy to make the scenes in between them special too or at the very least interesting.

Let me be clear, though, because I realize I’ve spent the last few paragraphs coming off like I’m dragging the entire movie through the mud, and I’m not. Pacific Rim is, in fact, good, harmlessly dumb fun. There’s some stuff to grouse about, stuff to nitpick, stuff to roll your eyes over. It’s a decent popcorn flick, and definitely worth seeing in all its spectacle on the big screen, given the enormity of the battle scenes. I just wish del Toro had put equal effort into ALL parts of the film, and not just the ones that give his inner eight-year-old a boner. Score: 6/10.