There's been a lot of talk about Pacific Rim. Depending on whom you ask, it's a shallow rock-'em-sock-'em "extended 3D episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on very expensive acid." It's an imminent flop that could end up sinking faster than Battleship. It's a gripping emotional thrill complete with rich imaginative worlds unlike any ever seen before. It's tracking poorly. It's got a killer soundtrack. It's possible Kanye West could save it from itself!
Here's my advice: Just shut up and go see it, preferably on the largest screen imaginable.
Unlike Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, or any number of other massive movie juggernauts that hit the multiplex this summer, Pacific Rim is an increasingly rare breed in Hollywood: an original story. It's not based on a comic or a prequel of a popular Pixar film or a sequel to a movie version of a popular TV show. And while its lack of an established name may prove to be a weakness -- and part of the reason of why it's tracking so poorly -- it's also the movie's greatest creative strength. And while it certainly pays loving homage to everything from Godzilla to Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's not like anything you've seen before.
Just ask Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, whose recent eight-tweet love-letter to the film declared, "I have never imagined that I would be fortunate enough to see a film like this in my life. The emotional rush I had inside me was the same kind I had when I felt the outer space via 2001: A Space Odyssey and and when I had touched the dinosaur in Jurassic Park. Animation and special effects movies and shows that I loved in my childhood days they all truly exist in the screen... This film is not simply a film to be respected, but most importantly, it let us dream the future of entertainment movies. Pacific Rim is the ultimate otaku film that all of us had always been waiting for. Who are you, if you are Japanese and won't watch this?"
Who are you, indeed.
Since I happen to be a critic, it's also worth noting that it isn't a perfect film. There few flaws here and there, notably that it doesn't let characterization get in the way of its retina-blasting mecha-on-kaiju action, but in the larger summer movie blockbuster scheme of things, that simply does not matter. This easily the most fun flick to hit the theaters so far this summer, a fist-pumping, awe-inspiring ride for anyone who loves monster movies, robots, or just wants to get their face rocked for two hours.
It's also a total surprise. Not because no one saw it coming, but because it's all coming from the minds of writer Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro, the only two guys as nerdy about big fun action movies as the fans who will be lining up to pay 15 bucks for Pacific Rim at the box office.
"When I was a kid – I grew up in the 80s – and we were seeing this sort of thing all the time," Beacham told Wired in a recent interview. "We had Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Gremlins, Star Wars -- there was a constant stream of invention coming out of Hollywood. As much as I'm going to be in line for the next Star Wars, I think in addition to those sorts of things what I would love to see in Hollywood is a new spirit of invention in which we originate as much of our own material as we can."
And so they did. Is Pacific Rim going to be as well-received and long-loved as those movies Beacham mentions? It's hard to say, particularly when you're no longer 12 years old and have been consistently spoiled by the wonders of Industrial Light & Magic for most of your adult life. But more than any film in recent memory, Pacific Rim is a worthy contender for Most Worth Multiple Theater Outings, a film capable of recapturing that feeling of movie magic -- the feeling that the purpose of movie-going is escapism.
__(Spoiler warning: Minor plot points for Pacific Rim to follow.) __
That's really all you need to know, but if you absolutely must know more, here's why del Toro's film rules.
Pacific Rim begins a decade into Earth's war with a race of monsters—kaiju—sent from another dimension through a crack in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. After the initial invasion flattened cities like San Francisco and Manila, humans fought back against the monsters by forming the Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC) and launching the Jaeger program, which created 250-foot mechas to fight the kaiju. Initially the gambit worked, and as kaiju fell, young Jaeger pilots became heroes, Maverick-in-Top Gun-style.
But over time, the kaiju got bigger and their attacks more frequent. The PPDC began losing the war, and pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) loses his brother and co-pilot Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) during battle. This is particularly painful, since the pilots are mentally connected in what's called "the Drift" to control the mecha during battle, meaning Raleigh was still sharing thoughts and memories with his brother when he died.
Naturally, and also in Maverick-in-Top-Gun-style, this causes Raleigh to abandon the fight. In fact, most of the world does. The international governments that formed the PPDC are looking to disband it, focusing their efforts instead on building massive walls along the Pacific coasts to keep kaiju out. But PPDC commander Stacker Pentecost (the never-not-brilliant Idris Elba) is unwilling to give up the fight and has collected the last remaining Jaegers and their pilot teams from Australia, Russia, China, and also recruited American Raleigh back into action to pilot his old Jaeger, Gipsy Danger.
