Ring of Fire . . . Or, Pacific Rim Review

So, caveat emptor.  Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's newest and most commercial foray into the summer blockbuster is big, loud, dumb, and fun.  It was everything (literally) I expected, and not much else.  Suspend your disbelief walking in, otherwise it's just going to be irritating.  But once you realize that you're not really there to see something that makes logical sense, it's much more entertaining.  And since your brain has already been partially deactivated, it makes it that much easier to overlook the many plot holes, the abominable acting, the inept plotting, and utter lack of character.

This is a movie about big robots and bigger monsters.  It's a movie about destruction wholesale and not an ounce of emotion, pathos or humor.  Sure, there's some slap-stick, but it's so tied to overworn stereotypes and racial prejudice that it's simply banal.

But it's monsters.  And robots.  But while I enjoyed the fights -- which truly felt visceral -- I was never engaged in the characters, nor did I truly ever feel a sense of danger.  No one I cared about was ever truly in danger; cities, after years of assault by massive kaiju (Japanese for "really big monster") had gotten good at evacuating with little warning -- as a result, human populations were miraculously spared.  And our heroes (such as they are) were so two-dimensional -- no.  Strike that.  It wasn't that they simply lacked depth.  There was no there there.  They were dots on the screen that lacked arc, growth, or any conceivable motivation.  The only character with a hint of story was so maudlin that at times I wondered if she was just really good CG.

But the CG was amazing.  I never felt anything other than belief in the existence of these giant, incomprehensibly walking, fighting robots.  So normally I'd advise against seeing this type of movie, but the spectacle is so extraordinary that it has to be seen in the theater, if it has to be seen at all.  If you like the genre, I'm sure you'll enjoy this celluloidal romp.  If you don't like the genre, you'll probably still enjoy the wanton carnage.  It is the perfect amalgamation of Independence Day and Real Steel, that only demands you watch without a shred of intelligence or reflection.

While this movie has sometimes been advertised as science fiction, and del Toro announced that he wanted to make it a kind of Gothic sci-fi, it is neither Gothic nor science-fiction.  The technological mind-meld that del Toro asserts gives the movie its moral conflict is boring and utterly underutilized as a moral conflict.  Characters jump in and out of one another's minds with such ease that I wondered why it was even a big deal or even part of the story.  In fact, it's so easy to do that a human being can "drift" with a kaiju, demoting this particular McGuffin to irrelevancy.  But the whole movie is a McGuffin -- something which is explained with so much hand-waving that it devolves into farce, or the worst kind of fantasy.  Technology and science are so poorly understood that even a middle-schooler should be offended.  It was the worst kind of pandering.  (My favorite line [After a new Kaiju emerges bearing its own EMP and the functioning robots have been fried because of their digital systems our hero says of his robot]: "It's nuclear.  Analog."  Though, it's not quite as bad as this gem: "Let's do this!  Together!")

This is a moment, I suppose, to reflect on the dumbing down of our entertainment.  There's no reason this movie couldn't have had monsters, robots, plot and a decent character arc with a mediocre plot.  It would have required a director committed to making something other than schlock.  It would have required a half-way decent writer.  It would have required producers and a studio willing to take a risk.  But if The Lone Ranger and John Carter taught us anything, it's that studios are pretty willing to take risks.  So why don't they take the right risks?  Why don't they invest in something that isn't malto-meal for my eyes?

Just a few thoughts.

Bottom line, while I was entertained, it was cheap, mindless entertainment that I can't in good conscious recommend.  But hey, that's what summer movies are for, right? 

For comparison, here's a fan-girl review from Mary Sue that makes me wonder if we were watching the same movie.