Spotlight #02: Pacific Rim

Yeah, as soon as I put the last spotlight up, you knew this was coming.

In truth, I wanted to do this since I saw the movie last year, but I felt like I didn't have an excuse to until last week. That said, let's get into the review a year in the making.

For those of you who don't know, Pacific Rim was a action blockbuster released last year by director Guillermo del Toro, creator of films such as Blade 2, Pan's Labyrinth, and Hellboy. Mr. del Toro, a very visual man, made it very clear that this movie was going to be big. As seen in the trailer above, the only thing you really have to know going into this movie is that the premise consists of giant robots beating the living tar out of giant alien sea monsters. He said specifically that it was supposed to be an homage to Japanese monster movies he saw growing up as a child without direct references to any of them. What we got was probably the best one of them all.

Let's start with the simplest aspects of the movie. In general, the plot doesn't make too much sense. It does have a very B-movie-ish set up, but in a sort of way that recognizes how ridiculously overblown the whole thing is. Despite what other reviewers have said, I actually enjoyed the characters. Mako Maori had a lot of heart put into her writing, Idris Elba murdered the role of the general, and Charlie Day's scientist didn't seem too far out of place as a 'del Toro-ian' comedic relief. Everything in the movie felt like it belonged in the movie.

But, let's face it. Nobody saw this for the characters or dialogue. The entire audience was there for the battle sequences, and boy, did they deliver! The cinematography is eye-popping and adds more layers to the world. Both the Kaiju and the Jaegers have impressive and intimidating designs, and are much easier to tell apart than, say, Michael Bay's Transformers. However, while those aspects do set this film apart, it lends itself much more to the overall immensity of it all. In the behind-the-scenes materials, mister Del Toro constantly referred to his methods of presenting scale in a visual story. which honestly were why they (the battle sequences) succeeded as well as they did.
The first he talked about was camera setting. He expressed the need to make it feel like there was a cameraman to add realism to it. He states that even though sweeping motions through the city and into impossibly tight fixtures would have been cool, it would shout to the audience that the movie was fake. Instead, practical camera angles were given from the ground. When the camera was in the air, it wasn't moving faster than anything around it. Speaking of which, it was also nice to see how much he blended physical sets with computer animation. In a world where blockbusters are normally overflowing with pointless CGI add-ons, (Hobbit, I'm looking at you) it's nice to see old-school methods making their way back to good effect.
He also put a good deal into detail. You can say a model is three hundred feet tall, but no one will believe it until they get a good reference. Sure, you see them trashing tankers and using shipping crates as brass knuckles, but it's everything in those that makes it feel bigger. The textures on the models can be scaled up almost infinitely without blurring or becoming too flat. When Otachi goes through the parking garage, hundreds of detailed cars are sent flying realistically. Gypsy Danger may have large, broad surfaces, he has an amazingly intricate network of gears and pistons underneath. All reinforcing the fact that you can cram more in if you have more space.
The last bit he relates to is motion. It's no secret that big objects move much slower than small objects, so it stands to reason that sky-scraper-sized objects move even slower. It may seem as though that would bring the intensity down, but that's only in the more traditional sense of action film making, in which the general idea is to shove everything into the camera to bring the audience closer to it. Here, it adds more realism- therefore, terror- to the whole situation. Everything now has weight. You can almost feel the things move, and you can taste how much force is thrown into the punches.
Is it a flawed movie in the end? Yes, every one has some. What makes this one shine, though, is how well it manages to get past those flaws to show the audience what they wanted to see and more. It's a little depressing that it didn't do too well state-side because of those issues, but I'm glad that it earned enough over-seas to justify a sequel. It's a fantastic, two-hour piece of eye-candy (sorry, eye protein), and I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a fun time.

All rights belong to Warner Brothers and Legendary Productions.