My Favourite Movies: Pacific Rim

Think about it for a few minutes. Giant alien creatures (known as Kaiju) – not unlike Godzilla - start appearing from a fissure in the ocean floor and begin to ravage coastal areas causing untold death and destruction seemingly shrugging off the best efforts of the military to bring them down. Eventually after weeks of battle they are brought down only for months later another and then another appears to take their place. Now given that scenario what is the absolutely least likely response from a technologically advanced world? That’s right – Giant human operated robots designed to go toe-to-toe with the creatures and take them on in basically unarmed combat (with the occasional rocket barrage thrown in for good measure) which mostly means fist fighting on an epic scale. But there you have it – the plot of Pacific Rim.

By all reasonable standards this is a film that shouldn’t really work. The plot, as I’ve shown above, is beyond silly. The characters are, by and large, paint-by-numbers which fits the plot nicely. The dialogue is often laughable with a few exceptions – though far too short I did like the leaders rousing speech just before the final battle:

“Today... At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are *cancelling* the apocalypse!”

The actors themselves where largely OK. The aforementioned leader – Stacker Pentecost – played by Idris Elba was definitely one of the better ones and carried his role pretty decently. The hero – Aussie Raleigh Becket – played by Charlie Hunnam was fairly nondescript and luckily very little acting was required from him. The love interest – Mako Mori – played by the delightful Rinko Kikuchi (above) was probably the only character to develop through the film moving from a frightened child survivor of an early attack (played very well indeed by 9 year old Mana Ashida - pictured below), to a researcher in thrall to Pentecost, to a fighter in the ring able to more than hold her own with hero Raleigh, to a rookie Jaeger (hunter robot) pilot to a celebrated combat veteran and world saver.

Of course, as with most of these films it’s the fight/combat sequences that really sell it. CGI these days is pretty much capable of anything so the thrills are basically only limited by the imagination of the director and his crew (in this case Guillermo del Toro). Which means that, certainly in this case, the battles are truly awesome events. If you haven’t seen this before just think of 100+ metre tall humanoid robots throwing and being thrown around by equally huge creatures in a cityscape with all of the resulting devastation. Now think of multiple robots and multiple creatures doing the same. You get my point I hope. One set of robots Vs creatures equals pretty amazing. Three of each and it’s off the scale awesome! OK, maybe it’s a teenage boy thing (basically how this film made me feel) but it hardly ever gets better than giant robots kicking giant alien monster ass – take my word on it!

One of the things you’ll need to do to enjoy this film is to give your more critical faculties a few hours off to do their own thing. If you start questioning things within the film that don’t make sense, don’t add up or are just plain silly (and sometimes downright stupid) you’ll have a hard time getting past the first 30 minutes. This is a film to be enjoyed on a simple emotional level. Just let out your inner adolescent (especially if you’re male) and go with it. The nonsense techno-babble is there to give the movie some much needed gravitas. Don’t give it a second thought. When it’s inconvenient to the plot the science is un-ceremonially dropped anyway so don’t give it a second thought. Oh, and try your best to ignore all of the basic scientific and technical mistakes scattered throughout the movie – although it could be fun picking them out on subsequent viewings with techie friends and a few cold beers. Above all else this film should be treated as fun and spectacle that certainly won’t stretch the mind but if you’re anything like me it will make your palms sweat.