If you’ve ever wanted to watch someone else play a video
game, or if you’re one of those people who thought Transformers could have used a little more Godzilla, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific
Rim is exactly the movie for you. As
for me, I think I need a little more from a movie.After the government decommissions the giant robot “Jaeger” program, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) seeks out former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) on the eve of the next big kaiju attack. The kaiju, enormous monsters, have been rising from the ocean and attacking coastal cities for years, leaving humanity desperate to turn the tide. As Becket is paired with skilled rookie Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), the kaiju attacks increase in frequency, with multiple monsters rising at once.
Readers know that I’m always a bit uncomfortable dismantling expensive passion projects from behind my keyboard, so I’ll say this about Pacific Rim – it’s entirely unpretentious, inoffensive, and governed by an obvious sense of the creators’ enthusiasm. And as far as big-dumb-loud movies go, Pacific Rim is undoubtedly the most earnest and the most triumphant. The trailers promise big machines punching big monsters, and you get that promise fulfilled to the nth degree; once you surrender to them, the action sequences are fun and imaginative – at least, within the parameters of “How could one CGI thing beat up another?”
So for a film that had to have been storyboarded by playing with action figures and making sh-boom noises, Pacific Rim is about as diverting as the trailers make it out to be. It passes that lower bar of “summer popcorn flick” but in a summer where we’ve seen action films that grapple with important issues alongside stellar beat-’em-up sequences Pacific Rim pales by comparison. Upon leaving the theater, the one adjective that dove to mind was “distanced.” At no point did Pacific Rim convince me to care about what was going on. Instead, it relies on the assumption that the audience already thinks that the premise is cool and, by extension, worthwhile. Yes, the premise is mind-numbingly cool, but the film never convinces the audience to invest in the concept.
For one, you can forget about character development beyond Michael Bay levels of cliché and central casting stock. It’s a shame that the characterization in the film is so poor, because it’s almost a waste of Idris Elba. Elba, an actor so good he convinced fans of The Wire that he wasn’t British, does the best he can with the script, even when lines like “I’m a fixed point” draw attention to the script’s dearth of personality. I don’t begrudge the film its five minutes of introductory exposition; I do, however, shake my head at characters who make Ellen Page’s “exposition queen” in Inception look like Molly Bloom. Charlie Day’s only plot function is to shout science at us, and Kikuchi – who is, like Elba, doing the best she can – actually yells her character’s motivation, even though the script’s already given intelligent audiences that answer. (Hint: she’s an orphan.) Why do we root for the main character? Because he’s the main character, duh (and total first-act trauma, duh). We deserve compelling protagonists, and Hunnam ain’t it. (Sidebar: was Garrett Hedlund busy?)
Then there are the tonal inconsistencies, which make me wonder if this isn’t actually a Michael Bay film signed by Guillermo del Toro in some weird Howard Roark/Peter Keating pact. The introductory montage sets up a grim future for mankind against the kaiju, while the first action sequence plays like a tragic buddy picture. Enter the exposition scientists (Day and Torchwood’s Burn Gorman), a pair comprised of a Justin Hammer knockoff and a grotesque caricature of a foppish snob; as my father remarked, “What movie do these two really belong in?” Finally, I’ve said nothing about Ron Perlman’s black marketer Hannibal Chau, in part because he’s another tonal inconsistency (included, I’m sure, because of Perlman’s Hellboy history with del Toro); Perlman has compelling screen presence, and his character is just the right amount of bizarrely-out-of-place, but Pacific Rim becomes an entirely different movie whenever he’s on screen.
It’s not that I went into Pacific Rim looking for brilliant character studies and subtle storytelling; I went in looking for characters and plots – y’know, the things we expect from a movie. What I got was a big, dumb, loud movie about pixels punching pixels. If that’s your thing, Pacific Rim is right up your alley. Me? I’ll pick substance over style any day of the week.
(Go ahead, take to the comments and tell me I’m missing the point. Just be sure to tell me what the point of the movie actually was. That’s not a joke. What is the point of this film?)
(Also, if you know the point of tofu, that’d be helpful, too.)
It turns out that there are people in this world who liked Pacific Rim better than Man of Steel. I can’t fathom such a poor life decision, but be sure to click back here on Friday for my list of “The Top 10 Reasons Why Man of Steel Is Better Than Pacific Rim”!
3 comments:
I'll take the bait: yes, you are missing the point.
