Pacific Rim (4/5 Stars)

Godzilla eat your heart out.

So in the year 2013 (that’s this year!) an instellar rift in the space-time continuum opens up in a deep underwater crevasse of the Pacific Rim. And out of it crawls a big-ass monster. Like huge. Godzilla huge. It crawls over to San Francisco and snaps the Golden Gate Bridge like a twig. That’s when humanity knew it had a problem. So the governments abutting the Pacific Ocean made monsters of their own: Huge man-like robots! Godzilla size! And they sent them off to fight the monsters in the middle of the ocean away from any large metropolitan areas. The robots are capable of firing rockets and all that but the battle style of choice is hand-to-hand combat. Now that may sound oddly impractical to you. I mean why would you spend an enormous amount of time, money, and resources developing a military strategy of up close fighting that could very possibly result in the death of the crew and the obliteration of your mega-robot when you have the technology and ability to simply fly over the monster and drop bombs on its head from a safe distance. You are such a smart ass. Sit down, shut up, and just enjoy the movie.

Amazingly the stupidity of the premise does not result in a stupid movie. This largely has to do with the fact that a very accomplished artist, Guillermo Del Toro, is in charge of everything from directing, writing, and art direction. So like his previous movies (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army) the design of the robots and the monsters is something to behold, the dialogue and character interactions between the humans make sense, and the fight scenes are competently choreographed. Let me repeat that last part because it is of great importance. The battles apply the laws of physics and general theories about space and time. So if you thought that the Transformers movies were great or thought they were terrible, I implore you to go see Pacific Rim because this is what a good movie about gigantic things that fight each other should look like. There is an extended sequence in Hong Kong and in the surrounding waters that works especially well. I saw it in 3D IMAX and will attest that it is worth the extra ticket price. If you are going to see this movie at all, please don’t wait till it comes out on DVD. You need a big screen.

The mega-robots work by mimicking an in-flight-crew stationed in its head that act out all of the movements of the machine. When these robots were being manufactured it soon became clear that a solo pilot could not handle the stress of wielding such a large vessel i.e. he would get nosebleeds i.e. a sure sign impending death via brain damage in movies. So a pair of pilots with each pilot controlling a particular hemisphere of the mega-robot’s “brain” was deemed the solution. What this meant is that the two pilots “drifted” together, which means that while piloting the mega-robot they were in each others heads working as one. So the team needed to be compatible on a profound level. This concept is ridiculous as well but watch what Guillermo does with it. Given that we accept this condition, it sets the movie up for some rather meaningful drama between the pilots of the mega-robots, like sibling bonding or a love story. They have to have a “connection” you see.

I generally do not enjoy blockbusters all that much not because I don’t like huge spectacle, but because the movies always insert these serious dramatic confrontations or idealistic speeches or tearful reveals in between all the dumb explosions. It’s the change of tone that I find particularly jarring. If the spectacle were totally unbelievable why would I care about the trumped up dramatics. It is to the credit of Pacific Rim that I did not mind all the quiet scenes in the movie. I thought they worked okay and were not annoying.  

There is something of course to be said of the main character Raleigh played by Charlie Hunman. Who? That’s right, I haven’t heard of him either. I remember with some nostalgia the heady years of the 2000s when the revolution in digital effects had just come into effect. I wrote then that the effects had the side of effect of revolutionizing casting in blockbusters as well. Where the 80s and 90s blockbusters had relied heavily on ginormous muscle men like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new effects had produced enough dazzle on their own that the studios felt confident for the first time in hiring actors actually known for acting in the lead roles. Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, and Johnny Depp come to mind. I could also mention Shia Lebouf, who (and I swear this was true at the time) had done enough good movies to be considered an interesting actor when he was hired for the first Transformers movie. It seems that these days are now going gone and the leading roles in summer blockbusters increasingly depend on the Abercrombie & Fitch stable of muscular (for the men!) yet doe-eyed (for the women!) man meat. Charlie Hunman is no exception. And him and his ilk, like say Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Evans, and Taylor Kitsch are fast becoming interchangeable parts in the current blockbuster cog. They all look the same, act the same, and more than likely are named Chris. I don’t want to seem like I am merely belittling six pack abs. After all, I have written the praises of Brad Pitt, Channing Tatum, and quite recently Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the past. The problem is that there seems to be this notion that you can stick one of these guys into a leading role and then that’s it. You do not have to put any more effort into the character. Once we all get a look at those abdominals, all the women will want to be with him and all the men will want to be him. Unfortunately a movie isn’t exactly like sex. It takes far longer to get through. (You can make the argument that a movie trailer or other marketing platform is given the respective length of time). For that reason it is a bit more like storytelling and it is actually of some relevance as to whether the person the story is about has a personality worth spending a couple of hours with. 

For that reason, it is a pleasure to see Charlie Day, Idris Elba, and Ron Perlman inhabiting the rest of the supporting characters, but Charlie Day especially. Mr. Day is currently one of the most interesting actors on television. There he plays Charlie in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” a frenzied, illiterate, unhygienic, seemingly celibate, rat-obsessed janitor of a dive bar. Here he plays Dr. Newton (“call me Newt”) an eccentric scientist who has his expertise in the monsters of the deep. He has got this crazy plan to drift with the still intact brain of a recently deceased monster in order to learn the secrets of the species. He does a very good, very funny job of it especially when playing against the stoic Idris Elba, commander of the army, and the dangerous Ron Perlman, CEO of the black market for monster remains. This is Mr. Day's first blockbuster and he fits right in. I hope to see him in others.