Every now and again, a movie comes along that has
"truth in advertising." A lot
of action movies are this way: What you see in the trailer is what you get.
Pacific Rim is one of those movies.
I'll be the first to admit, much as I had trepidation over
Cloverfield, Pacific Rim was another movie that I saw the trailers and thought
"this is either going to be great or really suck."
I know some of my concerns had to do with having high hopes
for the Joe Haldeman (one of my favorite authors) written and Stuart Gordon
(ReAnimator, From Beyond) directed "Robot Jox" from 1990. While the movie is not hideous, it never
lived up to the movie I felt it could be.
If you haven't seen it, it is Cold War politics meets the Transformers
with stop motion animation. As the movie
has aged it has become an interesting social commentary on both the cold war as
well as the action movie "apprentice" sub-genre and the "style
over substance" that heavily influenced the cyberpunk movement.
I've read a lot of reviews of Pacific Rim after seeing the
film and many of them tend to be along the lines of "this is either the
greatest shitty movie ever made or the shittiest great movie ever made."
For me, I enjoyed the film thoroughly.
With a lot of action films the biggest issue is pacing. Either the director goes all in and you're
subjected to a constant barrage of fights, chases and explosions all wrapped
around a thin shell of story, or you're given an earnest attempt at a plot that
just so happens to have a lot of action interspersed.
The problem with the first type of film is any break in the
action tends to throw the user out of their suspension of disbelief and they
really start to question why they are watching this. For those in this category you come across a
problem with fatigue brought on by sensory overstimulation. The second can work but it's a careful
balance that most directors/editors get wrong and once again I, as the viewer,
am left, usually after an over the top action scene looking around the
theater/room as suspension of disbelief is lost.
Pacific Rim is one of the most perfectly paced films that
I've seen.
Guillermo Del Toro made a movie that made visual sense, had
exposition that moved fast enough, especially after actions sequences that, as
a viewer, I never lost the flow of the movie.
Speaking of visual, there are many reason I never watch the
Academy Awards, and this year is no different.
I get it, awards ceremonies are political popularity contests. However, as with Cloverfield and sound
editing, that Pacific Rim was not nominated for any of the visual/technical
awards is just insulting. With most CG
heavy movies the user is left with scenes that don't make visual sense or have
such glaring spots where you are thrown out of the suspension of disbelief
because the CG is just so unrealistic.
Pacific Rim balanced computer generated effects with
practical beautifully. This is a
visually stunning movie, but the CG is so seamless that I never once stopped to
think "hey this is CG." Both
the robots (Jaeger) and the monsters (Kaiju) where rendered with such care and
precision that when they are fighting or moving toward a fight I never once
considered this was CG. Del Toro made
some very smart choices to keep the movie visually dark; most of the battle
scenes take place at night, but even when there are daylight shots the CG is
not apparent.
As this movie drew closer to release I did start watching
the "making of" featurettes which Del Toro released. To me one of the greatest achievements of
this film is the practical effects. The
inside of the Jaegers are, for the most part practical. They built multi-ton hydraulic platforms that
the actors interacted with, including moving the arm and leg armatures. It has always been a pet peeve of mine that
both movies and TV shows seem to get very lazy, especially with coffee cups and
don't fill them with liquid. It is flat
out obvious that there is no weight to these items and the actors aren't moving
a muscle. Not so with Pacific Rim. You can tell the actors were seriously
working out when inside the Jaegers.
The sets on this film are also incredibly well done. From
the wall in Alaska, to the Shatterdome where the Jaegers are housed to the
downtown Hong Kong scenes everything makes visual sense. Plus, as a cyberpunk writer/fan, I enjoyed
the visual nod to Blade Runner in the Hong Kong scenes. Granted, since I've never been to Hong Kong
it's possible that is what it looks like, but since I have no experience, I'm
going with an homage to Blade Runner.
So, is the movie perfect?
No.
I had some nitpicks with both the casting of the movie as
well as the acting.
The main casting issue I had was the hero and his foil. It's a time honored tradition, especially in
action films with a war theme to have two strong male characters that butt
heads. And Pacific Rim is no
different. The issue I have is that the
actors they cast where too physically similar so when they do get in a scuffle
you lose their identity.
But maybe that was the point. There is a lot of subtlety to this movie so
it's possible that he was making a "two sides of the same coin" type
of statement.
A secondary casting problem I had was Charlie Day. And this is personal. I just don't like him as an actor and I know
it is mostly his vocal inflections that grate against something within my
head. From an acting perspective his
character was delivered very well, but when he opens his mouth I just want him
to close it.
As I mentioned, my other issue was the acting and this
could, once again, be a statement by Del Toro that just didn't resonate with me
at times.
Pacific Rim makes no bones that it is a movie of cinematic
iconography. The problem is that some of
the actors delivered their iconic lines with Shakespearian fury while others,
especially the foil seemed to think that these lines where to be delivered a la
Sylvester Stallone. It's a small
criticism since the pacing of the movie generally pushed past some of the
awkward acting moments such that it wasn't until after the film was over that I
started to dissect the performances.
Finally I'd like to touch back on something I alluded to
earlier, the subtlety of the film.
While the movie is a grandiose spectacular, there are a lot
of small touches that really enhance the film either in the immediacy or in
thinking about it later. The obvious
homage is the pinup decal on Gipsy Danger, a nod to US bomber sin WW2. I
noticed some of the color usage myself, but it really resonated with my
wife. If you want to read a great
detailed analysis of it, please check out this link which is much more eloquent
on the subject than I could ever be: http://stormingtheivorytower.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-visual-intelligence-of-pacific-rim.html
Overall I loved Pacific Rim and on subsequent viewings of it
I keep picking out little details I missed in previous sittings.
