My Initial Thoughts on Pacific Rim

Disclaimer: *SPOILERS AHEAD* I also want everyone to know this isn’t an official review of Pacific Rim. I am, instead, waiting for the movie to come out on DVD before I can officially review it. That way I am able to view the movie multiple times to give it more of an honest review.

What lies ahead is a pseudo review. As of this writing, I am two days removed from having seen the film and feel like, after the excitement, I can look at it a little bit more objectively.

Thoughts on “Pacific Rim”:

Anyone who saw my Facebook post on our page a couple of days ago knows that I love this movie. Two days after having seen the movie, I still feel the same way. Pacific Rim, I believe, could potentially usher in an interest in the daikaiju genre; not just in the States, but worldwide. This film has received quite a bit of praise by folks and I am optimistic that 2014’s Godzilla will be greatly anticipated even by those who do not consider themselves daikaiju fans.

Pacific Rim is a well-made movie that has a lot of love put into it. Guillermo Del Toro is a fan of giant monster movies and even dedicated the film to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda. The film starts off with bang. It provides the viewer with an onslaught of various kaiju appearances and battles with the giant robots known as Jaegers.

The film, then, begins to quiet down; getting into our story on Raleigh Becket and how he is struggling to come to terms with the death of his brother, Yancy, who was killed by Knifehead towards the beginning of the film when he and Raleigh were preventing Knifehead from reaching the Alaskan shores.  We also are introduced to Mako Mori. A young Chinese woman who is the genius at the last Jaeger HQ, Shatterdome. She lost her family in a kaiju assault in Hong Kong when she was a child, and wants nothing more than to be a Jaeger pilot to seek vengeance. But her foster father, Stacker Pentecost, who is the acting commander, refuses to let her pilot. It is later revealed he was one of the Jaeger pilots who saved her from a kaiju attack when she was a child.

That is the jist of the story. I am leaving a lot of things out in case there are those reading this who have not seen the film.

I must say that I found the film to be made in a similar formula to kaiju films of the 1960s. Giant robots, kaiju from a different world, other-worldly planets, battles that consist of “wrestling” style techniques, it’s all here.

There isn’t much to the story, I’ll admit, even though the movie tries to provide something deeper. Raleigh’s story arc, unfortunately, is never really resolved, but the viewer does see a coming of age for Mori.

Outside of the battles, the most fascinating thing about the movie, I thought, was about the rift between our world and a different dimension located at the ocean’s bed.. This rift is where the kaiju are coming from and only kaiju can go through it. I thought such a plot device was unique even to this genre and provided an added element and dilemma to the story. Watching Dr. Netwon Geiszler attempt at connecting his brain with kaiju brain was a lot of fun and provided another element I don’t believe we have seen in the genre.

The film, though, isn’t without flaws. I do have two issues with the film that, I hope, are resolved in a possible sequel.

The first issue is on perspective during the battles. Most of the battles take place at night when it’s raining. The kaiju, also, are the same color: a grayish hue with only their eyes and mouths lighting up. With it being so dark, stormy, and the kaiju being the same color, it was difficult to make out what exactly was happening during the battles. Not to mention many of the shots where quick bang-bang close-ups of the action. This made it a bit hard on the eyes, but even more difficult to figure out what was going on. Even now, I still don’t know exactly what happened during various points of some of the battles. This is a technique that has been used frequently in recent movies, but it was worse hear due to the darkness of the environments and the kaiju being made up of the same hue.

I remember many people said that the reason why 1998’s Godzilla rained so much was to hide the lackluster CGI of Godzilla. That was never proven, but I couldn’t help but to possibly think that here. Not to say the CGI in Pacific Rim was bad, it isn’t, but there are a lot of effects and I do wonder if their budget was beginning to become so tight that they may have had to cut corners in some places.

Nevertheless, the battles should have been shot better and it would have been nice to have the kaiju with contrasting hues.

The second issue is that being the middle of the film drags a bit. While I found the human drama to be interesting enough to keep my attention, I did find myself, at one point, wondering when we were going to see more kaiju. Several minutes after thinking that, we entered into our final act which provided five kaiju going up against five remaining Jaegers! It was a battle that, to say the least, was exhilarating!

The film has characters that are a bit interesting (some more than others), but their stories don’t go very far during this lull in the action. I believed that it was more about peacocking between a few  of the characters than it was really about advancing the story.

While it was lackluster, the middle of the film wasn’t awful, but it could have provided more character development or it could have been cut down to reach the ending quicker.

Closing Comments: 

Pacific Rim is a film every kaiju fan needs to see! The film isn’t perfect, but I do believe it is a wonderful example where this genre could go and it could, potentially, rejuvenate an interest in the genre.

There are already talks of a sequel, but that has yet to be confirmed. However, with the response this film is getting from movie-goers, I can’t help but to think this may build greater excitement for next year’s Godzilla.

The kaiju designs are great as well as the battles. They are, obviously, the high points of the film with a human drama that, isn’t great, but passable. As a kaiju fan, I believe this film emulates the daikaiju films of the 1960s and was very pleased as a result.

Pacific Rim  is a great homage to the genre and one that I will watch again and again in the future. I definitely would go see a sequel if one were to ever be made, but I do hope they address perspectives during the fight sequences.