Pacific Rim

Del Toro brings us something that has been done before. After all, big cities have already been devastated by The Avengers, Transformers, or Superman to the point that falling skyscrapers are becoming a bit of a stereotype. The director tries to add personality to it by providing some pretty clear action scenes, and by not going too far over the edge in terms of visual sweeps. On the other hand, into two hours he didn't cram in a single major character, a real character who could pull carry better than a jaeger pulling a tin can down the street. Idris Elba has charisma but drowns in pathetic speeches, and the rest of the ensemble is severely uninteresting - Ron Perlman is more of an iconic trademark than a functional character. It goes by quickly, but the most important and impressive scene is still the escape of little Mako from the kaiju through the empty street. (07/18/2013)

One of my most anticipated films of the year turned out to be pretty weak! I’d been looking forward to Pacific Rim basically ever since the first reports. A war between giant human-controlled robots and giant sea monsters could be conceived in many ways, but I was hoping for a gritty and dark sci-fi bash with relentless apocalyptic atmosphere and massive and originally conceived battles (the first reports spoke of at least five giant battles, with each being shot in a different way). In short, I was hoping for something like the antithesis to the childish Transformers. If only. Pacific Rim is nothing but a generic popcorn movie for kids with jokes, shallow characters, clichés, and pathos. Even the action scenes don’t have much juice – and there aren’t enough of them (in the first half, the characters are just talking in hangars and it’s insufferable). Del Toro really only aimed for “the bar” – even the design of the monsters and the robots is not amazing. Squandered opportunity. (07/18/2013)

After watching this film, at first I said to myself that it was completely average. But then I went down another star as I thought of a lot of scenes where the logic of it was just too incomprehensible. Pacific Rim is a textbook example of a blockbuster. I don’t blame it for that, I even liked the camera and digital effects that Guillermo del Toro and his crew worked with. But let no one tell me, and now I’m going to spoil a bit, that the best warriors in those robots are brothers who, by coincidence, are on a routine mission in a sea grasped by a monster who immediately takes down one of them. I was also fascinated by how ten years later the other brother is offered to control a robot again and is considered an incredible fighter, which of course the other colleagues do not believe him at all. Plus, not a single actor fully convinced me to like him here, which is quite a fundamental issue, because Guillermo relies on the power of dialogues that do not work here at all in this regard. The only one worth it is Charlie Day as the crazy doctor. The rest is neither funny nor interesting, and the viewer simply cannot connect to them, which is probably the most fundamental stumbling block. It’s not entirely bad, but it failed because of the average actors and a very bland screenplay, which is simplifying so many things that it’s just incredibly obvious. (06/14/2014)

Godzilla meets Transformers. Pacific Rim is the most honest of this summer’s blockbusters, as it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t and avoids narrative feints and overlapping meanings in straightforwardly bringing very clear content to the term “high concept” (Monsters! Robots! And they’re really big!). (With respect to the anticipated hurricane of merchandising, the fetishisation of technology present in the film deserves special analysis – the characters repeatedly marvel at the power and size of the robots as the camera revels in their design in long shots, which are in some ways reminiscent of the presentation of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park). The plot puts us in familiar positions as viewers, as it is composed of popular sci-fi and military motifs (Earth in peril, neural linking, clones, male rivalry, the best defence is offence). All it requires from us is that we somewhat unthinkingly and completely contentedly watch modified versions of Top Gun, Cloverfield, Independence Day and Hellboy (for connoisseurs, there is a bonus in the form of the Blade Runner-esque neo-noir visual aspect of Hong Kong and a rather inappropriate reference to the famous “nose” scene from Chinatown). Given that its marketing campaign made it very clear what it was going to be about (and that it wouldn’t be about much more than that), Pacific Rim’s lack of originality did pose an obstacle to my enjoyment of the pure entertainment that it provided. The predictability of the plot twists and the restricting of the human element (manifested in the hunky actors who, with the exception of Elba, are interchangeable and uncharismatic) to the necessary minimum – after all, the concept of the Jaeger is based on the “transformation” of humans into a multi-ton steel monster (or an analogy for the cooperative playing of action-oriented games) – make room for a visual and visceral action experience. The heavyweight matches are clear and varied to the extent possible, but they are mainly huge. It’s a dream come true for gamers and comic-book fans. Guillermo del Toro plays like a little boy on a grand scale. I enjoyed the film – not intellectually, but intensely – especially because of its imaginativeness and the sensory experience provided by the combination of the film’s incredible visual aspect and its rock soundtrack. 75% (07/12/2013)

Something is creaking here and unfortunately not in that good robotic way. Guillermo del Toro might be playing around with huge action figures, but he forgot to give them a beating heart. Any part of Transformers can have as many mistakes as it wants, and yet it works incomparably better in terms of storytelling or emotion. Surprisingly, various dialogue and narrative clichés pile up here for some time, not all the actors are likable (Charlie Day fails miserably in his role), and all the weight lies on the action scenes. As expected, these work perfectly, and the battle for Hong Kong with the third dimension in the background is intoxicating like nothing I've seen in a long while, but it is still far from enough. Behind every precise hit, there is hesitation, and behind every twist, there is awareness that this is only little boy's dream come true without anything that would also satisfy someone who didn't spend his childhood throwing robots and lizards against the wall in his room. Even the plot twists with some added value, like the black market or the hints of a social crisis, feel slightly contrived. And given that the characters fighting the enemy are just pre-set genre figurines (unfortunately, even the eagerly awaited protagonists Mako and Pentecost), it is quite a disappointing experience despite cautious expectations. The third star is saved by the likable Charlie Hunnam and an appearance by a rejuvenated Daniel Craig, as well as Ron Perlman in the role of Ron Perlman. It particularly pains me, as a person who regularly acknowledges both Hellboy and Hellboy II as possibly the best comic book adaptations, that this blockbuster certainty didn't work out in the end. The perfect visual attraction remained just that: an attraction, not an honest film. (07/11/2013)