2013 - Guillermo Del Toro
There are some movies that you go into knowing that you aren’t going to be amazed. Everything about it looks like a joke: the trailer, the cast, those snippets of dialogue that are just fun enough to get you saying “that was a good line,” but not good enough to make you go see the movie (Nacho Libre, anyone?). Yet for some reason, I still go see these films. Call it being a glutton for punishment. Call it some glimmer of hope that I’ll walk away surprised and captivated. Call it a lack of air conditioning in my apartment. Whatever it was that made me utter the phrase “let’s go see Pacific Rim,” I can safely call it the stupidest thing I’ve done since setting even mediocre expectations for Man of Steel.
Deep beneath some crack in the tectonic plates in the
Pacific Ocean lies a dimensional portal to a world of aliens that are seeking
to eradicate life on the planet so they can…something. Pacific Rim doesn’t care; you didn’t come for a plot. Bottom line, big
monsters keep coming out of the ocean at an increasing rate to do…something…and
the world has gotten together to create giant robots not known as mecha so they
can engage in fist fights with the creatures not off the coast of Tokyo to save
the world in a way that’s not a poor attempt to create a live action anime, honestly.
As a moviegoer, critic, and hell, even a nerd, I was hoping for
a little effort from the teams not involved in post-production. But between the
NUMEROUS plot holes, disregard for logic, overwhelming amount of “human
interest” clichés, and some of the laziest script-writing I think I’ve ever
heard, Pacific Rim cancels out its “cool
factor” by committing the cardinal sin of this genre: trying to take itself seriously.
Everyone has some haunted past, everyone has to overcome it right now for the
sake of humanity. The hero is too reckless, the heroine is too damaged, but it
works because it’s dysfunctional to the level of perfect. The distinguished
commander is dying, the hotshot misses his father’s approval, the comic relief is
looking to be the hero, and if all else fails, you can simply clear your mind
and whip out a giant sword.
It’s difficult to not look at this movie from a fanboy
perspective, because I can’t honestly see any other feasible demographic. “For
people who liked Transformers, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Power Rangers as a
kid, check out Pacific Rim. We merged
everything that you may have liked about those and crammed them into some
really cool action scenes with the hope that you’ll completely ignore everything
else and then defend your appreciation of this movie with lines like ‘well,
what did you expect exactly?’”
I think Pacific Rim
honestly felt like it was getting away with not having a tangible plotline or
characters that anyone cared about. It tried to grab at your heart by
traumatizing the hero early, it almost wove a neat story about the aliens, and the
whole mind-melding robot pilots concept could have carried some weight if it
was ever actually explored with some creativity. However, even it seemed to
realize that…well…there are robots on the next scene…who cares about depth?
But I have to ask, in that instance, if you’re a
screenwriter who knows this going in, why not have a little fun with the areas
that aren’t the eye candy people came to see? Play with the dialogue a bit,
crack a few jokes, if you’re going to be ridiculous, be OVERLY ridiculous and then
make fun of yourself for it (a great example: the non-use of masks in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol).
Pacific Rim is an
action drama that would have done better as an action comedy. It was so
ludicrous that it would have been funny if it played into that, but instead the
movie was just horrible because it wanted to have its audience “really connect
with what it would feel like if subterranean aliens wanted to exterminate us
and we built giant robots to deal with it.” It’s the same problem I had with Man of Steel. Trying to approach
something so off the wall insane with an incredible sense of reality doesn’t
enhance the movie…it just makes it awkward and bad.
I can’t recommend Pacific
Rim to anybody. I can’t even give you a palette cleanser if you have seen
it because the obvious choice is Transformers
and that’s a slippery slope to something equally bad. This film was just
absolute crap from start to finish and I desperately pray that SOMEBODY gets
this genre right (preferably in movie form and not while succumbing to a
serious case of depression, NGE fans). I shut my brain off going into the
theater and the awfulness of this movie even broke through that and got me
banging my head against my chair.
But it did have giant robots. And they did punch big
monsters. And what did I expect, exactly?
3/10. At least it wasn’t an offensively bad action movie
like Gamer.
Maybe there should have been more to do with the characters and story, but at least it was fun for what it was. Good review Joe.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Checking out your stuff as well! I gotta get back more into the swing of it, but I'm about to move so I'll probably get back to the roots of The BackLOG then.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, would have been nice to see or if they wanted to just ignore it, at least make the not-robot fighting stuff be entertaining. This they just looked like they were really trying to make it work...and it was just sad. Sad sad sad.