Thinking of this film in terms of its action, my buddy David astutely described it as, “Voltron vs. Godzilla.” It was essentially giant robots fighting giant monsters (none of which, thankfully, were men in rubber suits). And even though the action was repetitive and overwhelming at times, the sequences provided enough thrills, bombast and suspense to keep the audience intrigued.
Where Director Guillermo Del Toro failed was in giving
the audience a story and characters that they could relate to or care about on any kind of
emotional level. That was disappointing, because he had the perfect plot device
to do so (I’ll try to explain without giving too much of the plot away). It
takes two people/pilots to operate those massive Jaegers and in order to do so,
the pilots must sync up their minds, opening themselves up to one another’s
memories, thoughts, etc. The hero of the film, Raleigh (played by Charlie
Hunnam) is mentally scarred due to a terrifying event that took place the last
time he piloted a Jaeger. His new co-pilot, Mako (played by the beautiful Rinko
Kikuchi) is also scarred due to a past experience with a Jaeger and a Kaiju.
Rather than taking the screen time to show these two building their
relationship and leaning to trust each other in and outside of the Jaeger, Del Toro
forced more fight sequences down the audience’s collective throats and included
a ridiculous sub-plot involving a lame, comedic relief scientist (played with
the utmost annoyance by Charlie Day) who was trying to figure out how the Kaiju
could be stopped. As a result, the budding relationship/romance between Raleigh
and Mako felt forced (as only Hollywood can do) and the ending of the
film lacked the emotional punch that it could have had if the studio had spent
less on CGI and more on a script.
Pacific Rim is a big, loud blast of a summer popcorn flick,
it’s just too bad the story did not match all of that action.
GRADE: C
GRADE: C
