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I went into this movie with high hopes,
fully knowing I was expecting a lot from a story about giant robots
fighting giant monsters. With a name like Guillermo del Toro's
attached to it, the man who created Pan's Labyrinth and The
Devil's Backbone, there was a chance the material would be
handled with an originality and depth largely considered atypical of
the giant monster movie genre. I've been a fan of Godzilla since I
was old enough to turn on a TV, so you can imagine my anticipation
for a fresh take on a familiar idea.
Pacific Rim, in my opinion, is
the worst movie del Toro has ever made. It's also the dumbest movie
I've seen so far this summer. There was not a single moment, not a
grain of the story or an element of any of the characters that
doesn't appear somewhere else in recent pop culture. It's common to
say that there are no new ideas, which may well be true, but I
didn't think a titanically expensive major studio release with such a
pedigree would be so thoroughly derivative. The giant robots are
nothing more than a retread of Transformers; the monsters
carry parasites on their bodies just like the monster from
Cloverfield; there's a gag involving Ron Perlman's character
taken from Deep Blue Sea; the creature designs are straight
out of Avatar; and to add insult to injury, there's a line
ostentatiously lifted from Star Wars.
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It gets better from there. All of the
dialogue is either uninspired or wincingly bad. The stock characters
live solely in two dimensions, plugged into the story to fulfill the
minimum of narrative requirements. You have geeky, awkward
scientists, a hero with a dark past to live down, a cocky young
upstart with something to prove, an insecure young upstart
with something to prove (and a dark past to live down), a grizzled
veteran without much time left, and monster-fodder. They're
unengaging, hollow, bland, and never once break the bonds of
cliché. Their unrelenting shallowness makes them impossible to care
about, a serious problem when it comes to generating any suspense or
interest during the big monster battles.
Those battles are the primary set
pieces, the main reason the movie exists, and rather than looking
forward to them, I found myself dreading their arrival. I had the
same problem here that I had with the Transformers movies;
computer animation doesn't render depth of field very well, and with
the added inconvenience of all but one fight taking place at night,
in the rain, the action looks like nothing more than big, glowy CG
blobs grappling with abstract geometric shapes. I had to strain my
eyes to make out what was happening. Combine that with the
thundering audio mix, and the effect is unpleasant at best, torturous
at worst, and you get a headache both ways.
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So much in the film comes off as
ridiculous that I have to wonder, did del Toro mean for it to be this
silly? Is it supposed to be a goofy homage to monster movies of the
past? If so, he goes about it the wrong way. What little campiness
there is feels subdued and half-hearted, not nearly gonzo enough to
support such a thin story. Over-the-top humor and satire would have
been an interesting way to go—think Paul Verhoeven directing an
uber-budget Big Man Japan—and would have been more
appropriate for this kind of outrageous subject matter. But I
think—I think—it's all meant to be taken unironically,
making the end result that much more disappointing.
Giant monster movies don't have to be
just for kids. The 2008 South Korean movie The Host is funny,
suspenseful, unconventional and adult, worth seeing more than
once. Apart from the ending, it might be one of the best monster
movies ever made. 2010's Monsters, while it has its issues,
is a unique and grown-up take on the genre. It's possible to do this
kind of thing and do it smart. Guillermo del Toro, of all people,
should have been able to give us something just as good. Instead,
what we have is only slightly less bad than the recent output of
Micheal Bay.
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