Pacific Rim, or, B-Movies Are An Art Form

Went to see 'Pacific Rim' today, otherwise known as the movie made by Guillermo Del Toro to prove that no, he's not at all bitter about it not working out on 'The Hobbit', no, really, incidentally have you seen my massive robots hitting these things which look a bit like dragons? That's like totally awesome and completely coincidental GODDAMN YOU PEEDER JIGSON.

Let's face it, this mess could have been sorted a lot quicker

if the dwarves had just built themselves a decent mecha.

So, anyway - this was never going to be a movie in contention for an Oscar for screenwriting. It was always going to be a big, ballsy, stupid, gung-ho, rock-em-sock-em punchfest as giant robots called Jaeger battled weird alien monsters called Kaiju.

Not these guys, sadly, but that would have been hilarious. If you want

your head messed with, look up 'Kaiju Big Battel' on YouTube.

Yeah, there's going to be spoilers in here. Just so you know.

Is 'Pacific Rim' entertaining? Yes... to a point. However, there are just so MANY things wrong with it that after a while your brain sort of gets dragged down into a quagmire of "huh?" while you try to reconcile the different bits of shit with a normal cinematic experience. The first and most obvious thing to me was the pacing of it; I understand that there's a movie which needs to happen, and action which needs to take place, and so let's skip over the boring exposition. However, the opening monologue feels forced, and we just skip over so much stuff so quickly. Then we meet the hero, Raleigh Beckett.

That's what I'm thinking of for the rest of the film. Well done.

But that's not all. His boss, played by Idris Elba, is called PENTECOST STACKER. That's not a name, that's a church shop job description. Whatever else Del Toro can do, he can't think up names for shit. Don't believe me? I mean, he'll do better naming the goddamn battle robots, right? Let's meet the contestants.

Gipsy Danger. Sounds like a pole dancer.

Striker Eureka. Two unconnected words, ahoy!

Cherno Alpha, aka 'The Russian one, so neither word has to be English'.

Crimson Typhoon. You win, hands down. All three of 'em.

Right, that brief sidewind into atrocious names dealt with, back to the pacing issue. Beckett's brother is killed while he's mind-linked with him in charge of a Jaeger, and he quits the whole 'fight the monsters' programme. Understandable. So he works in construction for five years, of which we get to see about ninety seconds before Stacker shows up offering him his old job back. Yes, there's a movie to be done and monsters to be fought BUT, we as the viewing public have barely had time to think "Oh, so he's down on his luck now and- oh, no he isn't."

So he's brought back to run a Jaeger, but he'll need a co-pilot, and it'll need to be someone whom he can form a good bond with. The Chinese one is run by triplets, the Australian one by father and son, he used to do it with his brother, the Russian one is run by... two Russians? Maybe both being Russian with appalling bleach jobs is enough, hell if I know.

So THAT'S what Zangief is up to these days.

Now we get into my second major bugbear with this movie - so many things are mentioned as apparent plot devices or simply as cool things and then... are contradicted, or just not followed up on. AGAIN AND AGAIN.

All the possibilities Stacker has lined up for Beckett to team up with are useless except his brightest star, his adoptive daughter, whom he absolutely won't let get into the Jaeger with Beckett because... reasons? I'm not sure if this was simply meant to be 'overprotective step-daddy' bit or more genuine concern about her ability to restrain her vengeful wishes for her dead family. Anyway, after about thirty minutes of "No, it won't happen. No, you're not piloting a Jaeger," he gives up for no apparent reason and she does the mind-meld with Beckett and, of course, it fails and she goes into a catatonic reaction thinking back to how she was nearly killed by a Kaiju when she was a kid (maybe this was triggered by Stacker giving her the shoe she was wearing at the time right beforehand? You know, bringing the old memories back? Nice work there) and she unconsciously activates the weapon and nearly blows the hangar up.

OK, so that didn't work. Any non-Russian woman is too weak to run a Jaeger, it appears. Gotcha.

