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.

Mickey Mouse, You're My Only Hope . . . Or, Use the Force, Disney

By Steven McLain

Star Wars VII is in a pretty bad way.  First, J.J. Abrams said he wouldn't do it.  And now, Guillermo del Toro turned it down as well, saying he's way to busy making remakes of classic 80s cartoons.  Word is even Brad Bird won't touch George Lucas's world with a ten-foot pole.  And it makes me wonder just what the heck happened to turn Star Wars from the most critically acclaimed space fantasy of all time, a perennial favorite with viewers and the basis of rabid fan enthusiasm, into something that the best directors of our age don't even want to associate with.  It sort of has the feeling of that popular kid in high school who ten years later got fat and calls you up around midnight to come score chicks with him at the bar. 

I don't actually Episodes I through III on the debacle.  Yeah, they were pretty bad, but they didn't ruin the franchise as much as all those Clone Wars cartoons, licensed action figures and midichlorians did.  I don't want to get too deep into the muck with this, but George took a bold leap with his franchise; and sometimes bold leaps just turn into belly-flops.  The crass commercialization of the franchise, however, sunk it completely (to mix metaphors).  What used to be something original and compelling became just another gimmick to turn a buck--and people caught on.  Especially the people who like to make original and compelling cinema (though del Toro's recent Voltron remake makes me wonder). 

That's beside the point.  The point is that Star Wars isn't a franchise that people want to get behind anymore.  It's too restrictive, too puerile (case in point: Han shot first).  It's too childish (but once more, Peter Jackson seems to be doing okay making childish adaptations of beloved stories).  Regardless.  If Disney want to turn the ship of Star Wars around, they need a serious marketing coup.  They need to address the silliness of the franchise so that it appeals to the hard-core fans, while accruing new fans along the way.  I think they should start pounding out the books again, leverage some of their capital into fan films, or maybe even a series of webisodes that could boost interest and drive sales.  Somehow, Disney has to make us all believe in the Force again.

Pacific Rim Trailer . . . Or, This Is What I Got Instead of At The Mountains Of Madness

Guillermo Del Toro has been hinting that he'd finally put H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" to celluloid (actually, is there any celluloid used in movies anymore?) for a while now.  Most of his movies hint at the darkness that lurks behind our world; both of the Hellboy movies are directly inspired by Lovecraft, and Pan's Labyrinth has the same foreboding sense of another world hidden just out of the corner of your eye.  His work is dark, and ominous, and you have the sense that humanity is small and insignificant compared to the forces arrayed against it.

This is the premise to Pacific Rim.  Monsters have traveled via dimensional gateway to our world and we are incapable of fighting back.  But instead of lying down to die, we find a way to fight back.  And that way?  We built Voltron.  Take a look at the trailer below and try to tell me that instead of At the Mountains of Madness, I didn't get Voltron.  Everything about this movie smacks of ridiculous.  So, uranium-depleted bullets don't pierce monster hide, I get it.  But where does the logic of building giant robots come in?  And then making them anthropomorphic.  We have bombs, currently, that can bore hundreds of feet into solid earth, stone and concrete and you're telling me we had to build a three hundred foot version of Real Steel?  We can bash these transdimensional monsters to a bloody pulp, but we can't drop a tactical nuke on them.  Ridiculous.  Where's Shia LeBeouf when you need him? 

I realize that for every movie I have to suspend my disbelief, but this movie asks too much.

Guillermo.  You've disappointed me.