I know we all wanted a robots versus monsters movie, but we don’t need to accept a mediocre one. In fact, it’s even more imperative we hold out for better. Pacific Rim isn’t good enough for the awesomeness of ideas it promises. We want to support original films coming out in a system that favors remakes, reboots and pre-existing properties, but what’s the point of inventing your own stuff if it just does the same stuff as the other stuff?
My only guess is that in order to make the ultimate robots versus monsters movie, Guillermo del Toro had to shoehorn it into the package of overexplained blockbusters to get the budget he needed. That’s even a reasonable concession, but seriously, if Michael Bay had directed the Pacific Rim script, everyone would hate it. Same script, same polished visual effects, and now it gets a pass.
I’m even going to have to explain some of this plot just to make my own points. Kaiju are giant monsters from another dimension that come from the ocean and destroy cities. That is a nice way to teach American audiences the authentic word for Japanese movie monsters, I’ll give them that. Humans built giant robots called Jaegers to fight the Kaiju, but Jaegers are too much for a single pilot to handle, so two pilots form a Drift and merge minds to pilot the Jaegers together. Interesting mythology. I think we’d all imagine one pilot is fine for a giant robot, but that’s why we’re not screenwriters. The connection between Jaeger pilots doesn’t serve a greater character need than revenge though. You lose your copilot and he’s actually ripped from your brain (he’s also the hero’s brother, which is usually simple enough motivation for revenge and order-disobeying).
I understand the first hour of the movie needs to buy some time because they couldn’t fill the first hour with monster fights. There’s a lot of Jaeger pilots talking and arguing, setting up things we don’t need to know, that don’t even pay off. I’m okay with Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) being the same rogue hero with authority problems and a dead sibling as every other movie has. That’s an archetype, fine. Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) has trouble forming the Drift with Raleigh. That could potentially be an interesting conflict, if our last hope for battling the Kaiju can’t form the basic connection to pilot a Jaeger. But after one failed Drift, then they hook into the Jaeger together just fine. I’m not saying I need a scene where she overcomes her psychological trauma. I’m saying you’re trying to use this traumatic Drift scene to engender sympathy for Mako and I see right through it. We already like her because she’s badass, a strong woman in a bunker full of men, and frankly we’ll take the movie’s word for it that she’s awesome. We’d certainly take Kikuchi’s word for it in her performance alone, without all the talking.
Mako is also thematically connected to Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba)’s non-character moment too. Mako’s traumatic Drift flashback was only serving to reveal a bit of exposition about her connection to Stacker, but that connection is only there to give Stacker a “thing” too. Everyone has to have a thing. Screenplays are substituting “things” for character definition, instead of just letting characters be true to themselves and their nature. I guess Stacker has two “things” but when his second thing is revealed, it’s not a surprise so they shouldn’t be building it as one. Then the decision he makes despite his surprise is just another cliché, so we have clichés motivating other clichés. Clichés can be fine to get us where we need to go, but when they’re asking us to actually care, that suggests either condescension, or they actually believe it matters.
We really can’t forego the pretense of a story, can we? No matter how mundane the story is, they’ve got to shove it in there, and then they’ll actually feel proud they made a movie that wasn’t just a spectacle. Every artist wants to claim there’s a story behind their high concept, but if your story is so generic, just do the spectacle. It’s fine to just do spectacle. It’s more offensive to be told, “Here are these characters you should care about.” It’s greedy really. You had us interested in your monsters vs. robots but you wanted more? It’s us too, though. We demand that all our spectacles have stories and characters, like we can’t consider any alternative mode of storytelling, and then this is what they give us. Del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham have given their characters pre-assigned weaknesses that each take exactly one scene to overcome, or not even a scene. They don’t address Mako’s trauma or Stacker’s overprotective orders. They just stop when they get to the robot monster fights.
But why am I even dealing with this story? I’m saying it’s okay to not have a story! How about some honesty? We’re all agreeing to go see robots versus monsters. Or am I wrong? Would we be ashamed to just go enjoy spectacle? Would haters complain that it didn’t have a plot? With my one vote, my virtual movie ticket (since I rarely end up buying them as I am entrenched in the pre-screening circuit), represented by the review I offer of each film, I hereby give artists permission to break free from the prison of elaborate “mythologies” and contrived character motivations. I’m not saying a spectacle doesn’t have to be artistic. On the contrary, I’m saying it can be more artistic without the same trappings as other screenplays. Everyone is chasing the same story model instead of feeling an alternate mode that may be more appropriate for their particular film. How awesome would it be if Guillermo del Toro made The Thin Red Line with robots and monsters as the war? Really, if this is all you’ve got, I would be okay with just the robots fighting monsters.
Perhaps I would be more forgiving if the spectacle delivered more. All this hollow nonsense is to set up robot/monster battles that are mostly indistinct. Very pretty and elaborately animated, but not very memorable. The Kaiju and Jaegars are magnificent, with detailed textures and water spraying off their bodies. There was certainly a lot of artistry in the detail of background plates that are only seen for three seconds. That’s a lot of work just to make sure every edit features a landscape as dense as the rest of the movie. Yet the only really fun battle is the one in the middle in Hong Kong, mainly because they used props. I remember the props the giant creatures picked up and swung at each other. When one of the props gets stuck between two buildings, that actually gives some personality to the CGI, and that’s the only time it happens. Everything else was just big things slamming each other, like The Hobbit.
So I didn’t hate Pacific Rim. I enjoyed the magnitude of the creatures and the craftsmanship of bringing it to life. I’m just more offended by the mediocrity of it than if it were all the way bad. Right or wrong, there is a lot riding on a non-branded blockbuster sized event movie in Hollywood, and if this is the best we can get, I’d rather see a sequel to something I know that takes an existing property in a creative direction. Look, I’d love to see a masterpiece of narrative storytelling too, but I can no longer stomach the pretense of one.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
