Pacific Rim (2013)

Let’s talk about destruction. People seem to like it. They will pay quite a bit of money to watch a movie in which an entire city is destroyed, and we’ve seen quite a bit of it this year alone. Not long ago Man of Steel caught quite a bit of flack for devoting its climax to a catastrophic fight scene that no doubt left millions of Metropolis residents either dead or injured. A great deal of big budget films include scenes of mass destruction, but in order to be successful the filmmakers must straddle a very difficult line. It has to be fun to watch, but not so insensitive that it doesn’t seem to value human life. Most will argue that Man of Steel was indeed wrongheaded in the way it portrayed its climax, but these complaints are not being hurled at Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, a sci-fi blockbuster that concerns itself just as much—if not more—with the destruction of large metropolitan areas.

The difference is, of course, in the execution. Not only do the scenes of combat and devastation succeed in Pacific Rim, but they are far more fun to watch than just about anything else in the movie. If it did away with many of the failed attempts at character building in the first act, it would be a perfect piece of loud, clanging entertainment. For now, it will have to settle for being a very good piece of loud, clanging entertainment. Unlike Man of Steel and other films of its ilk, Pacific Rim creates the sense that its human-controlled robots are actually fighting to keep further destruction from happening. Also, they’re quite simply incredible to behold. As I’ve said many times before, one of the chief flaws of CGI is that it often removes all weight from the onscreen environment, and as a result it looks fake. Guillermo del Toro clearly knows this as well, and his film provides proof that computer generated effects can indeed be utilized to create fully realized, lived-in universes. As problematic as Pacific Rim’s valleys can be, the peaks are truly astonishing.

The short version of the plot is this: giant robots fight giant monsters. That’s all that really matters. The longer version: a portal opens up deep in the Pacific Ocean. Out of this portal comes the “Kaiju,” a group of gargantuan lizard creatures that seem to exist only to lay waste to various Pacific-adjacent cities. To fight the Kaiju, the humans have created robots called Jaegers, which are controlled by two compatible pilots. They go out, find the Kaiju, and start punching away. One such pilot is Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam). He and all the other pilots are under the command of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), a man fully aware that he’s the only thing between the Earth and the apocalypse. Raleigh is teamed up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who has very personal reasons for wanting to stop the Kaiju. Meanwhile, two scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman work to see if they can find the motivation for the Kaiju attacks, and Ron Perlman plays a major black market figure that has found a way to profit off of all the violence.

As I look back at that plot summary I’ve just written, I’ve actually gained quite a bit of appreciation for the world that del Toro and co-writer Travis Beachem have created here. I haven’t even covered some of the weirder aspects of the movie, like the idea of “drifting,” but I shan't bother as much of it is covered in the opening narration. Normally I’m not a fan of that type of expository technique, but here it’s absolutely necessary, and everything clicks surprisingly quickly. One of the other impressive things about this environment is that it really does feel like a world on the brink of collapse. Everyone seems tired and afraid of what is going to happen, and only a few brave souls are working to prevent it. As with most of the great science fiction movies, Pacific Rim creates an alternate world that feels used. It is dirty, it is bleak, and true disaster always feels like it is right around the corner.

That’s what the movie gets right. Unfortunately, it makes the mistake of thinking the audience cares even a little bit about whom these characters are. Most of them are cliches, but the movie doesn’t seem to think that they are cliches. Pacific Rim really could have been a lot more economical in the way it presents its exposition in the too-long first half. It’s important to have something resembling sympathetic characters, but nobody here is ever able to make that all-important connection with the audience. As a result, for a while Pacific Rim may feel like a bit of a disappointment, and I kept waiting around for the punchin’ robots to come back.

Luckily, they do come back. And then some. The second half of Pacific Rim is almost entirely dedicated to piling awesome fight scene on top of awesome fight scene, and they are immensely entertaining. While there is very little originality to be found in the content of the film, del Toro is able to take the familiar “let’s blow up a city!” trope and make it his own. There’s a wonderful glee to the combat scenes, particularly the mid-film clash that leaves a good chunk of Hong Kong in the dust. By the time one of the Jaegers uses a cargo ship as a baseball bat, I no longer cared about the shortcomings of the script itself. The action scenes are pure visual gold, and it’s hard not to delight in every last impact. Pacific Rim is the kind of movie a typical 10-year-old boy would make if you gave him $200 million. That may sound like an insult, but when that 10-year-old boy is Guillermo del Toro the concept feels a whole lot more appealing. It’s not always the worst thing in the world to let a grown man play with his toys.

Grade: B+