Pacific Rim (2013)

Giant monsters—kaiju—have risen up through a dimensional portal on the ocean’s floor, and caused massive death and destruction. Eventually, humans got the advantage by building giant robots they call jaegers. The robots require two closely aligned pilots whose brains are connected to the machines and to each other. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) was such a pilot, until his brother was ripped out of their cockpit by a kaiju. Five years pass, and things have gotten much worse. The wealthy have moved inland and hope a giant wall will protect them. With only four jaegers remaining, Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) has a plan to defeat the kaiju and with so few pilots left alive, he needs Raleigh to return.

Pacific Rim was the Holy Grail to anime geeks. It’s a film seeped in Japanese pop culture, with giant robots and giant monsters battling it out, and it isn’t embarrassing. No daikaiju (the real Japanese word for giant monsters as kaiju refers to any sized strange creatures) fan can show Godzilla vs. Megalon to a non-fanatic without blushing. Let’s face it, most giant monster mashes are childish and horrendously made, and it only gets worse when you bring in over-sized robots. But Pacific Rim makes it all seem legit. And due to that, I have heard those fans gush over Pacific Rim as if it was the greatest piece of art ever made.

Well, if we limit ourselves to giant robots fighting giant monsters, it probably is.

While Pacific Rim is focusing on robots fighting monsters, it is a fabulous show. It’s slick and exciting with the combat set at that perfect speed that allows the audience to understand why each punch matters and when things are looking dire. The visuals are superb—director Guillermo del Toro can bring out the beauty in monsters and meyhem—and the characters give heart to the slugfests. The mid-movie, all-out combat is one of the great action scenes in cinema. Not that everything is perfect with the robot-on-monster moments. I’d like there to have been one scene in bright light instead of night, murk, and rain. And while the kaiju are the height of CGI mastery, they aren’t individually memorable. Godzilla never looked this good, but I remember Godzilla, and these monsters are just a collection of teeth and claws. Still, when compared to other giant monster films, that’s a small complaint.

The world they fight in is engrossing and complete without it being spoon-fed to us. This is a sad, broken future, that mixes gorgeous with gritty just as it mixes desire with desperation. And there are jabs at politicians and the social order that might fool you into thinking that Pacific Rim has something to say.

But things aren’t so good when the monsters are missing and the robots are still and the people begin to speak. The human stories are just a series of clichés. Becket is the generic hero, who’s been hurt but will get over that in record time once he’s back in action. Pentecost is the generic unbending leader. There’s a generic jerk pilot and two other jaeger teams who get no personalities at all. Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), Becket’s new partner, is the newbie with drive. None of them speak English, but instead speak only in catchphrases and trite expressions. They make two sentence speeches and will change their personalities only if presented with an over-the-top declaration or a smart-ass comment. Becket explains how emotionally he could never go back after his brother’s death. This has kept him away for five years, but Pentecost says one line about “Where do you want to die” and Becket is back in. I guess he wasn’t that upset after all. Pentecost has one firm conviction: Mori will never try out for, or become, a pilot. It is an absolute that he repeats so we know it well. But Becket implies, in a single line, that Pentecost is scared that she won’t do well and bam, the conviction is gone. These aren’t people. They are walking plot devises. The interactions, and speeches, remind me of Independence Day. It works in a way, but it is deeply simplistic and cheesy.

The only characters who don’t fit into this are the over-the-top scientists (Burn Gorman, Charlie Day) and underworld boss Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman). They aren’t human either, but they are memorable. All three, but particularly the scientists, got on my nerves, but I’d rather be annoyed than bored, and all the others are boring.

So, the characters are vacuous and simple, but then so is bubblegum pop, and sometimes it has a hummable tune. Pacific Rim has the depth of a cheap old pop song, but it also hits the right beats. If robots fighting daikaiju is an idea that calls to you, then yeah, this is your Holy Grail.