Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013)

[warren oates]

Let's be clear that It's the "real robot" subgenre we're talking about here. Not the "actually truly accurate science says it could happen for reals robot."

[Luke M]

I'm more disappointed by the lack of conservative pundits whining about the film pushing a liberal environmentalist agenda.

[domino harvey]

All the conservatives were at Grown Ups 2

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Is there a very heavily allegorical Judeo-Christian element to the monsters in Pacific Rim (/"Angels" in Evangelion), because that would solidify the connection![/url]

Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost?

[The Narrator Returns]

Some observations.

Spoiler

- Typical del Toro Motifs (I noted these after listening to many Guillermo del Toro commentaries right before seeing the film)

Parent-Child Relationship: seen previously in Cronos, a little in Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth

The subtext for much of the film is about how a parent treats his/her child. Stacker Pentecost is a father figure to Mako, and he dies so that she can perform her duty. The younger Australian pilot finally achieves his potential in the eyes of his father by dying doing what he's told. On the flip side, the baby kaiju dies due to its connection to its parent (the umbilical cord around the neck).

Masking Yourself with the Enemy: seen previously in Mimic and Blade II

A simple one, where the characters must coat themselves in elements of the enemy in order to not die at the hands of them.

Sympathy for the Monster: seen previously in The Devil's Backbone, Blade II, and Hellboy II

del Toro often seems more interested with the creatures that the main characters are fighting than he is with the others. Here, he's portrayed as the Charlie Day character, who wants to know more about the creatures before the Jaegers destroy them.

- Geek References, Ahoy!

I sincerely hope that naming the deceased brother Yancy was a reference to Futurama.

The same goes for Ron Perlman telling Charlie Day that he stayed in a public shelter once. (Once.) If that isn't a Johnny Dangerously reference, I'll be incredibly disappointed.

- This movie reminded me a whole lot of the first Hellboy (they even have almost identical last shots). This helped my enjoyment of the film, since I liked Hellboy a whole lot (and its sequel even more).

[Professor Wagstaff]

Some observations.

Spoiler

Sympathy for the Monster: seen previously in The Devil's Backbone, Blade II, and Hellboy II

del Toro often seems more interested with the creatures that the main characters are fighting than he is with the others. Here, he's portrayed as the Charlie Day character, who wants to know more about the creatures before the Jaegers destroy them.

Spoiler

Not sure if that's still sympathy for the monster or just scientific curiosity, especially since he's elemental in their destruction. That said, I do find it interesting that you're trying to make that connection as I think the 'sympathy for the monster' theme is what makes so many of his films interesting and the lack of that here made the film seem like his most impersonal to date.

The material with Charlie Day was actually what I liked most about the film because of its madcap nature (some of his adventures feeling like extensions of the troll market in Hellboy 2). While I enjoyed the robot fights, Charlie Hunnam's character is too much of a blandly handsome stock character, there to ease the general public into the story, much like Myers in the original Hellboy. The oddballs and outsiders feel more at home with this filmmaker and I wish he could spend more time with them.

[mfunk9786]

If you would have asked me before I saw Pacific Rim if Guillermo del Toro making a huge expensive film in which he can indulge all of his urges unfettered was a good idea, I would have answered with an emphatic yes. But the actual result is just what makes del Toro great, waterlogged (literally and figuratively - it is never not raining in this film for some reason). The camera is always swooping around, even when there's just a conversation taking place between two characters, and the cheesy cuts to the inside of the robots whenever they get hit are frenetic to the point of completely nonsensical (and let's face it, they're unnecessary cuts to begin with). No actor seems to have been asked to reign it in (Charlie Day babbles so quickly that he's occasionally difficult to impossible to understand - yes, I know that's his schtick, but still), and there is no breathing room in the storytelling for actual character development. Oh, how I wanted someone to just stop what they were doing, sit the camera on the tripod, and have a conversation about something. Having recently played The Last of Us, I am astonished by what they're able to do with just a quick dialogue about something, or a glance, or a bit of whistling. No one has time for any of this in Pacific Rim, because we have to get back to the robots and monsters and their punching. There's none of the balance that del Toro is so terrific at in something like Pan's Labyrinth, and the movie completely crumbles under the weight of the wall-to-wall frenetic action setpieces. Did I mention that it never fucking stops raining?

P.S.: This movie contains, undoubtedly, my least favorite character actor of all time. This is the first time I've seen him in anything (although I guess he had a small part in Game of Thrones I didn't notice) and I hope I never have to see him in anything again. Overacted, ill-conceived, and embarrassing work.

