Pacific Rim (2013)

Few things are more depressing than watching a promising movie fall flat on its face. I say Pacific Rim was promising not because the advertisements or subject matter had won me over, but because I have great respect for the man at the helm. Guillermo del Toro is a master filmmaker. His Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my all-time favorites and one of the greatest films of my lifetime. Just the other day I was watching the new blu-ray of Alfred Hitchcock’s original The Man Who Knew Too Much, which I’ve never thought was all that great, on which is an interview with del Toro that is so intelligent and passionate that it made me completely reconsider the movie’s worth. How could anyone with such cinematic insight make a movie like Pacific Rim? It is set very specifically in 2020 where big alien monsters that have been hiding underground for many, many years are now coming to the surface to terrorize large cities Godzilla-style. The world governments decide to fight back with equally enormous robots. Naturally.

If you’ve seen one giant robot, you’ve seen them all. By now, most movie-goers have seen so many computer-animated robots, monsters, aliens, etc. that they don’t much care anymore. The fact that Pacific Rim’s opening weekend box office was butchered by the insipid-looking Grown Ups 2 proves that viewers have grown accustomed to what computers can do and aren’t as easily impressed by movies that are more programmed than made. One of the biggest faults here isn’t even that everything revolves around monsters and robots, it’s that they’re so boring in both design and action. I’m not really sure how one would design a robot without making it reminiscent of a transformer, but surely alien monsters come with a wide range of creative freedom. Scientists throughout the film classify the monsters like hurricanes. At the beginning, they are level 2, then 3, then 4 and in the climax we are told with the highest dramatic flair that a level 5 will be battled. Yet, they all looked the same to me and seemed to cause equal amounts of destruction. If I were a child, I would have no desire to collect the Pacific Rim action figures. They’d all look the same.

 In interviews, del Toro, who co-wrote the screenplay, keeps using the word operatic to describe the events of the film. Yes, I suppose it is operatic, if G.I. Joe is considered opera. I confess that the screenplay is smart enough to realize that real characters are needed to sell this thing, because we just can’t sympathize with the hunks of metal. Unfortunately, all the characters are the stale cut-outs we’ve come to expect in a movie like this. The hero is a steel-faced bore who agrees to pilot one of the robots after the head of the project uses the recruiting tactic of shouting at him: “Would you rather die HERE or in a JAEGER??!!!” (The robots are called jaegers because they just are.) There’s also a Japanese girl who the hero picks to be his co-pilot after an actually good bit where neither can beat the other in a fight. If you are shocked to learn of the girl’s relationship with the shouting leader guy, you need to watch more movies, preferably better ones. There are also a couple comic relief geeks who are so annoying I was disappointed that they survived all the way through. The only really interesting part of the whole movie involves a character played by Ron Perlman, who is done away with in the most mundane way imaginable. At least we were spared a romance between the two leads. I doubt their acting abilities would have allowed anything more convincing than a staring contest.

The one good thing I can say about Pacific Rim is that it is one of the most watchable action movies of late, as far as camera movement is concerned. Everything is shot with a consistently beautiful smoothness, instead of darting all around in a way that makes you want to throw up with every punch. The effects are also largely spectacular, though wasted on uninspired material. The fight scenes suffer worst of all, going on far too long and often taking place in the ocean. This was an unfortunate decision since the water effects are the least convincing, though I hate to say so after hearing del Toro excitedly explain how intricately timed the movements of the waves were. I can understand what he was going for, but nobody who sees this movie will be telling their friends about how theatrical the water splashes were. They’ll most likely just shrug and forget the whole thing.

4/10