Pacific Rim Review

Meryl:

                After hearing all the hype about the movie Pacific Rim I decided to finally go see the film for myself. Now having watched it, I have to say I wasn’t all that impressed. Sure some of the fight scenes were cool, especially the one in Hong Kong with all the colorful neon lights and buildings crashing down (cue cliché kinetic balls clip). But other than that the acting was mediocre, and the plot very predictable. Pacific Rim seems to be yet another film solely enjoyable for the visuals…and don’t get me wrong, that’s a big part of what I love about film. I’m all about effects and art production, and in Pacific Rim we get to watch a hell of a lot of it with giant robots beating down on some crazy aliens. It’s just that after a while it can get old, especially without a good story thrown somewhere in there. To me this is what made the film a mediocre one and not something better.

                If you’re expecting Pacific Rim to be the next big sci-fi film with an enthralling new story….it’s not going to work for you. In the film Charlie Hunnam stars as the Jaegar pilot (or giant robot controller for those unbeknownst), Raleigh Becket. Jaegar pilots work in pairs, syncing their thoughts and memories with each other in order to control the Jaegar. But when a series of missions fail, including one where Raleigh loses his brother (and co-pilot), world leaders decide Jaegars just don’t have the capabilities they once had to defeat the aliens pouring into Earth from the Pacific ocean.  Jaegars, Jaegar pilots, and their commander Stacker Pentecost, soon become obsolete. However Stacker refuses to believe Jaegars aren’t the answer and goes underground to keep on developing and improving them. After 5 years of working underground, Stacker brings Raleigh back into the picture where he finds himself a new co-pilot to join him in the fight against the Kaiju.

                The most interesting and unique part of the storyline is that pilots have to join their memories and thoughts in order to effectively control their Jaegar. And yet Del Toro hardly utilizes this in his film. I would have loved to see more exciting problems arise, or joyful achievements accomplished because of the combined memories and thoughts the co-pilots share…but not once is it addressed during the fight scenes. There is also a lack in development of any of the main characters. We hardly get a good idea of what Raleigh and his co-pilot Mako (Rinko Kikuchi) are like outside of being in a Jaegar. Why should I care about a character that I’m not able to relate to at all? Give me some quirkiness! A special characteristic or an interesting past and I’ll be all over that. Instead we’re forced outside the box of Raleigh’s life rather than being right in the middle of it.

                In terms of acting, I thought Charlie Hunnam performed a fine cookie-cutter, buff-white-dude Raleigh Becket (there wasn’t much acting needed for this character). But if the story had plunged a little deeper into Raleigh’s history and personality, he could have found himself in a much more interesting role. Rinko Kikuchi played a very awkward, English-speaking Japanese woman as Mako, whose shy personality didn’t exactly reflect well in her kick-butt role as a Jaegar pilot. Idris Elba as the strong and intimidating commander, Stacker, was okay but not as badass as filmmakers probably hoped. The characters who really stole the show though were Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the quirky scientists who helped unravel how to defeat the Kaiju. Mana Ashido also performed a suspenseful and gut-wrenching performance as a young, helpless Mako, alone in the midst of an alien invasion.

                While Del Torro probably wasn’t going for high-brow entertainment with this one, I still would have preferred to see a little more oomph from the movie. Pacific Rim’s main characters could have been developed more and given some unique traits that would make them more human and relatable. The plot itself could also have been amped up a bit to maximize what little originality it had. While the aliens and robots were impressive, they were also not completely original. The robots were very similar to Transformers (I couldn’t help but also think of Megazord from Power Rangers) and the Kaijus looked very ocean creature-esque with mixtures of the Cloverfield alien, trolls from Lord of the Rings, pterodactyls, and others mixed in. Some of them were pretty lame looking and some of them were cool, but either way I kept finding myself comparing them to other creatures from movies rather than really being blown away by them. Over all as a spectacle it was a successful film, but as an interesting and original story it failed.

