I’m sick of summer blockbusters treating its audience as mindless drones, relegating each multi-million dollar picture to greater and greater depths of uniformity, ambiguity, and insipidity. I’m sick of hollow films with nothing to say, populated with inane characters and convoluted plotlines. And I was ready to give up on the movies of Summer 2013, convinced that Hollywood simply can’t tell big, fun stories like it used to.
But then I saw Pacific Rim.
This film is awe-inspiring, in ambition, scope, and execution. It riles and thrills and excites. Its characters proclaim big, bold sentiments (“Today we are canceling the Apocalypse!”) but never feel strained or artificial. But above all else, this film gives me hope that summer blockbusters can still retain a semblance of genuine fun.
The plot is mostly throwaway -- we simply itch to get to the action set-pieces -- but it’s straightforward and concise. Years ago, a portal opened at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, unleashing grotesque beasts -- Kaijus -- from an alien dimension hell-bent on taking over Earth. In response, mankind has built gigantic metal warriors -- Jaegers -- to fight the monsters. After a debilitating encounter, the ace pilot of a fallen Jaeger, Raleigh Beckert, is called back into service in an effort to eradicate the beasts forever.
Director Guillermo del Toro is a master filmmaker whose eye for grotesqueries is matched only by his sense for humanity -- his Pan’s Labyrinth still ranks as one of the most haunting, beautiful films in recent memory. But del Toro is also a boy, too stubborn to grow up and relinquish his childlike wonderment, curiosity, and passion (I mean this in the nicest way possible). And in Pacific Rim, del Toro stages each escalating robot-on-monster battle with the giddiness of a 10 year-old boy playing with his action figures. They are truly awe-inspiring, the execution of each punch landing, each roar echoing, each piston firing, each geyser of water exploding looks like it was etched directly from a comic book panel or more likely, del Toro’s own vivid imagination.
But beyond all the clobberin’, del Toro manages to imbue the film with a sense of profound artistry, often with a simple image: a little girl’s red shoe shines among a grey rubble-strewn street; a Kaiju suddenly unfurls kite-like wings; a Jaeger’s sword cuts through a Kaiju, both bodies eclipsed against the shining sun. There’s a gravity to each shot here, a specificity of vision and a concentration of passion. It’s something that other action movies sorely lack -- think of how Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise so callously destroyed city after city without eliciting so much as a gasp from the audience. Or indeed, look no further than Man of Steel’s exceedingly hollow destruction porn, relegating Superman to someone so complicit in the annihilation of Metropolis it strains logic to call him a hero at all.
This is perhaps what separates Pacific Rim from its fellow summer blockbusters. It doesn’t feel as artificial, so overtly desperate for money. Its intentions don’t stem from mass global marketing (Iron Man 3) or a desire to mine 9/11 imagery for cheap pathos (Man of Steel). Its plot doesn’t resort to “the vengeance story” -- indeed, Pacific Rim might be the only summer movie in which characters don’t necessarily look into their past for motives of revenge, but actually look forward for aspirations of peace (even pilot Mako Mori quickly learns that memories from your past should stay in the past). It doesn’t approach grand-scale destruction as a lazy way of upping the stakes; indeed, the film does a great job of actually caring about the lives of civilians (at one point, Gypsy Danger violates a direct order to save a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska; the people of Hong Kong use an early Kaiju detection alarm to bunker underground as the beasts roam on the streets overhead). It’s a subtle point, for sure. And to be honest, I can’t necessarily identify what separates del Toro’s destruction extravaganza from say, Bay’s pyrotechnic mayhem. But in between the inconspicuous tweaks to both story and character, perhaps that is where del Toro’s true genius lies.
At one point in the film, a Kaiju emits an electromagnetic pulse, destroying all digital circuitry in the more advanced Jaegers, rendering them useless. All hope seems lost as the beasts begin to terrorize the glistening hulls of the frozen fighting machines, until Raleigh announces, “But Gypsy Danger is analog!” It’s a convenient plot point -- this allows the outdated Gypsy Danger Jaeger to finally join the fray -- but it also illustrates a subtle wink at the audience. Pacific Rim might be loaded with glistening CGI, but its soul is proudly organic, wholly rooted in something human. And some things are best executed in its natural form. They harken back to the tangible, the gritty, the emotional. They don’t feel as artificial, hollow, and meaningless. They dare to transport us to a world of mystery and intrigue, to make us laugh in delight and gasp in horror.
This is why we go to the movies in the first place.