[stroszeck]

P.S.: This movie contains, undoubtedly, my least favorite character actor of all time. This is the first time I've seen him in anything (although I guess he had a small part in Game of Thrones I didn't notice) and I hope I never have to see him in anything again. Overacted, ill-conceived, and embarrassing work.

I COMPLETELY agree with this assessment. Felt like a poor man's Willem Dafoe because of his looks and the performance just reminded me of Lee Evan's in There's Something About Mary. I went into this thing with hope, thinking it would transcend the material somehow (and took my young cousins), but alas had all the cliches you would expect, with wooden, tired dialogue. The monster effects were okay, but again my complaints of modern cinematography where things are either Orange and Teal or the sky is gray/dark and raining to blend in the shitty CGI sequences comes up again and is also very tired. I had the same problems with Man of Steel as well, the whole goddamn movie looked like it was filmed against a London background in the fall. Bleak, washed out colors and desaturated tones does not a summer blockbuster make.

[colinr0380]

Oh god, I remember Burn Gorman's character from Torchwood, who somehow managed to win the competition to be the most unlikeable and selfish character out of an ensemble cast made up entirely of the most unlikeable, selfish characters ever portrayed on television. That's gotten me a little worried.

By the way The Narrator Returns, the Parent-Child Relationship theme is a very big one in Neon Genesis Evangelion too, with the teenage hero being forced by the head of the project into piloting the craft as he is the only one who can 'sync up' with it.

[rohming]

you didn't see Burn in TDKR? he was aight in that, suited the part, anyways.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Ben Mendelsohn got to chew so much more of the scenery in those DKR scenes, and to great effect. Gorman didn't have the chance to ham it up. I only saw 2-3 episodes of "The Hour", but his work as the mysterious translator was also a distraction.

[mfunk9786]

you didn't see Burn in TDKR? he was aight in that, suited the part, anyways.

Didn't see it. Heard it was just aight

[RossyG]

Oh god, I remember Burn Gorman's character from Torchwood, who somehow managed to win the competition to be the most unlikeable and selfish character...

The script had him as a comedy rapist(*), though. I think any actor would struggle to make that character charming.

(*) He used alien technology 'borrowed' from Torchwood to change the brain pattern of girls who didn't fancy him into ones who wanted to leap into bed straight away. The programme suggested that this was amusing and cheeky rather than a sex crime.

[Matt]

Seeing Gravity and Drug War just before seeing this had the effect of pointing out how weak, clumsy, and unnecessary all the characterization scenes were. The movie could have been a lean, mean 100 minutes without all the backstory and eye-rolling "emotional" scenes and twists. The premise of the movie could have been

Spoiler

We've got 4 Jaegers remaining, increasing attacks by bigger and bigger Kaiju, and we need to deliver a bomb to the center of the breech.

Simple, suspenseful, action-packed, and effective. But no, they had to throw in

Spoiler

all the characters with daddy issues, abandonment issues, differences in scientific methodology, a budding romance, Ron Perlman, and a last-minute alteration in the climax.

Get rid of all that, change the name from the bland and meaningless Pacific Rim to something more fun and interesting (Monsters from the Deep, anyone?), and you might have added $50 million to your US box office.

It looked great, though. And expensive. Though as thrilling as it is to watch giant robots beat the hell out of giant lizards (and vice versa), I had a difficult time suspending my disbelief at points. They couldn't just kill these things with missiles?

[knives]

It looked great, though. And expensive. Though as thrilling as it is to watch giant robots beat the hell out of giant lizards (and vice versa), I had a difficult time suspending my disbelief at points. They couldn't just kill these things with missiles?

Godzilla and Eva?

[jbeall]

I had a difficult time suspending my disbelief at points. They couldn't just kill these things with missiles?

I'm not sure it would have made it easier to suspend disbelief, but it definitely would've been way more awesome.

[manicsounds]

Well, I certainly had a blast at the theater watching this. With the US blu-ray announcement, (2xBD+1xDVD), I went ahead and bought the Canadian version, thinking it would be the same. When I opened the package, I only saw 2 discs, a DVD on the left and a Blu on the right....

I was about to rant off online, but then realized that Warner just stacked the Blu-ray movie disc on top of the blu-ray bonus disc... terrible packaging choice.

If people are not interested in Del Toro's "Pacific Rim", maybe they should go ahead with Asylum's "Attack From Beneath" aka "Atlantic Rim".

By the way, a question for someone who watched it theatrically, I watched it theatrically and all the dialogue was in English. But the Blu-ray has some occasional Japanese and Chinese mixed in with burned-in subtitles. So what version did everyone else see?

[feihong]

Seeing Gravity and Drug War just before seeing this had the effect of pointing out how weak, clumsy, and unnecessary all the characterization scenes were.

