Viking Night: Pacific Rim
By Bruce Hall
May 26, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
That’s right. I just described Top Gun with giant robots. If you’re not already weeping tears of joy, I have no idea where or when you lost the ability to feel.
The “common foe” happens to be a race of glow-in-the-dark space lizards called Kaiju that keep spurting from an interdimensional rift at the bottom of the ocean. They're flattening coastal cities around the world and overwhelming global defenses. Humanity finds itself on the ropes, as the planet just can't stop vomiting Godzillas. They eat buildings, swat planes out of the air like gnats and bleed toxic, earth destroying waste that takes decades to clean up. The most distinctive thing about them is that they glow all sorts of weird neon colors and they each have very specific physical abilities.
If you’re having trouble visualizing that, just imagine someone put Godzilla inside the computer from Tron, let him train with Evander Holyfield, cloned him 20 times and set him loose in Hong Kong. Yeah. It’s like that.
As a last resort, the world combines its resources to construct a fleet of giant robots called “Jaegers”, equal in size to the Kaiju. Each nation’s mech has a distinctive name, and is (sometimes stereotypically) reminiscent of their culture. For example, the Chinese machine is called Crimson Typhoon and is piloted by three brothers who look like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan’s love children. The Russian creation is Cherno Alpha, piloted by a pair of bleached blond cosmonauts who look tough enough to survive a steady diet of diet of brutal winters and pickled herring. Striker Eureka is the Australian machine, piloted by Hercules Hansen (Max Martini) and his son Chuck (Robert Kazinsky). Gipsy Danger is the American contribution, initially helmed by hotheaded brothers Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Becket (Diego Klattentoff).
At first, the Jaegers kick all kinds of Kaiju ass, and the world is saved. And then...it’s not.
Here’s the problem. Anyone who knows anything about giant fighting robots knows it takes at least two pilots to control one (right?). And of course, the neural interface used to maneuver the machine means that the consciousness of everyone on board is linked together (duh). In other words, imagine yourself calling a taxi cab for a ride. As soon as you get in the car, you have to share your thoughts and memories with the driver. And no, I am not referring to the annoying way some people can never shut the hell up and stop talking. I mean you literally have to share a brain, or the car won’t work. Not only would more people start walking, but there would also be no more taxi cabs, on account of all the murders. I can’t speak for anyone else, but the last place you want to be is inside my head.
Good God, you’d probably never find your way back out.
Needless to say, this requires the pilots to be extremely compatible with one another - which brings us back to Raleigh and Yancy. As tends to be the case with these kinds of stories, the brothers have trouble following orders. This leads to Yancy being lost on a mission, and Raleigh blaming himself. Because their minds were connected at the time of the incident, Raleigh experiences his brother’s death as if it were his own. Shattered by the loss, Raleigh gives up on the giant fighting robot business altogether. Yes, he moves to Alaska and embraces seclusion. No he does not develop a scraggly beard and a crippling booze addiction. But yes, he does put up the requisite token resistance when his old boss comes calling.
But, resistance is futile when your boss is a large, constantly shouting man with a name like Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). The war, as I mentioned, has taken a turn, and all available pilots are needed for one last, desperate push. Raleigh returns to Jaeger Command (awesomely called the "Shatterdome"), and chooses Stacker"s protégé Maiko Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) as his new pilot. This leads to more shouting from Stacker, and stokes the already smoldering animosity between Raleigh and Chuck. Yes, the world is coming to an end, and the only people who can stop it are up to their knees in bullshit high school politics. There's not a lot of discipline in this outfit, making it easy to see why the Space Lizards are winning.
There's also not a lot of logic in this movie, but for the most part, that's part of its charm. Pacific Rim is essentially a live action cartoon, and it’s as colorful, explosive, and vapid as that might imply. However, this also makes it easy to accept a lot of the movie’s flaws. At certain points, the Jaegers seem damn near indestructible - they sustain savage beatings from creatures able to snap skyscrapers in half like twigs, and they survive being tossed a quarter mile into the air by angry, 5,000-ton beasts like it’s no big deal. And, when it’s convenient, they fall apart like they’re made of tin foil. But that’s okay - this is pretty common in science fiction. One minute something is damn near indestructible, and the next scene, when conflict is required, it falls apart like a damn ficus tree.
And like any good mecha story, the conflict is where it’s at with Pacific Rim. If you haven’t noticed, all of the characters here have issues with other characters. Raleigh blames himself for his brother’s death, and needs to learn to trust himself, open up to his comrades and be a team player again. Stacker and Maiko have baggage to unload. Hercules and his son have no trouble sharing their brains when they're strapped into a mech, but father and son have never learned the way into each other’s hearts. I know - you just threw up in your mouth a little bit. But the characters should be the heart of any story, right? The character arcs are pretty rote, the acting is hammy, and the dialogue sounds like it came out of a particularly uninspired game of Mad Libs. But the theme of the story is growth, trust and partnership - and it does come across.
Where is doesn’t work is when Pacific Rim goes for comedic relief. I’m not sure who decided a story about real life comic book characters giant fighting robots needed comedy, but...it doesn’t. Charlie Day, Burn Gorman and Ron Perlman share a plot thread that’s integral to the overall story, but the antics of their characters are so over the top that it proves more of a distraction than anything else. It weakens the film, but it’s hard to completely castrate a movie about giant fighting robots, and the world Guillermo del Toro creates for all of this is nothing short of fantastic. I love the fighter jock mentality. I love the names. If I worked in a place called The Shatterdome, I would show up early every day and bring donuts. If my name were Stacker Pentecost, I would shout all the time, too.
Stacker Pentecost. I love that name. It’s better than Han Solo. It’s better than Hans Gruber. It’s even better than the protagonist in my new short story Vlad Dragonhammer vs the Skull Alliance. Pacific Rim is dumb, loud, colorful and ambitious. And despite the fact it almost derails itself trying to be funny, the seven-year-old boy in me will never, ever get tired of it. And unless you really HAVE lost the ability to feel, neither will you.