Viewed in
2013
Formats
IMAX 3D
Premise
Guillermo del Toro's epic tale of humans using giant robots to fight giant monsters.
Loved
IMAX 3D, Ron Perlman.
Liked
Likable cast, characters worth caring about, oddball sense of humor, joy of filmmaking.
Thoughts
Beforehand I gave it a hard time because it looked a lot like a live-action ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion. While that was still somewhat true, I was extremely happy with what I saw onscreen.
The IMAX 3D was fantastic. Cinemablend's 3D review was completely wrong. Unless they saw a poor non-IMAX version of it. The 3D did a great job of accentuating the sense of scale and size of gargantuan monsters wrecking things, eating people, and doing all sorts of epic fighting. I definitely felt like I was in the thick of things, with great attention to detail artistically and technically. Throughout all the numerous nighttime, rainy, underwater fights, it was never murky, always crisp imagery in all three dimensions. Kudos to director Guillermo del Toro for indulging us in lots of slow-motion shots to understand the action and appreciate the countless digital artists.
Another great thing about this film was the human characters. Obviously, a lot of them still followed certain tropes, but they were all fleshed out, easy to distinguish, and charming. I was really unsure when the first ten minutes was pure exposition about how the fight between humans and Kaijus began, but all that actually just paved way so the story could take the time to build these characters, give them well-done backstories, and interesting subplots/interactions. Basically, the movie said "this is our universe, how it came to be isn't important, what's important are these handful of humans trying to do the right thing." So when it came to the physics-challenging climax, all I cared about was the characters and hoping they succeed and survive the devastation. I was not expecting any emotional punch at the end, so thumbs up to the film makers for making the payoffs worth it.
Charlie Hunnam was convincing and likable as the straight lead, who easily could've been a stiff. Rinko Kikuchi was pretty charming, and her accent didn't get in the way. Naturally Idris Elba was badass, although I'm afraid Bill Pullman's speech was still better than Elba's "canceling the apocalypse" rally. Clifton Collins Jr. was brilliant, channeling young Steve Buscemi. But the scene stealers belonged to Charlie Day and fan-fave Ron Perlman. I was not a fan of Day after suffering through his wailing of a voice in Horrible Bosses, but here it was dialed down and his nerdy antics were absolutely winning. As for Perlman, holy crap. His entrance about halfway in took the movie's sneaky humor to a whole new level as a gold-encrusted, sailor-mouthed crime boss.
Speaking of humor, even though the movie was full of death, destruction, world-ending intensity, del Toro found a way to give it an unexpected dosage of levity throughout, adding to the humanity of the characters and alleviating us of the cynical/overly-serious aura from the recent rash of blockbusters. Not all the offbeat gags worked, like the cheesy Newton's cradle shot, but I laughed out loud numerous times, even in scenes not involving Day or Perlman. There was sense of film-making joy from del Toro that was really reminiscent of young Tim Burton.
Some nitpicks: Ramin Djawadi's rock-n-roll score felt incongruous to the action and tone, as if his Iron Man score hijacked the theme, some of the action shots were too chaotic to see what was going on, and I would've liked to see more of Hunnam and Kikuchi's arcs. Hunnam's brother's backstory was interesting but never felt like a struggle for him, and Kikuchi's leap from rookie-level to what she was at the end felt too sudden.
Lastly, my nitpick would be comparing it to Evangelion and other anime/Kaiju tropes. The tropes were still there for the most part, and those familiar with that series or other mecha stories probably won't find too much creativity in the genre. There's many reasons why they probably didn't/wouldn't/couldn't do a live action version of ridiculously-ambitious/mildly-disturbing/very-confusing anime of the mid 1990's, but part of me still wished for it. Nevertheless, there was enough creativity such as the dual-pilot idea to make it feel less of a ripoff.
Overall, even when I saw things coming, del Toro's visual enthusiasm, the actor's performances, the digital wizardry, or the thoughtful writing would always come through to make Pacific Rim a surprisingly/sometimes-darkly fun big-budget, CGI-laden, destruction-oriented 3D summer movie.