Your criticism of the characterization is fair, but that's beside the point. The idea of this is the action and visuals. Not every movie needs to be dark and have deep character drama. This one's light and fun, which is refreshing after all the darker and serious blockbusters recently. Why is it so hard to just go with it and take it for what it is? If they had taken more time to dissect the finer story and character points, people would have complained it was too long (which is the problem this those awful Pirate movies you love way too much). Just around two hours was the perfect length.
And the visual effects and imagery are imaginatively and elegantly designed, and the fights well-choreographed and coherent. Michael Bay just throws together mildly adequate effects and random explosions and destruction into a bright shaky mash and calls it an action scene(which is also the case with Man of Steel). Comparing Bay and this is is a false analogy, and if you can't tell the difference, you're either a kid with a short attention spans who just watches anything with explosions, or you just had it out for this movie before you even saw it. Nobody who really watches and loves this kind of film could possibly find them indistinguishable.
No, I didn't "have it out for this movie" - I wouldn't have paid for a ticket if that were the case. I gave Pacific Rim a fair shot, and it missed the mark.
I don't need every movie to be dark and deep - I loved Red 2 for exactly that reason. But Red 2 had engaging and unique characters; I don't think it's "beside the point" to ask the same of Pacific Rim. In a medium that's all about storytelling, you can't just set aside the core components of the medium and call it a day (I mean, unless you're Dziga Vertov, but Pacific Rim is no Man with a Movie Camera). It reminds me of that episode of South Park where Michael Bay can only express himself in onomatopoeia - that's where I make that comparison.
Which is a damned shame, because I know del Toro is capable of so much more. Hellboy has some fantastic characterization, and Pan's Labyrinth is a first-rate combo of compelling figures and stunning visuals. del Toro doesn't need to dissect himself or overanalyze his characters; he just needs to make them human. Otherwise, just cut out the middle "man" and make it a movie about actual robots punching monsters. We're due for a Godzilla reboot anyway.
But at the end of the day, I'm not saying that Pacific Rim is rubbish. I think we end up agreeing - it's good for what it is. But what it isn't is a landmark achievement, a brilliant summer movie, and an engaging movie experience. It's watching someone else play with action figures for two hours without involving the audience.
Say, hypothetically, that Michael Bay really did direct Pacific Rim. Everything about the movie is exactly the same, and Bay is on record claiming that it's his homage to "mech" anime and all that. . . . Would we still try to convince ourselves that the film's visual intelligence outweighs its underwhelming dialogue/plot? I doubt it. So to defend its lack of substance makes us del Toro apologists. Auteur-worship, is what it is.
That's not to say that Pacific Rim is a "bad" movie, per se, or even that I didn't like it (I liked parts-- mainly the "pixels punching pixels"). But even if the film's entire point is "action and visuals," I don't think that merely succeeding in this goal makes it a "good" movie. I wanted a regression into adolescent enthusiasm for robots pounding monsters into submission, but as Zach points out, I felt detached from (or perhaps outright denied) this regression. And it's because I didn't care about the characters and because the plot was a series of strung-together clichés (culturally, even racially).
The comparison that keeps coming to mind is Independence Day. The scope of the destruction and the thoroughly alien antagonists seem to resonate, and even though Charlie Day and Brent Spiner aren't perfect analogues, they're both scientists who are a little too enamored with the aliens and ultimately make a psychic connection with them. Independence Day is not a challenging film, nor is it replete with moral ambiguity or "deep character drama." But it's engrossing and fun, due in no small part to its cast of big personalities: Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, etc. Even if these personalities don't portray three-dimensional characters, they are at least fun to watch. Pacific Rim has Charlie Day (playing Charlie Day-cum-scientist), as well as a cameo by Ron Perlman, but otherwise even a good actor like Idris Elba is reduced to the boring-speech-giving function of a Bill Pullman. (What is it that Pentecost says toward the end when he agrees to team-up with the Australian Jaeger pilot-- "I can co-pilot with anyone because I don't take any memories or emotion into the 'drift?'" Yeah . . . apparently not into the "drift" with the audience, either.) In Independence Day, I think we actually feel something when Randy Quaid flies his fighter jet into an alien spaceship, regardless of how campy it is ("Up yours!"). I don't think we feel the same thing when Elba detonates the nuclear warhead on his Jaeger.
I'm okay with action and visuals, and I don't always need brooding, conflicted characters. I'm also willing to admit that, in a movie like this, most of the plot is just a conceit to get to the action. But I couldn't even remember the protagonist's name after leaving Pacific Rim. It's one thing to be unpretentious and uncomplicated, but as Zach says, the movie seems to fail in the most basic aspects of storytelling.
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