People have come to expect different things from movies they see in the summer than they do from movies they see throughout the rest of the year. Ever since the first few blockbusters that came out in the late 70s and early 80s, summer movies have continuously become less about telling a story and developing characters, and more about being an event. It’s not enough to make a film that’s full of laughs, it also has to be full of thrills. It’s not enough to make a film that’s beautiful, you have to make one that’s a spectacle. It’s not even enough to be just a film, you also have to have merchandise on store shelves, tie-ins with fast food companies, and billboards on the sides of highways. All of those expectations can lead to quite a few disappointments, but with Pacific Rim, director Guillermo del Toro has finally provided filmgoers with a summer 2013 movie that’s going to live up to all of their hopes and dreams.
The premise is simple. Somewhere around 2013 a rift to a different dimension opened up on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and ever since, gigantic, city-destroying monsters have periodically come out of it in order to destroy coastal towns. Humanity tried to fight these monsters off with tanks, planes, bombs, missiles, and all of the ordinary means of warfare, but it didn’t take long to realize that a new weapon was in order if we were going to be able to protect ourselves from these beasts from beyond. What sort of new weapon? Giant robots, each as big as a monster, each tricked out with unique weapons and gizmos, and each piloted by two expert fighters who are mentally linked and share the neural wear and tear that comes from controlling the robot’s advanced computer brain. Does any of this make any sense? Not really, but you have to accept that in order to enjoy the fun that comes from watching giant robots and giant monsters do battle.
The main thrust of our story occurs toward the end of this war with the monsters, when our army of robots has been depleted down to a final four, the monsters who are coming out of the rift not only seem to be getting bigger and more powerful, but are also coming out more frequently, and hope for humanity has nearly run out. The commander of the robot force (Idris Elba) has one last ditch plan. If he can just get a nuclear payload down to the bottom of the ocean and have it detonate in the rift itself, he feels like he can collapse the connection between the two worlds permanently. The only problem is, he’s going to need the power of all four of his remaining robots, and one doesn’t have a set of pilots. Enter Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a hotshot pilot from years ago who went into hiding after the tragic combat death of his brother and co-pilot, Yancy (the briefly appearing Diego Klattenhoff). With the help of a promising young co-pilot wannabe named Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), he just might represent humanity’s last hope.
As would be expected, the main attraction here is the robot on monster violence. If the big fights didn’t deliver the prerequisite summer blockbuster chills and thrills, Pacific Rim would have been sunk no matter what else it got right. Thankfully, the fights deliver—they deliver in a big way—and that’s in large part because of the hard work done by the design and effects teams that del Toro recruited to bring this world to life. Each monster and each robot has its own look, its own personality, and its own stockpile of tricks and abilities. The attention to detail put into their conception is the sort of thing that’s going to inspire a whole generation of kids to scribble ideas for their very own robots and monsters into notebooks, and then to run out into the backyard to play Pacific Rim with their friends. And that’s basically the coolest thing a summer movie can accomplish.
Design isn’t the only thing that carries these big battles though. If the aesthetics of these creatures weren’t working in conjunction with top notch animation, the whole thing could have still felt like a flimsy cartoon. Creating creatures this big can’t be any easy task, but del Toro and his animators are actually able to make them feel like they have weight, like they’re taking up space, and they’re able to make them move the way things this large would actually move. Whenever a robot or a monster hits something, you feel the impact of the blow, you see the extent of the destruction it causes. Whenever they step on something, you feel the impact of them smashing it, you understand the panic of the people scurrying like terrified ants below.
The city-destroying fights here are basically the opposite of the disappointing city-destroying fights that Zack Snyder recently gave us in Man of Steel. These combatants aren’t invulnerable tanks who can pound on each other without effect until the audience gets numb. Instead, they bend, break, and tear apart with every devastating attack. And the cities that get destroyed in the process aren’t shiny, faux-feeling metropolises that crumble to dust without effecting anybody caught in the path of the destruction. These are densely populated, lived in, and worn down towns, and the plight and desperation of the last remaining of humanity’s huddled poor is always at the forefront of the film. Not only are the stakes of these fights made clear, you’re made to feel their importance at every turn, and that’s the main ingredient of creating an effective action scenario. Really, the only complaint one can make about the action scenes in Pacific Rim is that they’re shot in a little too close and the color palette is a little too dark to completely show off everything del Toro and company have created.
