Top 25 Favourite Films: #11 Pacific Rim (Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2013)
#11. Pacific Rim. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, 2013
I unreservedly, unapologetically love Pacific Rim. To pick one film by Guillermo del Toro, one single instance of one of the greatest film makers of our generation's boundless imagination in action, was difficult, with the gothic fairytales Pan's Labriynth and The Shape of Water among my favourite films, but when it came time it simply had to be Del Toro's 2013 take on the daikaiju-in which colossal creatures do city-destroying battle-genre. All of Del Toro's films are beautiful dreams, but Pacific Rim is a child's daydream of the battle between human-piloted giant robots-Jaeger-and extraterrestial creatures from another dimension via a bridge in the marianias trench-Kaiju, a technicolour melee of a film in which Del Toro's love of the genre is as palpable as the satisfyingly colossal action, and you won't be able to wipe the colossal childish grin from your face until the credits roll.
I adore mecha anime-as I mentioned back when I reviewed Pacific Rim Uprising, the enjoyable sequel that skews a little more Saturday morning cartoon, among my favourite series and games, from LGBT-science-fiction introscopic visual novel, Heaven Will Be Mine to Hideaki Anno's cultural golliath anime Neon Genesis Evangelion are works that explore the mecha-giant robot-genre for miscellaneous ends, from an extension of the id to the weight of a father's expectation on his mentally ill son. Yet, what all of these series have in common, and what they certainly share with Pacific Rim is their battles. Evangelion, and its cinematic sequel series, have more than a passing resemblance, with miscellaneous monsters arriving to battle our heroes in city-levelling battles full of carnage and spectacular chaos-think the best bits of disaster movies twinned with a seventy-story wrestling match, and Pacific Rim captures this perfectly.
Every single battle is, in a word, spectacular-the battle in which our hero, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) is introduced, and his brother lost is bruising, an under-dog fight in which Beckett is left injured and piloting his stricken Jaeger, Gypsy Danger until he essentially gets lucky and scores his victory. Eventually drawn back to the Jaeger Program by Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecost, a larger than life performance in which Elba is at once the driving force and heart of the battle against the Kaiju, so Beckett is eventually paired with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), and slowly learns to sync with her in order to be able to fight with her.
With not one but two Kaiju arriving in Hong Kong harbour, the film's best action setpiece unfolds, in which we not only get Gypsy Danger, but three other Jaeger, including the Australian Striker Eureka, whose pilots have a rivalry with Beckett, and a Russian and Chinese Jaeger. Though these characters are broad brushstrokes-hell, the majority of the other Jaeger pilots don't get more than a few lines-each is uniquely designed, and their screentime almost bitter sweetly short, as the destructive power of the kaiju destroys both in short order. Pacific Rim is an almost brutally efficient film in places, and at points it seems to cram an incredible amount into barely two hours, and nowhere is this seen better than in its characters.
Even in the case of our main leads, both are pared down to a number of pitch-perfect scenes in which their bond is formed, Mako's childhood trauma and connection to the man who acts as her saviour, her adoptive father, are explored and Raleigh finds his will to fight and carry on after his brother's death. With these wounds, mental and otherwise The battle of Hong Kong is, and there is no other word for it, pure, unadulterated awesome, from Gypsy Danger beating the ever-loving crap out of a Kaiju with a tanker to the cathartic and equally epic scene in which the mech eventually uses its knife, falling from the sky with Mako's vengeance for her parents full in her mind.
In a strange way, Pacific Rim is a film about loss-the monsters of cinema are almost always, on some level allegory, and in this film, the monsters are, as they are in Hideaki Anno's Evangelion at once physical and symbolic, but where Anno's Angels symbolise the demons of mental health, of loneliness, of social anxiety and emotional attachment, Del Toro's Kaiju are a more direct threat, the murderers of Mako's parents and Raleigh's brother, a very real and very dangerous dragon to defeat and to avenge them by defeating it.
