Movie Talk: Pacific Rim and the sum of our parts

Pacific Rim! Giant robots fighting giant monsters. What’s not to like? The movie is basically a love letter to anyone who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons ever, or anyone who has ever watched anime.

I went and saw this a couple of weeks ago and I’m still thinking about how much fun it was. We get a lot of things in movies these days–explosions, big greenscreen sets, etc., etc., but sometimes the pure fun and spectacle of it all can get lost in the grimdark, ultraseriousness. Not that there’s anything wrong with grimdark seriousness with the right story.

One of the great things about Pacific Rim is that it never forgets what it is. It embraces being an action movie with a great visual style and a lot of punch (ha-ha, how about that wordplay?)

One of the OTHER great things is that the story in the movie is all about knowing what you are and embracing it, too. The characters are all allowed to just be. There are jerks, people who are stuck up, people who are tough to work with for whatever reason, and the point of the movie is that they all manage to get over themselves at the end of the day and work together. Because working together, they’re infinitely better than being alone. No one has to go through some life lesson about how they need to become a better person. It’s the end of the world and, regardless of baggage, everyone has to come together.

Individuality is given a lot of value in movies and books, generally. In movies like these, you usually have the one person who rises above everything else to save the world, to be the hero. But in Pacific Rim, nothing would happen without the people who come before you, after you, and with you.

It goes without saying (based on the director alone) that the movie has a ton of visual style. Not only does it look cool, but it manages to use the visuals in a way that helps to tell the story. Everything from the design of the robots (Jaegers) to the look of the cities and the world help to build up this world without spending a lot of time handholding and explaining to us. We can infer things based on appearance, and the movie trusts us to do that.

The movie does stumble a little here and there. The first half feels a little disjointed at times, but overall it’s a very smooth experience with an absolutely fantastic pace. And once the action scenes start and that amazing music starts pounding and getting your heart pumping, it’s pretty much impossible to think of anything other than just how cool it is.

Filed under: Life