Pacific Rim (2013)

Pacific Rim (2013)

I’m still unsure about this film, but I really enjoyed it, so I guess that means it is alright.  Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, I thought this film to be a bit outside his norm.  Del T is primarily known for contributing to childhood horror films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Mama, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark and The Orphanage to name a few.  He did dabble with action a bit with the Hellboy Franchise.  Because of Del Toro’s intriguing writing and directing style, I was excited to see what he could do with a high intensity, heavily CG action movie.

The Plot

The world is under attack by a new threat, 250 foot tall monsters called Kaiju that seem to come from the darkest depths of the sea, seeking to destroy everything in their paths.  Missiles, helicopters, fighter jets and tanks all seem to be ineffective in combatting this new enemy.  After suffering heavy losses from the first Kaiju attack, the humans were finally able to bring the huge monster down.  Realizing they are seriously unprepared to deal with this monstrous threat, countries from around the world set their best and brightest to work to try to find a new way to defend themselves from the vicious Kaiju.  They eventually come up with the idea to fight fire with fire, in this case, fight the 250 foot monsters with 250 foot robots.  

This is what happens when Japan is allowed to make decisions

These machines, called Jaegers, are controlled through a neural connection with a human pilot.  Testing found that the neural connection caused too much strain on a single pilot, so they engineered the Jaegers to be controlled by multiple pilots.  The pilots need to sync up and share their memories though a digital process called The Drift to better be able to predict each other’s movements and be able to control the Jaeger. 

The next time a Kaiju rears its ugly head, the humans put up a better fight, successfully killing the Kaiju with their shiny new Jaeger.   After successfully defending their turf, Jaegers are put into mass production and soon every coastal region is under the protection by the robots.

The humans become adept at killing Kaiju, but after every attack, the Kaiju attacks grow more brutal and more frequent.  The rapture on the ocean floor, through which they emerge is opening wider and wider, allowing Kaiju larger in size and number to come through.  Soon the Jaegers are losing more often than winning, and it is clear the Kaiju have regained the upper hand.  The leaders of the world are left no choice but to ditch the Jaeger program and instead focus their efforts on building a giant wall to keep the Kaiju out. 

Enter retired pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunman), who after losing his brother and co-pilot years ago in one of the last Jaeger vs. Kaiju battles is now among the many poor blokes fortifying the massive wall.  He is recruited by former commander Stacked Pentecost (Idris Elba) to aid in bringing back the Jaeger program.  There are only 4 functioning Jaegers remaining and Pentecost, though no longer being founded by the government, believes these to be the only hope humanity has for survival.  They have all been through their fair share of battles, and are all manned by talented pilots.  Raleigh is reluctant to step into a Jaeger again after the loss of his brother, but after the escalating violence of the Kaiju attacks, he seems to have no choice.  Besides, Pentecost pairs him up with an Asian hottie.

What I imagine Siri looks like

Oh and if you were wondering, the giant wall works about as good as you would expect.  It held up for about ten minutes before a category 4 Kaiju (whatever that means) breaks through and starts to demolish the city.  The human race is in trouble now, facing a real Dog’s Breakfast if they don’t find some new way to combat the steadily growing threat of the Kaiju.

My Take

The story is a bit silly, I’ll be the first to admit that, and the characters aren’t exactly polished, but I don’t feel the least bit ashamed to say that I enjoyed this movie for what it was.  The visuals were great, and I felt that the Kaiju had a distinct Del Toro nature about them.

I'll set fire to the rain!!!

Throughout the whole movie, however, I felt like the Jaegers were fighting with a handicap.  Seriously are these Jaegers armed with any kind of weaponry?  Through the multiple battles we witness, about 90% of the Jaeger attacks are punches and throws.  There is once scene where Raleigh’s Jaeger finally uses a sword, but after effectively cutting up one Kaiju, he puts it away and never uses it again.  He also likes to use a kind of plasma beam that is about as useful as a potato gun.  Surely if they can build 250 foot robots, they can at least give them effective guns and design a style of combat that focuses on using weaponry rather than relying on punches.

"Yeah, just scale those up and we'll be fine"

There is a subplot, where a pair of scientists attempt to learn from the Kaiju to develop better ways to defeat them.  I thought this provided a good amount of background info on the monsters, but I am still confused about their classification system.  I guess the higher the class the more dangerous the Kaiju? 

At first I thought the dual pilot system was stupid, and was only there to create some semblance of a love story between Raleigh and his female co-pilot, Mako.  This may indeed be the case, but Del Toro created a believable enough explanation for the dual pilot system for me to forget about my theory until just now.

The Verdict

There is a scene where the Autobots Rollout Jaegers form up and head out into the ocean to fight a pair of Kaiju.  This scene WILL get you excited.  Also there is a scene where a Jaeger strikes a Kaiju in the face with a bus like he’s smacking a hooker in GTA.  These scenes, along with the Ron Perlman scenes are worth the price of admission. If you don’t learn any life lessons or gain any moral insight from this movie, good, because that’s not what it’s about anyway.   The precedence for cinema these days tells us that you don’t need to have a good story when you have robot smacking bitches with busses.  We’ll all (myself included) buy tickets anyway. 

7.4/10