Score:  C++

Jarret:

My nutritionally supplemental opinion on Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim:

            Summer blockbuster, boys and girls. Summer nutbuster, boys. Our good buddy Guillermy is back, and it isn’t too bad of a return. His name has been attached to several films over the past few years, but the man hasn’t actually been in the director’s seat since 2008’s Hellboy II, and for those of you that are like, “wasn’t 2008 only like a year ago?” No. It wasn’t. Beef up your Gregorian calendar game. It has been at least two years since 2008—maybe even three.

            So, Pacific Rim sounds like maybe a documentary on the geographic Pacific Rim, or maybe it’s like about boats or something? You’re wrong. You’re so wrong. The film is about an interdimensional portal in the Pacific Ocean that allows giant, genocide-bent monsters to come to Earth and really just ruin everybody’s day. Fortunately, humanity banded together to create the Jaeger program which was the construction of giant robots to do combat with the monsters which are known as the Kaiju. Unfortunately, the Jaeger program is shut down roughly twenty minutes into the movie, and to find out what happens from there, you’ll just have to get up and go see it—or watch it illegally online or something.

            Right off the bat, if you’re an otaku, you may have noticed something mildly familiar about this film. If you replace “Jaeger” with “Eva unit” and “Kaiju” with “Angel,” then you basically have the premise of the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. You may have also noticed that Kaiju is the name of the genre to which the Godzilla film series belongs. Coincidence? Kind of, but not really. Del Toro has claimed that while influenced by these works, he refused to directly reference them for his film, and as a result, Pacific Rim does stand apart from these series once you move past the film’s concept. The Jaegers have their own twist that separates them from typical Japanese mechas, and the Kaiju of Pacific Rim aren’t quite like King Ghidorah and his monster friends. So, hopefully, we can all settle our qualms about this film being a rip-off.

            The film has a handful of problems—especially, if you’re sitting in the theater expecting a potential nominee for Best Picture. The story was pretty predictable in the way that you were introduced to a number of characters and you thought to yourself, “oo u kno he dead,” and then your suspicions were verified one by one as the film progressed. The plot was as straight-forward as they come—fight the Kaiju and try not to die. The film also had a rather small main cast to deal with and given over two hours of film time, they still couldn’t quite get you to care all too much about them. Even the film’s two protagonists, Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket, were a bit hard to connect with as they spent a lot of time clashing with 2,500 tons of awesome. The characters were all pretty much archetypes too. You had your rough-around-the-edges but gentlemanly Caucasian male hero with a little bit of shirtless fan service for the ladies; there was designated comic relief characters; arrogant brute with a redemptive character shift; et cetera et cetera.

            The film does not require a mature mind in order to be enjoyed, and if that’s what you’re expecting, you probably won’t enjoy it. However, the film does promise special effects and brawling colossi, and it certainly delivers on that. Let’s be real for a moment—nobody watched Godzilla vs. Mothra for its deeply moving plot and relatable characters. I wanted to see a giant lizard with atomic breath throw down with a space moth, and if a man can’t sit down and watch unfettered entertainment without the throes of high art weighing upon his shoulders, the Kaiju might as well sweep the human race under the mat of extinction tonight.

            Pacific Rim is reasonably directed which justifies the action overkill, and the movie had some refreshing qualities. I particularly enjoyed that the two leads maintained a platonic bond until the credit roll. Furthermore, I noticed a lack of hyper-sexualized female characters (there was a lack of female characters in general). As a film that is more than likely geared towards men, I appreciate that Del Toro did not feel the need to draw viewers in with a mouth-perpetually-open Mikaela Banes-esque character.

            Taken at face value, the movie is quite fun, but if you start digging deeper you might find the wood gilded beneath. It is the type of film that inspires that old childlike sense of awe that makes you want to go home and convince your brother that your dog is a Kaiju headed for the Alaskan coast, and y’all are mankind’s last chance for survival.

Score: 3 ½ Ron Perlman cameos out of 5