As a kid, I remember having friends that were in love with Godzilla. I never understood the fascination and instead dumped my time into following a little weekday animated television show called Robotech. Robotech was about a war against a race of giant alien warriors and featured squadrons of Veritech fighters, human controlled fighter jets that could transform into giant mechs. Like many kids, my friends and I would have great debates about who would win in a fight, Godzilla or our mechs, with no one ever coming to terms with the others’ decisions. Guillermo del Toro must have had similar debates as a child because his latest film, Pacific Rim, is a feature length answer to that great debate.
Pacific Rim starts off with a pair of definitions emblazoned on the screen, laying out exactly what the film is about. Kaiju are giant beasts, while Jaegers are their hunters.
The kaiju in Pacific Rim are every Godzilla fans wet dream, massive beasts whose only function is to destroy everything in their path. When the kaiju began attacking, humanity retaliated with all their might, and while they were ultimately successful, the toll was catastrophic. Something had to be created to battle the kaiju on the same level, and thus, the Jaeger Project was born.
Jaegers are massive mechs that are controlled by human pilots via a neural link with the hardware. This link is so taxing on the human brain that each jaeger needs a pair of pilots to sync their minds together via a process called drifting. This drifting enables each participant to work in perfect tandem as they battle the giant beasts but there is a side effect that forces the pilots to experience each other’s memories and to feel what they feel while linked. This requires a strong bond between the two, and not everyone is compatible.
The jaegers are a great weapon against the kaiju but even with their success, things are bleak. The kaiju keep adapting and as such they are winning. Humanity is at its end. And all of that information is smartly relayed in the opening minutes of Pacific Rim, and there is no confusion to why things are as they are, or why things work the way they work. The film gets you to believe in del Toro’s vision, strapping you in along the way for an epic ride that rivals any big blockbuster summer movie in recent years.
If del Toro is known for anything, it is his amazing visual style, and Pacific Rim delivers the goods on all counts. The monster designs are astounding with the creatures looking like the demons of Pan’s Labyrinth crossed with dinosaurs but taller than skyscrapers. The jaegers themselves are imaginative behemoths that all have a distinct look. For example, the Gypsy Danger, the jaeger the narrative focuses on, looks like the original Iron Man design, while the Chinese led Crimson Typhoon has a lither frame akin to its pilots’ martial arts fighting style. And when the kaiju and jaegers come together it is jaw dropping sight that accentuates the size and strength of both brands of monsters.
Despite being mostly computer generated effects, Pacific Rim never made me feel like I was watching anything but real imagery. Some of that can be attributed to how del Toro chooses to frame the special effects and his reliance on kinetic action in those shots. Unlike other directors, that insist on showing you all their fancy camera tricks, del Toro lets the action play out on screen. There are no sweeping pans, no slow-mo shots of blows impacting, no multiple angle walkthroughs of the same shot from different angles. It is all just feels very organic and because of that the destruction feels even more colossal. If any complaint can be levied against the special effects and camera work, it is that I often felt not enough was being shown of the fights due to the camera being pulled in extra close. Sometimes when this would happen, things just felt choppy and disorienting making my excitement level dip a bit.
With the film’s selling point being mechs and monsters, one would be forgiven for forgetting about the human aspect of the film. But ultimately, the story of Pacific Rim is a fight to save humanity. and as such. there are humans at the center of it all. Much of the film focuses on the pilot of the jaeger Gypsy Danger, Raleigh Becket (Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam), and his eventual co-pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). Hunnam has a natural charm that makes his roguish Becket immediately likable. Kikuchi’s Mako on the other hand is the exact opposite, playing by the rules at every turn, but it is hard to not love her because she is cute as a button. But while their charisma, good looks and chemistry together helps to solidify their appeal, there is a surprising amount of depth to each of them.
As the film progresses, we learn more and more about Raleigh and Mako. They both share a traumatic past filled with immense loss. And as we learn that, their relationship becomes stronger and stronger, which in turn makes me care for their well being. Making anyone care about characters is a hard thing for many films; making it happen in a film about giant monsters and mechs is straight up commendable. Sadly, the same can’t be said about the rest of the human characters, which are mostly just around to push forward the story. But in all honesty, it all comes back to monsters and mechs, and anything more than what Pacific Rim offers in the character department would probably have taken away from the pure fun the film offers, and that would be detrimental to the experience, so I can easily give its lack of characterization a pass.
As with many films focusing on humanity’s extinction at the hands of an alien race, Pacific Rim is a film about beating the odds and doing the impossible. When backed into a corner, humanity always pulls through. It doesn’t matter if it is aliens from another planet or another dimension. It doesn’t matter if we have to send Jeff Goldblum to space or giant mechs to the bottom of the Pacific. We win because of who and what we are. And I guess that right there is the answer to that 25 year old debate of Godzilla versus mechs. But regardless of the outcome, it does leave one question left to be answered: How cool will it be? If it is anything like what del Toro envisions, it will be gloriously epic. Of course, that is assuming that you don’t get stepped on like an ant first.
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