Pacific Rim

Dir: Guillermo del Toro

2013

***

Guillermo del Toro achieves just what he set out to in Pacific Rim. It is indeed the ultimate giant monster movie. It's flash, has all the effects and looks stunning. The acting takes a little bit of a back seat but that said, Idris Elba and Ron Perlman more than make up for this in their stand out performances. The thing is, it's almost too good. The classic monster movies that us fans love were a bit cheap. They were low budget b-movies that were very much in 'So bad they're good' territory. By making a good version of something that we all love to be bad, del Toro has essentially made something unwanted and unnecessary. Hasn’t he? Rather him than anyone else though. I'll take it but I would have rather have seen HellBoy III in all honesty but it’s so mindlessly fun that it is impossible to resist. The story begins in the present day (2013), an inter-dimensional portal called the "Breach" opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, from which giant monsters, the Kaijus, emerge. To combat the Kaiju threat, humanity builds massive robotic machines called Jaegers. Each Jaeger is piloted by two or more people, who are mentally linked in a process called "Drifting", to share the mental stress of piloting the machine. In 2020, the Becket brothers, Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff), pilots of Gipsy Danger, are launched to defend Anchorage from Knifehead, a Category III Kaiju. Knifehead kills Yancy, and Raleigh barely manages to pilot the Jaeger on his own and kill the Kaiju before crashing it at a shoreline. Traumatized by Yancy's death, Raleigh quits the Jaeger program. Five years later, the increasing power and numbers of the Kaiju cause the world governments to end funding for the continuous construction of Jaegers in favor of building coastal walls, and Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) moves all four remaining Jaegers to the last Jaeger Shatterdome in Hong Kong and plans to end the Kaiju War by destroying the Breach with a nuclear weapon. As Striker Eureka, piloted by Herc Hansen and his son Chuck, kills Mutavore, a Category IV Kaiju, in Sydney, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the walls, Pentecost persuades Raleigh to rejoin the program and they arrive at Hong Kong and meet Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), director of the Jaeger restoration program. After finding her compatible, Raleigh and Mako try their first drift, but Mako ends up nearly destroying the Shatterdome while lost in the memory of a Category II Kaiju attacking Tokyo and killing her family, and is relieved of piloting duty. It is revealed that after this incident, Mako was saved and raised by Pentecost. Pentecost consults Kaiju experts Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb to plan the assault on the Breach. Newton is able to drift with a piece of a Kaiju brain, discovering the Kaiju are scouts sent by invading beings from another dimension, and establishing a two-way mental link that enables the Kaiju hive mind to gain access to his knowledge just as he did theirs. Pentecost tasks Newton with finding a black market dealer and seller of body parts of dead Kaiju, Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), to find a fresh Kaiju brain. Later, two Category IV Kaijus, Leatherback and Otachi, emerge and rampage through Hong Kong to find Newton. After Otachi destroys Crimson Typhoon and Leatherback destroys Cherno Alpha, Striker Eureka loses all power by Leatherback's EMP blast. Gipsy Danger is finally sent and kills both Kaijus. Newton and Chau find out that Otachi is pregnant, and the infant Kaiju dies shortly after eating up Chau. Newton and Hermann drift with the infant's brain, discovering the Breach will only open in the presence of a Kaiju's DNA. As Herc was injured during the previous fight, Pentecost, who is dying from radiation sickness from piloting a Jaeger with a nuclear core before the implementation of radiation shielding, gives a rallying speech and pilots Striker Eureka with Chuck. Along with Gipsy Danger, they approach the Breach and are warned by Newton and Hermann of what they discovered from drifting with the infant's brain. Three Kaijus, two Category IV called Scunner and Raiju and a first Category V named Slattern, emerge from the Breach to defend it. After Raiju is killed, Pentecost and Chuck sacrifice themselves by detonating the bomb, which kills Scunner and wounds Slattern. Raleigh and Mako kill Slattern and drag it to the Breach, where Mako is ejected and Raleigh successfully overloads the Jaeger's reactor, destroying and closing the Breach. As Raleigh and Mako's escape pods surface in the Pacific Ocean, Herc orders the war clock to be stopped, indicating mankind's victory and Raleigh and Mako embrace. In a mid-credits scene, Chau is shown cutting his way out of the Kaiju infant, looking for his lost shoe. In February 2006, it was reported that Guillermo del Toro would direct Travis Beacham's fantasy screenplay, Killing on Carnival Row, but the project never materialized. Beacham conceived Pacific Rim the following year. While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, the screenwriter imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?" Deciding this would be "a story about loss, moving on after loss, and dealing with survivor's guilt", Beacham commenced writing the film. In May 2010, it was reported that Legendary Pictures had purchased Beacham's detailed 25-page film treatment, now titled Pacific Rim. In July 2010, it was reported that del Toro would next direct an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for Universal Studios, with James Cameron producing. When del Toro met with Legendary Pictures to discuss the possibility of collaborating with them on a film, he was intrigued by Beacham's treatment—still a "very small pitch" at this point. Del Toro struck a deal with Legendary: while directing At the Mountains of Madness, he would produce and co-write Pacific Rim; because of the films' conflicting production schedules, he would direct Pacific Rim only if At the Mountains of Madness were cancelled – which is exactly what happened. Del Toro drew inspiration from Francisco Goya's The Colossus, and hoped to evoke the same "sense of awe" with the film's battles. The end credits dedicate the film to Ray Harryhausen and Ishirō Honda, who helped to establish the giant monster genre. The individual pilot stories do add valuable development to the story and to the characters and the script is punchy in place but in the end of the day this is just a big dumb film that just gets more fun the bigger and dumber it becomes.