Each Kaiju's defeat is, certainly, cathartic, pitch-perfect, and, with their blue, iridescent blood, strangely beautiful-we feel each defeat, both of our heroes, and of their enemies-even for such a lightweight concept, there is a gravitas-not a seriousness persay, but a meaningfulness to every battle, every moment of action in Pacific Rim. Certainly, this is a film in which memory plays a strong part, and the connection, the neural bridge that allows the two pilots to share the control of the jaeger means diving into the memories of the other person, which the film does to great effect, and eventually, via Charlie Day's memorably frantic Newt, is the key to finding not only the purpose for, but the source of the kaiju attacks.
But what one takes away from Pacific Rim most is that it is a film that unashamedly revels in what it is; for all its surprising eloquence, this is a big dumb beautiful action movie. It aspires to be nothing more, nor less, in its big battles, big gestures-this is a film where Idris Elba, after all, bellows full blast about "CANCELLING THE APOCALYPSE", and one fifth of It's Always Sunny... and one fourth of BBC's Torchwick takes great meaty bites out of their respective roles, not to mention Del Toro stalwart Ron Perlman as Kaiju black marketer Hannibal Chau. And yet, for all its big meatheadedness, it is perhaps one of the most beautiful, and certainly one of the coolest action movies ever made, fromits beautiful use of neons and primary colours and its near-fanboyish excitement perfectly captured in Ramin Djawadi's score, featuring Tom Morello's unmistakable guitar style.
Pacific Rim is that perfect balance of dumb and smart, of big concept and small moments, of world-wide apocacalpyse cancelling, and small scale, and very personal vengance. Far from being the odd one out in Del Toro's nigh peerless ouvre, it feels like a connection, a perfect linkage between Del Toro the cinematic artist, and Del Toro the geek, between the films he makes and the films he loves. Of all of his films, only Pacific Rim feels like the one he'd love to watch as much as he loved to make, a passionate, hand-on-heart homage to everything from giant robot anime to equally giant monster series, a message from the heart, a film for the people who love the monster and the mecha as much as he does.
I unreservedly, unapologetically love Pacific Rim. To pick one film by Guillermo del Toro, one single instance of one of the greatest film makers of our generation's boundless imagination in action, was difficult, with the gothic fairytales Pan's Labriynth and The Shape of Water among my favourite films, but when it came time it simply had to be Del Toro's 2013 take on the daikaiju-in which colossal creatures do city-destroying battle-genre. All of Del Toro's films are beautiful dreams, but Pacific Rim is a child's daydream of the battle between human-piloted giant robots-Jaeger-and extraterrestial creatures from another dimension via a bridge in the marianias trench-Kaiju, a technicolour melee of a film in which Del Toro's love of the genre is as palpable as the satisfyingly colossal action, and you won't be able to wipe the colossal childish grin from your face until the credits roll.
I adore mecha anime-as I mentioned back when I reviewed Pacific Rim Uprising, the enjoyable sequel that skews a little more Saturday morning cartoon, among my favourite series and games, from LGBT-science-fiction introscopic visual novel, Heaven Will Be Mine to Hideaki Anno's cultural golliath anime Neon Genesis Evangelion are works that explore the mecha-giant robot-genre for miscellaneous ends, from an extension of the id to the weight of a father's expectation on his mentally ill son. Yet, what all of these series have in common, and what they certainly share with Pacific Rim is their battles. Evangelion, and its cinematic sequel series, have more than a passing resemblance, with miscellaneous monsters arriving to battle our heroes in city-levelling battles full of carnage and spectacular chaos-think the best bits of disaster movies twinned with a seventy-story wrestling match, and Pacific Rim captures this perfectly.
Every single battle is, in a word, spectacular-the battle in which our hero, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) is introduced, and his brother lost is bruising, an under-dog fight in which Beckett is left injured and piloting his stricken Jaeger, Gypsy Danger until he essentially gets lucky and scores his victory. Eventually drawn back to the Jaeger Program by Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecost, a larger than life performance in which Elba is at once the driving force and heart of the battle against the Kaiju, so Beckett is eventually paired with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), and slowly learns to sync with her in order to be able to fight with her.