Drug War! Can't we ever talk about that film? Somebody should start a new thread!

[Finch]

Drug War isn't quite up there with Exiled and The Mission but it's upper-tier Johnnie To all the same. One of my favourite films of 2012, it builds slowly and patiently to a great finale and while the story isn't particularly original, it gives you characters to care about, and the few action scenes are so concisely and dynamically shot and edited that it should be compulsory viewing for almost all genre filmmakers in Hollywood in how to construct a genuinely good and clear to follow shootout or fist fight.

[colinr0380]

Pacific Rim was fine (and Burn Gorman was nowhere near as bad in his role as I had worried about earlier!), although for all of the spectacle I felt strangely unexcited throughout. I wonder if that was because of the slightly one note (and that note is panicked shouting) characters all trapped in archetypal roles - of course there are going to be issues that cause our main pair of heroic pilots to be kept on the sidelines watching whilst the other Jaegers are decimated before being thrown in as the last resort to resolve the situation; of course the character who reveals that if they pilot a Jaeger again they will die suits up literally two minutes later; there absolutely will be a couple of bickering but victorious scientists; etc, etc. I was fine with that but at the same time never really felt enjoyably blindsided or challenged by the film going in a different direction to the most obvious one at every point.

The above I think plays into the way that this is really a perfect kids (or big kid!) film - it is one where you see clashes between characters but ones which get neatly resolved pretty quickly and after the opening sequence you really only see the fantastical monstrous creatures suffering, and never see any innocent bystanders caught in the middle of the action getting hurt or killed (the telling moment for me was what happened to the fishing boat in that first encounter, but you also see a care taken in scenes such as the bunker sequence or Mako's childhood memory), which in a way acts as a pointed contrast to the Roland Emmerich Godzilla film, which didn't seem to really mind one way or the other about whether civilians were dying in the collateral damage.

Spoiler

In the end you only get a few scientists working for Hannibal Chau and Chau himself in a highly telegraphed moment very reminiscent of one from Deep Blue Sea dying (though the end credits coda pulls back on even that!), along with a few of our main characters who get the honour of dying nobly rather than amusingly. And there have to be some noble deaths in the narrative to tie in with the idea that humanity cannot remain unsullied and untouched in the conflict but in some ways has to suffer before earning redemption (the religious element creeping in!), something which Raleigh and Mako (and later Pentecost and Chuck) come to embody.

I agree about the sense of scale being very well pulled off, feeling as if took those 'monster clash' men in rubber suits fighting in model city films and actually placed the action into more believable settings while keeping the same tone. Although maybe a little more camera trickery going from massive to micro scale in the same shot would have added a lot more to the spectacle. One of the moments where that gets lingered on in the film - the fist punching through the office building and setting the clacking balls of an office toy moving before pulling out again - is one of the best moments in the film because of that in-shot scale change of focus back and forth. The film is certainly not as confusing during the fight scenes as the Transformers films can be. But, and I'm as surprised as anyone to be saying this, I think that might just be because the Transformers films have more complex plot and action elements going on in them than the much more straightforward Pacific Rim, even if that complexity is often ham-handed. I'm currently vacillating back and forth on which approach I prefer.

The dual piloting element was interesting, although I much prefer the Neon Genesis Evangelion method of single pilots working together. And while on the subject of Neon Genesis Evangelion again, I think that series mixed up the fights against the monsters much better than Pacific Rim does, with Pacific Rim often just following the Godzilla-film pattern of monster jumping at mecha, a bit of wrestling and eventually getting punched or chopped into submission. There did not seem to be a clearly defined sense of the pilots having to actually adapt their tactics to different monsters (aside from pulling out an acid spitting tongue or two, which incidentally is where the Jaegers actually start to show some individual character, with the amusing double-take at the melting office building!), and nothing to really match the excellent 'synchronised attack' countdown climax of one episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which managed to perfectly encapsulate the idea that balletic and choreographed violence might be difficult to pull off but when it does it is able to carry the same impact as a great musical number.

The Ron Perlman cameo was great of course (though just as great was seeing Santiago Segura in there too, as one of Hannibal Chau's gang). But also the other small touches occasionally seen in the world outside of the base that added a much needed sense of place and humour to what can otherwise become quite a heavy handed, dour and portentous film.