But hang on, because when the next attack comes in and two of the other Jaegers are taken down (unsurprisingly, the Chinese and the Russian ones), Gipsy Danger and its two pilots are deployed. Rather than going back to his pool of admittedly slightly lack-lustre recruits to co-pilot with Beckett, Stacker sticks his adoptive daughter back into the machine even though she went catatonic and nearly blew the base up last time. And they function perfectly as a team for the rest of the film, with not even a mention of that first little problem which nearly killed everyone. I should also point out that she seems obsessed by Beckett before she meets him and has apparently studied him intently, and she tells him that she doesn't think he should be sent on the mission because he takes stupid risks but then she really wants to be his co-pilot. Girl, you need to get your head straight.

Also, one of the new Kaiju debuts an EMP which knocks out the circuits of the Jaegers and also Hong Kong. However, according to Beckett, Gipsy Danger "is analogue, she's nuclear". Now, I have a few problems with this:

1) The power source might be nuclear, but there's a shitload of electronics in there, including the damn mind-meld thing.

2) When the Russian Jaeger is getting pounded, one of the pilots screams "Water is getting into the reactor!" So... I'm not sure what's going on there.

3) EMP Kaiju doesn't even try that trick again when faced with Gipsy Danger, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I'd have expected to see it try it and be confused when it doesn't work, allowing the Jaeger to knock its block off.

Now, don't get me wrong - the fight scenes in this movie are amazing. The CGi is truly spectacular and you do really get a sense of the size and weight involved... at least, until one of the Kaiju spreads WINGS and takes off HOLDING GIPSY DANGER and then FLIES HIGH ENOUGH THAT THEY START TO LOSE OXYGEN. Let's remember that a Kaiju weight was given as 140,000 tonnes, and that Kaiju was smaller than this one. Let's remember that it's carrying a Jaeger as well. Let's remember that the higher you go the thinner the air is, so the more difficult it would be to fly. I KNOW I'm not meant to talk about physics when we've got massive alien monsters emerging from a rift in the floor of the Pacific Ocean, but come on. I can just about wrap my head around these things walking and moving on the surface of the Earth, but flying? And then there's the fact that a Jaeger can go undersea and the pilots can still breathe just fine, but they can't go to a high altitude?

Anyway, all that aside, they have a plan to drop a nuke down the rift to get back at the Kaiju. Meanwhile, Skinny Dennis Nedry is a Kaiju scientist who does a mind-meld with a secondary Kaiju brain they happen to have lying around, and he gets some success, and Stacker sends him off to track down a Kaiju black market dealer to get another brain to do another mind meld with. He blabs about this to the dealer (Rob Perlman playing Hannibal Chau - OK, that name is awesome), who points out that if they have a hive mind then now the Kaiju know about this guy. And when one of the Kaiju hits the city SDN runs for a bunker and the Kaiju attacks that bunker and it knows he's there and it seems to be reaching for him with its tongue and... then Gipsy Danger jumps it from behind and THIS IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.

"Eh, no wonder you went extinct."

According to Skinny Dennis Nedry, the Kaiju are grown as warbeasts by an alien race which move from place to place, consuming resources and then moving on.

"I think you'll find that's our schtick."

But actually, my little Jurassic Park reference up there works better than you'd think (apart from them both being egotistical guys with similar accents) because according to SDN, the dinosaurs were this alien race's first attempt at this idea.

"Son, I am disappoint."

After narrowly surviving being chosen for... dinner? Kisses? Meaningful conversation? by the Kaiju, SDN returns to Ron Perlman and aggressively yells "You owe me a Kaiju brain, you one-eyed son of a bitch!"

Um. No he doesn't.

He's a black market dealer and he doesn't owe you shit. You're not even offering him any money. He thought the whole 'mind-melding with a Kaiju' thing was absolutely idiotic. He nearly cut your nose off because you wouldn't tell him your name. You think he's just going to let you go mind-meld with a Kaiju now you know him, when he cuts up and sells Kaijus and as far as he's concerned what you know, they will know? That's got to be the stupidest-

Oh wait, here you are at the death site of a Kaiju and he's going to let you do it. Well I never.

Well, this Kaiju's brain is damaged, but there's a heartbeat in there! OH MY GOD IT'S PREGNANT!

This may be a larger job than you bargained for, ladies.

A biologically-constructed warbeast is pregnant. My mind is boggling at that one. Why would you build that feature in? When did it mate? I... yeah. Anyway, the offspring dies and SDN mind-melds with it and OH GODS THE PLAN WE HAVE ISN'T GOING TO WORK, because the plan involves dropping a nuke through the rift to severely piss off the guys on the other side who are sending all these monsters.

