Pacific Rim Soundtrack Review

With the film itself releasing in just 3 days away, the same day as G-FEST XX, the original soundtrack to Legendary Pictures’ Pacific Rim was released digitally on June 25th and the physical CD was just released today. I was able to get the chance to listen to the soundtrack and expecting great things from it and hopefully living up to the film’s hype so far from just seeing the trailers. But after listening to the soundtrack, I was kind of somewhat left underwelmed by it. However, when diving more into the soundtrack itself, I can definitely feel some familiar reminiscence, tune and tone-wise to a legendary music composer.

The Pacific Rim original soundtrack was composed by Ramin Djawadi, who’s mostly known to compose music for Prison Break, Iron-Man and Game of Thrones. Pacific Rim’s director Guillermo del Toro selected Djawadi to score because, according to del Toro:

His scores have a grandeur, but they have also an incredible sort of human soul.

del Toro also mentioned that there’ll be a little bit of “Russian Rap” mixed into the score; however, after listening to the score, I don’t think there really wasn’t much of a rap influence in it. But don’t quote me on that since I really haven’t heard Russian rap music, so I really wouldn’t know at this point in time.

Anyways, the first tracks to the score were ok, but nothing too thrilling. But, as we go further into the soundtrack, I start to get the Akira Ifukube-esque type of rhythm, beats and tones in the tracks – which I do believe that gives the score a really nice touch and somewhat pays homage to the Japanese daikaiju films. Nevertheless, though, I mentioned earlier that I was kind of underwelmed by the soundtrack, because I was kind of expecting something along the lines of the scores that were in the first three Transformers films, which were composed by Steve Jablonsky. But the nice Akira Ifukube-esque tribute and somewhat of a Big-O type of music I think suits the film.

Below are the list of tracks and their run time:

1. Pacific Rim (feat. Tom Morello) – 4:55
2. Gipsy Danger – 3:19
3. Canceling The Apocalypse – 3:39
4. Just A Memory – 2:08
5. 2500 Tons Of Awesome – 1:05
6. The Shatterdome – 2:31
7. Mako (feat. Priscilla Ahn) – 4:24
8. Call Me Newt – 1:43
9. Jaeger Tech (feat. Tom Morello) – 1:58
10. To Fight Monsters, We Created Monsters – 2:04
11. Better Than New – 1:41
12. We Are The Resistance – 1:49
13. Double Event – 2:28
14. Striker Eureka – 1:55
15. Physical Compatibility – 2:32
16. Category 5 – 2:17
17. Pentecost – 2:12
18. Go Big Or Go Extinct (feat. Tom Morello) – 2:25
19. Hannibal Chau – 1:34
20. For My Family – 1:58
21. No Pulse (feat. Tom Morello) – 0:58
22. Kaiju Groupie – 1:15
23. Deep Beneath The Pacific – 1:55
24. The Breach – 3:15
25. We Need A New Weapon – 1:41

Before I wrap-up this review on the Pacific Rim soundtrack review, I wanted to display a little video of a track from the soundtrack which I’d say is my favorite, called Mako. It’s the seventh track in this soundtrack and it’s pretty much the one that I was really looking into when listening to this soundtrack.

[youtube id=”VqHJ55165Mk” width=”620″ height=”349″]

[include id=”10″ title=”Jason PacRim Soundtrack Review”]