Pacific Rim, 2013.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro.
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman and Ron Perlman.
SYNOPSIS:
It’s giant robots versus giant monsters. That’s about it.
Much has been made of Pacific Rim’s need to be a financial success given that in a year of films that are either prequels, sequels or reboots, this film offers something new. We need to show Hollywood execs that we support original films, and we want more. Trouble is, Pacific Rim is not really original, is it? It’s not exactly new or innovating. Nor exactly is it good. In fact, if this what we are supposed to be letting Hollywood know we want more of, the future is bleaker than Pacific Rim ever managed to convey humanity’s hopes as being during its entire its 131 minute runtime.
Taking place in the not too distant future, Pacific Rim follows the attempts of humanity to fight back against alien invaders who have arrived on Earth via a portal between dimensions located under the Pacific Ocean. To fight these alien monsters, the Kaiju, humans created ‘Jaegers’, huge mechanical robots – apparently our weapons are useless unless they are fired from these Jaegers and not aircraft or ships, but that’s the fun part isn’t it, really. I guess. The Jaegers are piloted by two humans who must synchronize their brains to be able to control the Jaegers – a little hokey, but you can buy in to it as the point is to be fun, not realistic. Pacific Rim does well to skip to the end of the war; too often do we see the first alien attack and how humanity reacts to it, and rarely do we see the end of the resultant wars – unless we’re somehow able to enact a swift victory. Rim forgoes all of that and gives you a five minute reel of the first attack and indeed the first few years of this war.
As mentioned, this was welcomed, however Guillermo del Toro undoes that good work immediately by showing numerous scenes of how humanity had ‘moved on’ after the first few Kaiju attacks and the whole thing had become a big joke. Any tension (or what little there was) was immediately removed by showing us how the world we are meant to be buying in to doesn’t even take the attacks seriously themselves – so how are we supposed to?
One knew not to go in to Pacific Rim expecting intelligent fare, and that this could be an insanely fun summer blockbuster that required little thought, but unfortunately there isn’t much of anything to latch on to. Everything looks great; the Jaegers, the Kaiju, the CGI is top notch. But that’s all it is, CGI. The human characters are short changed and given quick glimpses of their back stories, which when coupled by some of the worst collective acting in recent memory – admittedly not helped by a terrible script – gives you absolutely nothing to latch on to when Jaeger 1 punches Kaiju 1. At times the action does look great, and there are some really cool little moments (such as the ‘elbow rocket’ and the use of a cargo ship as a weapon) but they can’t make up for what is ultimately a very shallow film.
Pacific Rim is mildly entertaining at times but there’s just not enough at its core to make any of it particularly interesting. It’s disposable fun; a quick two hours of light entertainment. Which is essentially what the Transformers franchise was for a lot of people, and yet that has been heavily criticised. One can’t help but wonder if Pacific Rim has avoided this simply due to the name at the top of this review being Guillermo del Toro rather than Michael Bay.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Originally published July 25, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