It is this return to action that provides Pacific Rim with its emotional core. In order to step back into a Jaeger, Raleigh needs a new co-pilot—someone who can handle the Drift with him—and the one he's most compatible with is Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) a young woman whom Stacker is very protective of (and, in a welcome addition to the current sci-fi summer slate, a legitimately kick-ass female protagonist).
But really, Pacific Rim is about battles. And from the moment Raleigh is brought to Hong Kong -- where Stacker is staging the final Jaeger defense against the kaiju onslaught -- the film is an almost never-ending series of face-offs. And, oh, what glorious face-offs they are. ILM's chief creative officer John Knoll, a Toho monster movie fan as a kid, told Wired recently that the marrying of kaiju and robots in the same film was something new for the VFX house and "that was actually a big part of the appeal of this was that this was original material, this wasn't a sequel or an adaptation -- I love working on original things where there is no stylebook established that we have to be faithful to and we can try new things."
To that end, his team went bananas creating scenes that are as beautiful as they are stupidly fun. Battles move through the ocean, crash into buildings, dive into the center of the Earth and even go into space and never lose a bit of luster or suspense. "Giant fucking robots versus giant fucking monsters" was kind of the whole point of Pacific Rim, and it drives it home like a rocket-punch to the face. (If you see this movie for no other reason, see it for its fantastic use of a Jaeger sword.)
Of course there are other things in Pacific Rim to keep fanboys and fangirls happy, too. There's a pretty smart wink to the kaiju flick The War of the Gargantuas in the first third of the film. Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull gets in a cameo -- in name at least (are these requisite now?). The aforementioned soundtrack comes courtesy of Ramin Djawadi, who also does the music on Game of Thrones, and the film's theme has licks from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. The mechs themselves evoke the Japanese anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. GLaDOS herself, Ellen McLain, is the frigging voice of Gipsy Danger. And, as del Toro might say, that's just the tip.
There are also the touches that only master world-building del Toro can bring. There are visuals of people who have built homes around fallen monster carcasses, references to people who "think the kaiju were sent from heaven," and flashes of detail about the anti-verse from whence the creatures came abound. This narrative, surprisingly, is also the source of the most humor. As part of the resistance, Stacker has brought on a pair of researchers—Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman)—tasked with figuring out if there is a less explosive way to defeat the kaiju. Their bickering, and Newton's crazed attempts to literally get inside the brain of a kaiju, give an often zany look at what might constitute "science" when the world is facing certain doom at the hands of creatures from an unknown dimension. Newton's quest also gives the film a reason to use what might be del Toro's greatest trick: Ron Perlman, who shows up as black-market kaiju parts dealer Hannibal Chau. (Don't question it, just take in his gold grill and tacky suit and smile.)
What is going to end up being most important about Pacific Rim, however, is whether this plethora of cool things adds up to something better than the sum of its parts. Largely it does. For every character that could be a little less shallow, there is a deep well of story surrounding them to keep audiences immersed. And even though the ending feels a bit neat and almost anti-climatic, that feeling only comes once you realize the last three quarters of the film have been one awesome, epic final climax that just lasts for an hour and a half.
Pacific Rim has moments that feel downright hokey, but then again, so does Ghostbusters. (The end was a battle with a giant haunted marshmallow, remember?) So does Back to the Future. And they're all incredibly fun. Not too long ago there was a time—before prequels and the Marvel Cinematic Universe—when most people went to see summer flicks hoping to be surprised by something they hadn't seen before, not looking for a faithful rendering of something they read or saw on TV as a kid. Pacific Rim may come with a marketing blitz and scores of teasers and promotion, but it is trying its damnedest to be that kind of movie. "I love that sense of discovery," Beacham said. "You're experiencing something for the first time and your parents aren't in on it, previous generations aren't in on it. It has a chance to belong to you and your generation in a way that nothing has. If Pacific Rim is a fraction of that, I would be very proud."
It might be impossible to even be that kind of movie these days, in a world where we speculate about the villain in the next Iron Man flick before the script is even done, but Pacific Rim is the closest anything has come so far this summer, if not a few summers back. It's beautiful and flawed and -- despite over a year of hype -- still manages to pull quite a few surprise punches. And there's just no spoiling that.