The other things the film hangs its hat on—second to the big battles—are its performances. Along with the over the top violence comes an over the top and colorful cast of characters, and almost to the last one they’re brought to life by fun and charismatic character actors. The one exception to this rule is a big one though, as it’s Hunnam’s protagonist who isn’t able to jump off of the screen like everyone else does. The guy just doesn’t project much of a personality or have all that unique of a look, and the script doesn’t define him very far beyond being a generic hero guy, so the character who you should be rooting for the most ends up being the one who you care about the least—to the point where you’re likely to get flashbacks of Garrett Hedlund’s cardboard protagonist in TRON: Legacy.
All of the other characters are so fun, and get enough screen time, that they do kind of make up for the lame hero though. Probably at the top of the list of great supporting performances is Charlie Day’s turn as the monster-obsessed science advisor of the human forces. He’s basically channeling Rick Moranis’ work in Ghostbusters here, and he more than proves that his manic delivery can be hilarious even when he’s not delivering raunchy, nihilist material like he regularly does on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
He has an easy chemistry with another scientist played by Burn Gorman, as well. These guys are probably supposed to be partners, but in reality they’re more rivals, and if Day’s character represents the most out there and expressive a science-type can get, then Gorman’s represents the other end of the spectrum, as he couldn’t be more buttoned-down and impossibly British. In any other film, these characters would be too silly and these performances would be too broad to really work, but in this sort of live action cartoon where you’re accepting that humanity’s best hope for survival is to build giant robots, they seem right at home, and end up being a lot of fun. Ron Perlman shows up in a small role that’s equally flashy and silly, and he doesn’t disappoint with his charismatic performance either. That guy can be a lot of fun when directors let him show off.
The two biggest supporting players with the most heavy-lifting to do are Elba’s commander and Kikuchi’s rookie pilot. Elba doesn’t get a whole lot more to do in the commander role than project authority and appear concerned, but seeing as he’s such a strong actor, and he’s such a powerful presence that projecting authority is possibly the thing he’s best at doing, he’s able to add a good deal of weight and grounding to the thoroughly ridiculous things going on around him. Kikuchi’s character is maybe the most relatable in the film, and she does a great job bringing her to life as well. Her face is such an open book of emotion and vulnerability that it’s impossible not to root for her, even when the wide-eyed, lip-biting, little girl act she’s asked to perform gets a tad too cheesy during the meet-cute scenes.
The actor who absolutely steals the movie out from under everyone else is a little girl named Mana Ashida though. She plays a small child who gets caught in the middle of a monster attack and is left lost and alone, and she’s so impossibly adorable, and seeing her trapped in a situation that’s so beyond her ability to comprehend or defend herself from is so impossibly affecting, that the single scene she’s featured in just may be the best scene in any disaster movie, ever. If you want an example of how to inject humanity into summer spectacle, this haunting, beautiful, terrifying scene is about as good as you’re going to get.
That’s one scene though. Overall, the film isn’t deserving of quite so much over the top praise, and that’s mostly because the screenplay that del Toro shot from (co-credited to him and Travis Beacham, who also has a story credit) isn’t anywhere near as impressive as the visuals or the scenery-chewing performances. It’s got some problems. The dialogue is mostly stilted, the relationships between the characters are set up rather clumsily, there are a good number of gaps in logic you’re asked to ignore, and the content and structure of the story are just a little too traditional and uninspired. One or two ballsy choices as far as the narrative went would have gone a long way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ m not saying this is a film like Avatar, where the writing is always working against the spectacle and threatening to sink things, but the screenplay isn’t doing all of those impressive robot and monster fights any favors either. Pacific Rim is good for what it is, but it isn’t able to transcend what it is in order to become something great.
