Film Review: Pacific Rim

You know, I lot of the time I come into the week dreading about what I have to write about. Will it be the nonsense of selling off the post office? The cruelty of legal aid changes? The insanity of Texas's fresh assault on women's rights? Or will it be the last minute contender, the oh-my-god-wut of the Zimmerman case?

So instead I'm going to talk about giant robots punching giant monsters IN THE FACE.

DUR DUR DUR DURLALALA DUR DUR DUR!

PUNCHING MONSTERS INNA FACE!

Pacific Rim is kinda hard for me to objectively review. Once in a while, I remember sitting in the cinema thinking to myself, 'Wait a minute, that didn't make sense,' before the film turned to me and screamed, 'I PUNCH A MONSTER INNA FACE WITH ROCKET ARM, YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.' And quite frankly, I was totally okay with that.

I mean, come on people, why am I even pushing this movie? The core concept alone should have you clamouring to go see this movie, unless you suffer a complete dearth of joy in your soul.

Unlike the totally dire Lone Ranger film, this film wasn't ashamed of what it was. It didn't spend the whole run time undermining it's core message because it was trying to be 'edgy,' or 'cynical,' No. This film is, in a sentence, about giant robots punching giant monsters in the face. The whole film revolves around that, and it's great to see a film embrace it's core concept with such love and joy instead of shame.

BOAT SWORD BOAT SWORD GONNA HIT YOU WITH MY BOAT SWORD.

So, fine, an actual plot synopsis for you: Giant monsters, called Kaiju, have risen from a hole in reality from the seabed. And do what monsters are supposed to do - wreck the mother fucking shit outta everything. And they're pretty good at it, so humanity, realizing that their biggest tanks are no more threatening then the average perturbed puppy to these thing, go for broke and build the Jaegers, our giant monster smashing robots. To get the best out of them, they need two pilots to neurally sync up with the robot, as a single pilot can't handle the mental strain and normally ends up with brains dribbling out their nose... which does put a damper on your fighting prowess. In goes the Jaegers, and what do you know, giant robots kick all sort of ass!

So much ass is being kicked that eventually, the Jaegers stop being replaced, and the authorities start winding down the program to instead built a less awesome giant ass wall, in the spirit of, 'Well fuck you, we didn't want the Pacific ocean anyway, you take it.' However, the Kaiju are getting bigger, badder, and more numerous as our heroes realise these Kaiju aren't going away and are about to swamp the planet on mass. So it's about time for a crazy plan involving getting an ex-pilot back into action with a new partner, a nuke... and punching monsters in the face.

Yeah. Honestly, I'm just gonna stick with the 'giant robots punch giant monsters in the face.' Way snappier.

Whoever wins, it's going to look awesome.

This really is the epitome of the summer blockbuster. Big, loud, pretty, and not utterly stupid, and not without flaws. I will admit, discussing it after watching just lead into a long conversation of the film's more silly bits - anyone care to explain the whole digital / analogue engines bit to me again? Hell, the only answer I could come up with is that modern Jaegers have digital engines, which can be on or off (hence digital) where the older nuclear powered Jaeger could be on, off, or overloading... so that's not digital? I don't know.

It is interesting that it doesn't push the human connection into the background either. While making sure a film around giant robots vs. giant monsters is primarily focused on that rather than just it's human cast - looking you, Transformers - the fact that the Jaegers are piloted by two pilots that need to be in sync with each other by linking minds allowed a lot of development in dealing with emotional baggage and the power of teamwork. Very nice. A lot of lesser films would of passed over that.

Most of the more stupid bits to me felt that it wan't a raging plot hole but moreso just bad explanation. The guy in charge of the Jaeger project, Idris Elba who's character's name I forget and so I just called him Stringer Bell, couldn't pilot a Jaeger again without it killing him. He said it was because of radiation poisoning from older Jaeger models - fine, that makes sense, but it was presented that syncing would kill him... which would also make sense, as he piloted alone for a bit which messed him up. But radiation poisoning and sync death are two very different things. It was one or the other, but it was shown as both at the same time which was confusing.

Then you're talking about how we're told that powdered Kaiju bone is ridiculously expensive, yet we have the Bone Slums were poor people live within the rib cage of a long dead Kaiju. Yeah. Considering I can't get a train nowadays without a delay due to some fucker nicking the cabling, I guarantee you those ribs would of lasted about forty seconds surrounded by that many desperately poor people.

The other criticisms I could pull up which are't niggles of misunderstanding - and I'm spoiler tagging this bit here - was that I was highly disappointed that we had so few other Jaegers to play about with, as that got knocked out of the grand plan pretty early, which was a great shame as they were much more visually distinct of all the Jaegers. Boo! 

Look, this film will bring you joy. It's that simple. It's a great, brash, sorta silly film, and it's delivering what it's got with great aplomb and cheer. It's music is bombastic and incredible, and this film is one of those films, films that really must be seen at a cinema with the sound blaring at you and sights dazzling you. And seeing it will hopefully put more studios in the mood to show us new ideas, rather than sequel after sequel. So go see Pacific Rim, now!

Before this film becomes a bust, loses out to Grown Ups 2 and we never see anything new again.