“Today, we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”
“You want to know one of my favorite films of the twenty-first century? Pacific Rim. Raise your hand if you’ve seen it. [No one raises their hand.] Dude. You gotta check it out. I won’t ruin it, but here’s the set-up: Giant alien dinosaurs come to earth through a portal on the ocean floor. These giant alien dinosaurs kick ass. Now, we are uninterested in them continuing to kick ass, so we create . . . giant robots to kick their asses. Naturally. And then we kick the giant alien dinosaurs’ asses. Until what happens? That’s right. Bigger giant alien dinosaurs come through the portal. End of Act I. It is so dumb! And so good!”
That’s more or less what I sound like at the beginning of every semester of Film Lit as I giddily extol the structural and directorial virtues of this film. (And let’s be real: I got giddy just writing that re-enactment.) (And let’s be even more real: I usually gush about the film more than once in my non-Film Lit classes also.)
Last time we met, I mentioned that “when I thought of films to begin our summer Film Lit Pitches, it just had to be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” The second absolute must-include film for the summer version of The Film Lit Pitch was Pacific Rim.
Why? Let’s start here:
Years ago, but long after we were adults and very long after we met, my beloved friend Matt Sly described me as follows: “The thing you need to know about Mark is, his taste in music and movies stopped evolving in eighth grade.”
That description (clearly) has stuck with me ever since—most likely because, well, touché. I do feel my record shows I can appreciate a complicated and sophisticated film now and then. And yet it remains true that I love big, dumb films as much now as I ever did.
[Historical footnote: I write this post mere hours after I saw—and enjoyed!—Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.]
Here’s the thing: this movie really is a triumph. To me, it is genre-defining. There are a lot of big, dumb monster movies out there. A lot of movies hinge on the same tropes Pacific Rim does: the inexorable end of the world, the insubordinate hero with a tragic backstory, the “I’m bringing you back for one last job,” the heroic sacrifice, among many others. The frame of this movie is not super-original. This one just does what it does better than other films do what they do. It knows what it is, owns what it is, and leans alllllll the way in.
“Haven't you heard, Mr. Becket? The world is coming to an end. So where would you rather die? Here? Or in a Jaeger?”
Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do well. This set-up is extremely simple and juvenile, and yet carries with it a hidden and very high degree of difficulty. If you don’t believe me—and feel like wasting an hour and fifty-one minutes—check out the sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising. It has to be one of the most disappointing sequels in my movie-watching career.
The key difference between the original and the sequel, of course, is that Guillermo del Toro directed the first, but not the second. (He stepped aside to direct The Shape of Water, and was only a producer on Uprising. Given the awards he won for Shape of Water, who can blame him?) And the original is del Toro at his absolute best.
Precisely as long as film structure textbooks say an Act I should be, the extended opening sequence takes us sixteen minutes and thirty-two seconds into the film; and it represents classic del Toro world-building. From the opening definitions, the sequence provides bald—and yet remarkably efficient—exposition accompanied by captivating visuals. (I’ll note here that del Toro displays his mastery of this element of the genre again later, when Raleigh gets a tour of the current state of the Jaeger program. I mean—and I could say this of many scenes in the film—the robot roster run-down is just so fun and cool.)
Three moments in particular from this opening help capture del Toro’s genius. First is the utopian vision of dystopia that the film presents: the Kaiju crisis was the one thing that really did get every country to put aside their differences and work together towards one united goal. (And the remaining Jaeger crews from around the world confirm the lasting nature of these alliances.) Second is the description of the later stage of Kaiju battle, right before our story really begins: Jaegers had become so dominant that “[d]anger became propaganda.”
Taken together, these two moments present serious potential for storytelling. Like, legit mini-series material. What were the negotiations and meetings like that led to this historic unification? How much bad faith and corruption were behind the progression from danger to propaganda? What did the governments of the world know, and when did they know it?
And then there’s the third aforementioned moment: the gratuitous and fun shot of the Kaiju excrement.
That the excrement shot gets about as much screen time as world unification and military-industrial complex propaganda tells us that the world of this film is fleshed out, and its details matter, but they will not bog us down. We’re here to have fun. To take but one other example, he seems to tell the audience, “I know I need to tell you about the drift, but I’m not going to explain it overmuch.”
“Now we have a choice here: we either sit and wait, or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid.”
That is del Toro’s gift, the throughline between all of his great films: endearingly brazen storytelling confidence that also shows respect for the audience’s time. Again, to present a hypothetical paraphrase, his storytelling seems to say the following: “Look. Are you in, or are you out? If you’re in, then get the hell on board, and let’s go. If you’re out, I really don’t care.”
(I’ll say here that you can see this attitude in all its glory in two other of my favorite del Toro films: Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.)
His adorable aesthetic—quirky and instantly identifiable—provides another example of his confidence and willingness to have fun. And so do his action scenes, which are grand and epic and gratuitous and everything you could want out of this genre. I mean, the shot of the Gipsy Danger’s clenched fist just barely tapping the Newton’s Cradle on the desk has made it into my Film Lit class as an example of both an excellent use of the angle up, and a fun example of a close-up. It’s just an awesome sequence.
The Kaiju are giant and weird and seem pretty clearly to be the results of someone who had a good time designing them. And, I must say: I have special respect for the presentation of the robots. They are, by turns, both athletic and clunky. And thus they are wholly believable as technological triumphs that are, after all, still early iterations that leave plenty of potential on the table.
One more thing: I can’t think of a cooler theme song, a perfect big and dumb anthem to the big and dumb movie. I smile every time I hear it, and then wish I could be piloting a Jaeger myself.
“Where’s my goddamn shoe?!?”
See you June 28th, when we discuss Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). (Just in time for the release of the fifth installment of the series.)
P.s. Okay, one more small thing/gripe, just to show that I can turn at least a semi-critical eye to a piece of art I love. I still find it funny that it takes a flying Kaiju dragging the Gipsy Danger into outer space for Mako to mention the existence of and then decide to employ the (admittedly awesome) Jaeger sword. Like, what took so long? Wouldn’t you walk into every fight with that thing already unsheathed?
P.p.s. Apologist Mark wonders if using the sword comes at a serious energy or safety cost.
P.p.p.s. Critical Mark wonders why, if the above is the case, they didn’t just explain that.
P.p.p.p.s. Apologist Mark is already over it. I just wanted to point it out.