Pacific Rim (Movie Review)

Review by ComiKate

Purely based on the title I wouldn’t have picked out this movie from the long list of movies in our local theatre. I mean, to my knowledge Pacific Rim wasn’t any particular idiom or expression, nor a well-known location. But as soon as I saw the movie trailer in the theatre, (I think during Star Trek: Into Darkness, or maybe Man of Steel), I immediately knew I just had to see this movie!

Director Guillermo del Toro turns out to have been a fan of Japanese anime from his childhood. In a recent interview with Simon Mayo of Kermode & Mayo’s Film Reviews on BBC Radio 5 Live (you can check out their podcast here or on iTunes), Del Toro recounted his love for the mecha and kaiju creatures that often fill the worlds of anime.

In very general terms, mecha is the Japanese word for any creature or vehicle that is robotic, which in anime are often huge... and by huge I mean really ginormously large. Think Transformers or the gigantic Tripods in the remake of War of the Worlds – which, by the way, is also a GREAT movie. Go find some time to see that one too!

The mechas’ organic counterparts in anime are called kaiju – giant creatures, sometimes reptilian, other times amphibian or even deep-sea fish, but basically any super-large man-threatening creature. Think Godzilla and modernize him with 21^st century special effects. You catch my drift.

Story

One day, not so far into the future, a giant monster emerges from the depths of the ocean. Think 25 stories high “large” (according to director Del Toro). It takes some effort but humanity manages to kill the beast, using current weaponry like tanks and fighter jets to shoot it down with missiles. Worldwide people celebrate their victory over this primal threat, and move on.

However, to everyone’s great shock, new monsters appear a couple of years later. Thus, it's time to develop some new weaponry to fight these kaiju. Through worldwide technical and strategic collaboration the people of earth develop gigantic robots, mobile weapons of mass destruction which from then on are called Jaegers (after the German word “jäger,” which means hunter).

These Jaegers are so large and so complex that the neurological stress would be too big for only one pilot to bear, which is why they have to be manned by two people: one for the left hemisphere of the brain, and one for the right. To accomplish this there has to be a neurological connection not only with the robot, but also between the two pilots. This connection, called the Drift, is necessary since the pilots will have to think, move, and act in perfect unison – just like the two hemispheres of one human or animal brain control one body. This is why every pilot cannot be matched to just any other pilot: to be able to share each other’s minds, instincts, memories, and secrets, there has to be a deep fundamental trust between the pilots.  In order for the neurological connection to hold, especially in combat situations, the two have to be “drift compatible.” Or, as the recent graphic novel prequel Pacific Rim, Tales from Year Zero puts it, love is the key:

For a while the Jaeger program is very successful: every kaiju that emerges is eventually killed. Because of this, governments start feeling comfortable again and the international community decides to prioritize things differently: the Jaeger program is considered too expensive, so the new plan is to dismantle all Jaegers and build giant walls along densely populated coastal areas instead.  Surely that will be more than sufficient to keep potential future kaiju at bay. (...ehh, say what?)

As the next kaiju emerges and breaks through the first of these coastal walls (duh), the governments realize their mistake. But it’s too late: prognoses indicate that more and more kaiju will soon appear, and now humanity’s only hope is the last four Jaegers, piloted by a small group of people who have kept resisting the new wall-policy and maintaining these four giant battle-mechs as best as they could with the limited resources they had. Now the task falls upon them to close the interdimensional access point between the world of the kaiju and Earth: a rift deep in the Pacific Ocean. Due to some extra-violent Jaeger-kaiju battles, only two functional Jaegers are left when the mission starts and the remaining four pilots embark on a suicide mission in a race against the clock.

Likes

Despite the rather two-dimensional plot – very big robots fight very big monsters – Del Toro has delivered a movie that captivates from beginning to end. This is largely thanks to the characters: the surroundings may be enormously grand, but the interactions between the main characters are still close-up and intimate, focusing on matters of the heart just as much as the head. As a viewer I was swept up by the story from the beginning, and rooted for the main characters to beat the near-impossible odds right up to the end. I consider this quite a feat by Del Toro, considering the total mayhem, the tumultuous chaos, the deafening sounds of fighting monsters and mechs, and the destruction of cities that keeps you on the edge of your seat for large portions of the movie.

Furthermore, the special effects are magnificent. From the cool high-tech computer interfaces with which the Jaegers are piloted, to the enormous but yet very detailed kaiju and Jaegers, every one of which has a unique design, this movie is visually stunning.

More importantly, I’m very happy that Del Toro paid attention to building his characters and their relationships. He takes the time to show us how a newbie pilot is trained, what it’s like to enter the neurological connection for the first time, and why it’s so important for those entering this “Drift” to have a stable mind. Plus, he adds some humor to the mix through the sidekicks: two bickering scientists who work for the Jaeger resistance.

Last but not least, the joining of minds in the Jaeger could trigger a number of relevant conversational topics, like: What is trust? What is intimacy? What is friendship? One question that will probably resonate with Christians in particular is: What does it mean to be truly one with another (and do you have the nerves for it?). After all, it was one of Jesus’ best-known prayers for His followers to be “one”:

“I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name – the name You gave me – so that they may be one as We are one.” (John 17:11, NIV)

Although I doubt that Del Toro had that verse in mind, he nevertheless touches upon these themes, without claiming to have the definitive answers. Rather than going “soft” on these issues, Del Toro instead manages to have keep these underlying themes both fascinating to the viewer and central to the movie’s action.

Dislikes

Ehh… no. Can’t think of any. Maybe if I tried again……
Sorry, no.

Final Score

This movie is a total Must See, and also a strong contender for my personal top 3 movies of 2013!

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language

Quality: 10.0
Relevance: 8.0