I must be thankful that I live in a universe where someone like Guillermo Del Toro exists. It's very rare I find directors who really have investiture in their work and even rarer directors who really pull off their vision. In some ways it doesn't exactly matter whether Pacific Rim is genius or not, because it's from director who perfectly executes his vision in a way that is huge and massively entertaining.
Guillermo Del Toro has created, what is essentially, the ultimate fan film; a giant robots vs. monsters movie that puts together some of my favorite actors (and then a bunch of other random people) in a spectacularly colorful wave of cinematic fury. Its appropriate that most of Pacific Rim's battles take place at sea, because the whole aesthetic of the film is oceanic; it moves in swathes of flowing color, crashing against each other with immensely loud blows. It should be emphasized that this movie is LOUD. I had to cover one of my ears at a couple of points because the audio was so intense (it could have just been the theater's audio, but I have to imagine they test this sort of thing when getting the audio balance, especially on digital projections.)
The premise, of course, is that alien monsters ("Kaiju," as they are called, in reference to the sub-genre of Japanese monster flicks; if the Godzilla tribute wasn't obvious enough) have come through a portal under the Pacific Ocean. For years humanity wages a war against these insane titans, as stated by the movie's intro, narrated by Charlie Hunnam as Reilly Becket, rephrasing his old Sons of Anarchy monologues to be about aliens and robots. Things start looking bad for the humans. Our giant robot fighters ("Jaegers") begin to lose time and time again while the aliens slaughter countless thousands of people.
Idris Elba steps up as Stacker Pentecost, finally letting his London give the best variation of "today we celebrate our Independence Day!" I absolutely love Elba on Luther and The Wire, but sadly he doesn't really get masterful material here, but that's ok because nobody really does. Del Toro is essentially doing a robot anime (or at least a Godzilla vs. Mecha Godzilla tribute) as a feature film and if one expects the blazing glory of epic monster fights, it's also hard to fill every single moment with brilliant characterization.
For my money, the basic character arcs in this film precisely match one of my other favorites of last year; The FP. Which of the two films has the following? Scruffy main character who experiences a lost and steps out of the game, only to be compelled by a stern coach and a troubled lady while struggling with a rivalry with the big jock in town. The answer; both.
Frankly, yes, the characterization is not great. Elba hangs his strengths on his facial hair. Hunnam, another native Brit, tries to remember that his character is from Alaska, not California or Boston. Rinko Kikuchi, seemingly an interesting choice at first, actually gets very little to say for about 80% of the movie. It's really very shocking despite the movie trying to make her a big deal as Hunnam's co-pilot of the mech "Gipsy Danger." The other international robot teams; Russia's "Cherno Alpha", China's "Crimson Typhoon" and Australia's "Striker Eureka," sadly get little to do. Apparently their only roles were to have cool names to say in their native accents. Seriously, try saying "Striker Eureka" in an Australian accent, it's perfect. The Chinese guys literally get no lines, despite having a 3 man pilot team and the Russians get maybe one word. Team Australia's pilot gets pegged as the asshole jock, which creates conflict but doesn't really roll the plot.
This is a bit of a puzzle for me because Del Toro is a very smart, talented director. Where did he stick all his choice bits? I should've known that his favorite character was obviously the nerdy scientist, Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geizler (is that a name or an energy drink?) Being my favorite actor from Always Sunny in Philadelphia and possibly the funniest man of television, the sheer idea of Day as a scientist is something that until now, could only come about in my dreams. Simply watching him dart around as the nutty, ecstatic little "Kaiju groupie" contrasted with Burn Gorman's math obsessed Hermann Gottlieb, as the odd couple science team. Ron Perlman gets a hilariously sunny cameo as a black market dealer Hannibal Chau who is, as he states, "Named after my favorite fictional character and my second favorite Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn."
Of course this is all the subsidiary build work for the film. Like every other crunchy sci-fi movie there's the exposition and talking, and then there's the stuff you really want to see. Del Toro makes it very clear that his battle scenes are huge, loud and expansive. The Jaegers are roughly the size of a modest skyscraper and the Kaijus they battle are just as huge. There's a lot that's stated just by the creature design of the monsters. They have gigantic features like horns, claws tails and roar with immense ferocity. Although their design is vaguely based on the Japanese rubber suit monsters of old, their design is colossal and terrifying. The battles are insanely destructive and there is actually a sense of the scale of these battles. The movements are slightly to convey the gargantuan amounts of energy it would take to deal with monsters like these.
Unlike the chunky, blinding battles of the "Bayformers" series, which exist as a kind of football game of characters vs. explosions, these battles are cleaner shot, but the fight choreography is a brutal affair. You'll see Jaegers using boats as swords and wrestling with these monsters in swirling cinematic maelstroms. Not every shot is perfect and there were a couple instances where the ocean tides sometimes overtake the view of the battle, but 90% of the time these huge, massively scary battles are the things of dreams; where all the fear and insanity of the unknown come lunging at us with giant sharp teeth from another dimension.
These sections are literally meant to be awesome, but part of me feels the real heart for the director came from the adventurous scientist in the middle section, who gets his own problems to deal with, including banter with Ron Perlman. It's this section I like in particular because it gives some really great scene backgrounds on the brightly sprinkled streets of Hong Kong and the colorful black market research labs, to the heart of a dead Kaiju, filled with mysterious pulsating and glowing organs. I honestly could've waited another 15 minutes or traded 5 minutes of action for 5 more minutes of character interaction.
All in all I got exactly what I expected and it makes perfect sense among the lexicon of Del Toro's other work. I'd rank this one just above the first Hellboy and next to Blade II. As clichas some segments might be (he's a rogue because he's Jax from SAMCRO! She's quiet because Japan! And when they get together, all sorts of wacky things happen!) It's still a blast and as silly as it might be, it's a kind of silly that comes from the heart. It's the kind of silly where the director cares about the lighting behind his silly characters so you can properly see the silliness earnestly gleaming in the aesthetics. In the end, isn't that the right kind of silly? The silly that cares?
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