Pacific Rim Movie Review

Pacific Rim is the story of a future Earth that has been under attack for many years by an alien race that enters our planet through a rift at the bottom of the Pacific. We get the history of this in the first 15 minutes, then enter the story at a time where the world has, paraphrasing the movie's tagline, built monsters to fight monsters. The world has built giant robots (called Jaegers, German for 'Hunters'), controlled buy two pilots who connect via a neural bridge to control the giant machines from within, and go to war with these monsters (called Kaiju, Japanese for 'Monsters') when they enter our world. This has been effective up until this point. From there, we watch as our heroes fight to save our Earth from attack while simultaneously try to close the rift in the Pacific. It stars Charlie Hunnam (the gang leader from Green Street Hooligans), Idris Elba, Charlie Day (from It's Always Sunny), Ron Perlman, and others, and is directed by Guillermo del Toro.

This movie was SO much fun. It was a movie that I didn't have much advanced info on before going, so I had really no expectations. What I experienced was the type of movie that is just a ton of fun from start to finish. Watching these giant human brain-powered robots fight these alien monsters that were ever growing in size and threat was incredibly fun. Like 10 year old giddy type of fun. Now there were many reasons for that. The next two paragraphs are going to be my likes and dislikes, starting with dislikes.

There are always issues when you invent a new reality on film, which is what Guillermo del Toro did in this movie. Hard to build the scope, hard to build the circumstances, hard to build the stakes, in a 2 hour movie. Those that can don't have the scope of this movie. Now, this has a good side (which comes next paragraph), but it left a lot of holes and a lot of questions that I felt you need to really be invested. The overarching plot was simple, but the micro-scenes, those that are there just to drive the story forward, were bad. There was a lot of cheesy dialogue, a lot of flimsy relationships forced on us, and really no character development that's worth a damn. The worst was when Idris Elba emerges from the Jaeger in Mako's memory. It was so cheesy, and simply there to show us his connection with her. I honestly think it would have been more powerful as a dialogue. That is one scene of many though, which luckily are far enough apart that the action can pull you right back in. It was also a bit scattered, but honestly, I chalk that up to just not having enough time to show everything, while wanting to.

Now, for the good. ALL of those negatives I just mentioned, the lack of substance, are ALL made up for with the positive aspects. Number one, the scope. This movie is perhaps on the largest scale I've ever seen. By that, I mean sheer size of what we are looking at. Plenty of movies have a broader universe, span more time, or have larger themes. However, this movie does a fantastic job of first establishing how big we are (humans), and then showing us how large these monsters and robots we've created are. We are first introduced to our first Jaeger (older model) and Kaiju (category 3), which are almost equal in size. We're told this is what we've been dealing with for years, and we are now very profiencient at besting these monsters when they appear. However, throughout the movie we are shown larger and larger Kaiju (up to a category 5, "the first ever") that come more frequent and in larger numbers. The helplessness we're supposed to feel is clear. The end is near, if we don't do something drastic. Enter the plan to close the rift, etc. Going along with the scope, the visuals are incredible. I would say 80% of this movie is visual effects, and they are SOLID. Easy Best Visual Effects Oscar coming to this movie this year. A marvel in visual effects, truly. The third piece of the scope and visuals puzzle is, of course, the action. Just pure fun. Orchestrated and directed in such a way that there wasn't any boring Power Ranger-style fight scenes, but there was enough action to get your knucles white. A few times I caught myself with my hands clenched like crazy. Now that leads me to the comic relief. Charlie Day plays a GREAT Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. Just great. Hilarious the whole time. But when he's with Ron Perlman, those are some of the best scenes in the movie. It is well done to give you a little break but not too long where you're begging to get back to the action. I thought this movie was unique in a couple ways, also: first, it's a unique script, not based on source material or a sequel. There should be a round of applause for that right there, we need more ambitious, creative, original movies out there. Second, this is one of the first movies I can recall that shows a global crisis, which is then fought by the entire globe as one. All countries coming together to fight for the greater good. Not America saving the world (looking at you, Michael Bay), no competition among nations, just good old fashioned human race vs. the rest. I liked that. The last thing I will say, and this may be the thing that proved to me how much I liked the movie, is that I really want to know more about this universe. I want to know the backstory, how we built these things, the origin and progression through technology, how we came together as a world to build and fight these things. I want more! I will see sequels or prequels if they are made, in spite of my previous commendation of this being original and NOT a sequel.

In summary, I think this movie is as popcorn as it gets for all the right reasons. It's fun, it's unique, it's loud, it's exciting, it's got a huge scope, it looks great, and it's a pretty darn good movie to boot. Go see it on a Sunday afternoon and just enjoy yourself.

On the Reganometer, I give Pacific Rim an 8 out of 10.

Links: Trailer IMDB page Rotten Tomatoes Review page