The film is also struggling a bit with the same issue that the Matrix sequels had - only a few main characters get fleshed out with heavy handed back stories while everyone else in the 'resistance' is just a quickly bustling, busy character in the background (though there is one great moment that stands against that: the first scene in the base in which the hero gets in the way of a guy driving a buggy who has to stop and gets annoyed because of the inconvenience!). Because of the need to keep the urgency of the situation up there is no time to really explore the world more fully and let it feel lived in (and spend time just existing - every scene has to be relevant to the drive of the plot). And while the idea of all races, genders, nationalities etc working together is an admirable one, it also strangely leads to every character getting blanded out - turning everyone more into a neutral grey than specific individuals, and worse into just a uncharacterised 'mass' once we get past our four or five front of stage characterised characters (which is one of the reasons why the Hannibal Chau character comes as a bit of a relief! Though to keep up the Matrix parallels, that suggests he is the Merovingian of this film!)

I was also kept amused wondering about different things, such as the way that the chest cannons on the Jaegers reminded me of Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, or (and this might be even more of a stretch!) the moment of the Jaeger using a giant tanker ship as a club to pummel a kaiju looking a little like Monty Python's fish slapping scene! Or the flying kaiju being slightly reminiscent of Q-The Winged Serpent!

Oh, and I would have serious concerns about ever getting into a vehicle piloted by Idris Elba, as based on this and Prometheus I really couldn't see it ending at all well!

[domino harvey]

Holy shit that looks awful-- Transformers meets Power Rangers?

Now that I've somehow seen this, yes. Good job, Past Me. I was reminded of Lew Schneider's line, "Look how much effort went into boring me." This movie looked so expensive that I felt guilty on its behalf for existing. I had so many problems with this that it will do little good to laundry list them, but I will say that I could never engage with the film on a basic level because its very premise makes so little sense: The best way to battle monsters is to create elaborate, expensive, specific, fragile, complicated man-powered Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots? Like Matt said, why not just make a better missile or throw a bomb at it? The movie is wall to wall illogical moments, even within the world of the film as presented-- one big glaring nonsensical move was the revelation that one of the monsters was pregnant, which makes no sense after being told that these creatures were created via cloning to attack in specific ways. It only exists, of course, for a cheap thrill extension of maybe 90 seconds, but it's indicative of the level of care and wit that went into the script. This whole movie looked like one big toy commercial, starring protagonists who may or may not already be played by plastic dolls, and that an action movie is finally showing some colors other than blue and orange doesn't mean shit if they're in service of shit. I will say the only thing I did enjoy was Charlie Day and Ron Perlman's sideplot with the monster-part-harvesting and wacky comic bits, mainly because it was seemingly the only time things stopped either being smashed or overexplained. I had some passing fancy imagining a big budget film from their perspective, with the carnage in the background like a monster version of that Roy Andersson movie, but then I guess we wouldn't have iridescent liquid-spewing generic Dinosaur Bugs and metal puppets smashing into skyscrapers and bridges over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over

[swo17]

Holy shit that looks awful-- Transformers meets Power Rangers?

The Conjuring and Pacific Rim Blus are both $7.99

Now that I've somehow seen this...

Never underestimate the lure of a good deal.

[domino harvey]

And such small portions! I gave it a chance since a lot of people here liked it, but clearly this was an error. From now on I'm only seeking out films everyone here hates-- can't wait to watch that James Franco corpse love movie!

[FerdinandGriffon]

I could never engage with the film on a basic level because its very premise makes so little sense: The best way to battle monsters is to create elaborate, expensive, specific, fragile, complicated man-powered Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots? Like Matt said, why not just make a better missile or throw a bomb at it?

You went to see a mecha/kaiju movie without accepting the basic premise of the genre ("The best way to battle monsters is to create elaborate, expensive, specific, fragile, complicated man-powered Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots") ahead of time? Yes, it makes no sense, but then neither do any Superhero movies, nouveaux-Batmans included. Without accepting the premises of the genre, it's no wonder you couldn't enjoy Pacific Rim, and I don't expect you'd fare much better with superior examples of it, from Neon Genesis Evangelion to Ultraman.

For my part I think it's a beautiful bit of nonsense, crafted with great care as a love letter to a dying genre. Del Toro's knowledge and enthusiasm lift it above a certainly flimsy script and the bulk of its more earnestly plotted but soulless peers.

[Mr Sausage]

I agree with domino, this was an over-earnest bucket of cliches. The action scenes were amusing, but quickly became repetitive, and the numbingly long middle gave me too many opportunities to reflect on how neither side, aliens or humans, acted with any coherence. I can imagine this kind of movie elicits a childlike glee from many viewers, but I didn't find it amusing enough to make up for all the sodden, plodding bits of business in the middle, all of which were given too much time and seriousness.

Ron Perlman and the wacky biologist were the most amusing part. Why the rest of the movie wasn't given the same tone, I don't know.