Guillermo Del Toro
Pacific Rim

THE REVIEW

Pacific Rim
(or that time we regretted Michel Bay)

If you're on this page because of cinematic tastes similar to mine, Pacific Rim is a film that needs no introduction. If you don't know anything about me, but you have an internet connection and browse YouTube, Pacific Rim doesn't need an introduction for you either.
Maybe Pacific Rim actually deserves an introduction only for those who have been orbiting the Mir for the last six months. And since I have great respect for those little men with helmets and spacesuits, and who, thanks to space-themed Lego, I wanted so much to be an astronaut as a child, let's spend a few words to tell all the Russians, Americans, and the single Italian in orbit right now what Pacific Rim is.

There are really bad beasts from space sleeping at the bottom of the oceans. One day they wake up, surface, smash everything they find, and sow panic and destruction. Humans don't take this as smoothly as a glass of sambuca, and therefore look for the most spectacular, adventurous, massive, and Hollywood-like solution possible: they build super-duper giant awesome robots able to punch the evil Godzillas, and restore peace and serenity to this odd planet.
So the film begins more or less with an explanation similar to the spoiler I just gave you.

What happens next in the film I’ll avoid telling you, since the plot is ridiculous and if I add just half a line, I might end up spoiling it all.

Now that everyone knows what we’re talking about let's start over:
Pacific Rim.
(or that time we regretted Michael Bay).

Let's not deny it, it was the most popcorn-worthy trailer of the cinematic season. Perhaps of the last three or four years. Perhaps of the last ten. Perhaps ever. Giant Robots Vs. Giant Monster. If you're equipped with testicles and watched cartoons in the '80s, it's the film you've been dreaming about for about thirty years, reviewed and updated in a Post-2000 key.
It's always been there in your head hoping to come out, maybe one day, who knows, you win the lottery and what do you do with that money? I finance a movie about Daltanious for goodness’ sake!
Today you don't need to dream of winning millions, Guillermo del Toro and Warner Bros love you and give you 130 minutes of what you wanted, with terrifying special effects and buildings falling under the weight of giant robots and aliens.
Awesome.
Absolutely awesome, I can't wait to see it, damn it's been out for a week already, let’s move!

Then you see it, leave the cinema and have a face of "Meh". Because let's face it, it's not a bad movie, but damn, alright for high expectations, but what a drag.

Let's go in order: the expectations. They can't help but be sky-high, not so much because Giant Robots vs. Monsters creates an out-of-the-norm anticipation in at least two generations of former children, but because it's directed by Del Toro.
I’m not overly crazy about Del Toro, The Devil’s Backbone was nice, the first Hellboy was terrible, I don’t appreciate Pan’s Labyrinth (but that's maybe my limitation), but I have to say two things about him: the first is that he can honestly and effectively mix art-house films and superblockbusters. The second is that if you give him a superblockbuster that's only meant to be just a superblockbuster, first he makes Hellboy where he screws everything up, then learns from his mistakes and throws out Hellboy The Golden Army, which I don't know how bravely I watched after seeing the first, but I still thank that bunch of friends who said to me: “you can't not watch it, it's beautiful". I still thank them because yes: it's beautiful. Ubiquitous special effects that don’t in the least hinder a captivating story, characters characterized as needed but as the heavens command, pace for sale. It's the blockbuster as it should be. From Hellboy The Golden Army to today, of properly made blockbusters, I might forget some, but only another one comes to mind: Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
In short, while it’s true I’m not this great fan of Del Toro, ever since Hellboy 2, every time I see a trailer for a Michael Bay movie, I think: if Del Toro had done it, I'd watch it.
And Pacific Rim is the perfect Michael Bay movie: action, explosions boom, special effects, explosions kaboom, laser cannons, explosions boom, aliens, explosions boom, impactful speeches, and, some explosions, just because those never hurt.
I see the trailer, think “another stupid thing from little Michael", then the director's name “Del Toro” passes, and I start touching myself compulsively.

Yes, okay, here we are: those were the expectations... But why disappointed?
Disappointed because everything Del Toro knows how to do is missing: build a story and characters, and garnish them with a good dose of rhythm.
If it's true that it was obvious the story could only be a pretext to show Giant Robots punching boom and firing shots at Giant Monsters (boom, motherfucker!), it's also true that there’s more plot in Transformers... Transformers that are by that little fool Michael Bay...
Okay, everyone can make mistakes, but the character development here is totally absent: I’ve heard people complain about the overly stereotyped characters in Avatar (maybe they were right, but thanks for the genius). Okay, compared to the figurines in Pacific Rim, the characters in Avatar seem drawn by Shakespeare.
In Pacific Rim, there’s the protagonist (who plays the protagonist whose relative dies, so he’s all tormented) The protagonist’s co-pilot (who falls in love with the protagonist and is reciprocated by him BUT, Del Toro doesn’t shove a love story inside and this is the biggest point the director manages to score, and for this, I still highly respect him, had it been directed by Bay it would have lasted 40 more minutes and bored us with a syrupy and unwanted love story) then there’s the supreme general who does 3 things: recruits people, looks at everyone with very angry eyes, and makes a speech that should give viewers goosebumps and instead causes yawns (here Bay eats Del Toro’s lunch). Then there's another series of characters all exceptionally curated from an aesthetic point of view, which in the plot serve pretty much no purpose (for those who have seen it: the super-cool Russians on the super-cool paleobot last 3 minutes of shots, they’re the suicide of the film. No?).
Now, all in all, it’s not that one goes to see a film like this for the story or the characters, you might tell me, and I might more than agree. Let’s come to the real sore point of the film: the pace.
I saw this in 3D with five other people, four of them said the exact same thing I did when it ended: “you can’t make a film like this and make me yawn”. It’s not very clear to me why it’s dull, maybe it doesn't help that all the fights or almost all of them are in the middle of the sea at night during a storm, and that there are about 3 colors for 3/4 of the film (because yes: 3/4 of the film are brawls between Robots and Aliens). Maybe instead it’s the almost infinite duration of the fights that make it hard to digest, or maybe, much more simply, it’s boring because giant robots only work for about 30 minutes excluding commercial breaks, preferably serialized.
This last part wasn’t a joke: I’m sick and tired of zombies (never, NEVER would I have thought I’d say such a thing, I sincerely thank showbiz that managed to squeeze to the bone an almost eternal resource... yes eternal, but give it time to recharge for god's sake!). I was saying, I’m sick and tired of zombies. You like putting lots of money behind TV series? Well, make me a TV series with giant robots and aliens, idiots! (idiots you producers, not the aliens).
So to conclude: Pacific Rim is what it says it is: Giant Robots vs Aliens, it's not a bad movie, technically it's beautifully done, but it suffers from that thing capable of ruining even the best works: super high expectations. And if we add that, from a purely narrative standpoint, it’s not ideal... I don’t know how to rate it, I wouldn’t know whether to tell you if it’s worth seeing or not, I definitely know I’ll never watch it again, and maybe I’m left with the doubt that maybe Bay, despite slapping a love story in there, might have been capable of keeping the pace at higher levels (it pains me to say good things about Bay, who poor thing The Island is pretty damn nice. The Island and ENOUGH) Pacific Rim is not bad, but it’s nowhere near what in my head, for 30 years, it should have been.

And standing tall, proud, with legs spread, and the left arm outstretched drawing a circle in the air to end pointing at the forehead: Attaccosolare sons of bitches!

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