"I think you'll find that's my schtick."

So... this would be a... wait for it... JAEGER BOMB?? :D :D :D

(My wife takes credit for that one)

But the plan of dropping a nuke through never worked before, and they thought it would work this time because... I'm not sure. Stacker said he had a plan, but he never explained why he thought it'd work this time. Anyway, SDN and British Numbers Guy who did the mind-meld with him now know how to make the plan work, and they rush back and tell the guys at base, because Striker Eureka and Gipsy Danger are off to bomb the rift. Of course, Australian Dad's arm is injured so the new co-pilot for Australian Jerk Son is Pentecost "I'll die if I get in another Jaeger" Stacker, who neatly shits all over the idea of needing a good bond with your co-pilot by saying "I take nothing into the drift; no rank, no memories, no emotions", or words to that effect. Um... OK. So what you're saying is that if only humanity had crewed Jaegers with psychopaths, this whole 'close bond' thing wouldn't have been necessary? IS SOME INTERNAL CONSISTENCY TOO MUCH TO ASK, DAMN IT!?

I wonder where they got the nuke from? Perhaps they needed some weapons-grade uranium...

One for regular readers, this.

Blah blah, Kaiju attack, blah blah, malfunction, blah blah, bomb can't be released by Striker Eureka, blah blah, blow up to clear the way, blah blah, Gipsy Danger goes through the rift, blah blah send its nuclear reactor into meltdown, blah blah, eject in lifepods.

Eject.

Out of the Jaeger which is now IN ANOTHER DIMENSION and back through the rift into our world. Despite the fact that the truth uncovered by Skinny Dennis Nedry and British Numbers Guy is that the rift has to recognise a Kaiju's genetic signature to let it through. That's why the bombs had always bounced before. And sure, you were clutching a Kaiju on the way down but now you're on the way up and it's just going to let you through? I mean, let's not forget, every Kaiju so far has rampaged until it was killed. No Kaiju has ever gone back down the rift anyway, so when they're saying "it recognises the Kaiju's DNA and lets them through" they had to be talking about the way up, right?

Right?

Oh wait. Internal consistency. Nevermind.

So both pilots make it back to the surface after Gipsy Danger goes boom and collapses the rift with a nuclear blast, and Beckett is apparently dead after his trip back from the void, but he recovers to consciousness following no real medical attention by anyone beyond a display of emotion.

"No, seriously, I'm going to sue."

And with that the movie ends. So now let me address my third and final bugbear with the movie; the direction. I guess the 'pacing' bit could come into this (and also the sound mixing - there is no excuse for me to not be able to hear dialogue between characters in a cinema, even if I am deaf), but I'm more talking here about the portrayals of the characters. First of all, other than Skinny Dennis Nedry (who overacts a bit, but does so amusingly enough to get away with it), there's precious little truly good acting going on. Idris Elba is a good actor, but Pentecost Stacker is too one-dimensional to do much with. Sure, he threatens to cut loose occasionally, but even in his "rousing" speech near the end it's all a bit... dry. Raleigh Beckett might as well be "American Action Movie Trope a) Washed-Up Former Hero" and is almost completely unmemorable. Even Ron Perlman seems off - it shouldn't be hard for him to convince as a menacing, amoral black market dealer, but it just doesn't click for some reason.

Then there's the racial stereotyping. The Japanese girl is timid, the Russians are dour, the British Numbers Guy is painfully stereotyped, the Aussies are brash and obnoxious (although hilarious on one occasion when they do, as someone else put it, "something really brave, stupid and Australian"), and the Chinese all look the same (okay, they're meant to be triplets. Even so).

In conclusion, 'Pacific Rim' is a movie which could have been so much more... but possibly should have been so much less. It tried to strike a balance between brainless action smash-em-up and something with a logical plot and character dynamics, but the second part just ended up dragging the first down a little. If you're going to explain things then they need to actually make sense... at least, if you're paying to see it in the movies. If you're watching 'Sand Sharks' on Syfy then I'm quite content to hear Brooke Hogan talking about how the grooves on a shark's skin allow it to swim through the microvortices between grains of sand because no-one expects that to make sense.

All I can say is, thank gods this man never got hold of 'The Hobbit'.