With not one but two Kaiju arriving in Hong Kong harbour, the film's best action setpiece unfolds, in which we not only get Gypsy Danger, but three other Jaeger, including the Australian Striker Eureka, whose pilots have a rivalry with Beckett, and a Russian and Chinese Jaeger. Though these characters are broad brushstrokes-hell, the majority of the other Jaeger pilots don't get more than a few lines-each is uniquely designed, and their screentime almost bitter sweetly short, as the destructive power of the kaiju destroys both in short order. Pacific Rim is an almost brutally efficient film in places, and at points it seems to cram an incredible amount into barely two hours, and nowhere is this seen better than in its characters.
Even in the case of our main leads, both are pared down to a number of pitch-perfect scenes in which their bond is formed, Mako's childhood trauma and connection to the man who acts as her saviour, her adoptive father, are explored and Raleigh finds his will to fight and carry on after his brother's death. With these wounds, mental and otherwise The battle of Hong Kong is, and there is no other word for it, pure, unadulterated awesome, from Gypsy Danger beating the ever-loving crap out of a Kaiju with a tanker to the cathartic and equally epic scene in which the mech eventually uses its knife, falling from the sky with Mako's vengeance for her parents full in her mind.
In a strange way, Pacific Rim is a film about loss-the monsters of cinema are almost always, on some level allegory, and in this film, the monsters are, as they are in Hideaki Anno's Evangelion at once physical and symbolic, but where Anno's Angels symbolise the demons of mental health, of loneliness, of social anxiety and emotional attachment, Del Toro's Kaiju are a more direct threat, the murderers of Mako's parents and Raleigh's brother, a very real and very dangerous dragon to defeat and to avenge them by defeating it.
Each Kaiju's defeat is, certainly, cathartic, pitch-perfect, and, with their blue, iridescent blood, strangely beautiful-we feel each defeat, both of our heroes, and of their enemies-even for such a lightweight concept, there is a gravitas-not a seriousness persay, but a meaningfulness to every battle, every moment of action in Pacific Rim. Certainly, this is a film in which memory plays a strong part, and the connection, the neural bridge that allows the two pilots to share the control of the jaeger means diving into the memories of the other person, which the film does to great effect, and eventually, via Charlie Day's memorably frantic Newt, is the key to finding not only the purpose for, but the source of the kaiju attacks.
But what one takes away from Pacific Rim most is that it is a film that unashamedly revels in what it is; for all its surprising eloquence, this is a big dumb beautiful action movie. It aspires to be nothing more, nor less, in its big battles, big gestures-this is a film where Idris Elba, after all, bellows full blast about "CANCELLING THE APOCALYPSE", and one fifth of It's Always Sunny... and one fourth of BBC's Torchwick takes great meaty bites out of their respective roles, not to mention Del Toro stalwart Ron Perlman as Kaiju black marketer Hannibal Chau. And yet, for all its big meatheadedness, it is perhaps one of the most beautiful, and certainly one of the coolest action movies ever made, fromits beautiful use of neons and primary colours and its near-fanboyish excitement perfectly captured in Ramin Djawadi's score, featuring Tom Morello's unmistakable guitar style.
Pacific Rim is that perfect balance of dumb and smart, of big concept and small moments, of world-wide apocacalpyse cancelling, and small scale, and very personal vengance. Far from being the odd one out in Del Toro's nigh peerless ouvre, it feels like a connection, a perfect linkage between Del Toro the cinematic artist, and Del Toro the geek, between the films he makes and the films he loves. Of all of his films, only Pacific Rim feels like the one he'd love to watch as much as he loved to make, a passionate, hand-on-heart homage to everything from giant robot anime to equally giant monster series, a message from the heart, a film for the people who love the monster and the mecha as much as he does.
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