by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright July 2013
The premise of Pacific Rim looked silly -- an endless stream of giant monsters battling desperate Mechwarriors -- but it got some great reviews from my Facebook friends so I gave it a try... Well, I sure got something to write about!
The movie was silly, through and through. Even sillier than I expected. Now the question is: Why have some of my Facebook friends found it so interesting?
I'm going to categorize the silliness, then address the mystery.
o Big doesn't act the same as small. Big breaks a lot more easily because metals and minerals have limited strength. The Mechwarrior concept violates this completely, and so did the monsters. The battles would have made more sense if Mechwarriors and monsters were ant-sized. ...And something new for a monster movie premise!
o Why it took two pilots to run a Mechwarrior made no sense. This was pure plot device.
o Why computers couldn't have run them even better than people was never addressed. This was even more vexing for me as the movie progressed because these pilots never did anything clever. They just smashed. Adding to the yawnfest, the monsters never did anything clever, either. In the older Japanese movies the monsters at least looked different and had different powers.
o Why the Mechwarrior sensors had trouble picking up monsters coming from the back or sides made no sense. This is high tech. Sensors should be a dime a dozen.
o Sending the Mechwarriors to the bottom of the ocean without some extra strength pressure fittings made no sense. And two emergency ejection pods survive this deep sea crushing? And this is the first time we see them used? As I said earlier, this movie would have made a lot more physical sense if these monsters were coming from the bottom of a giant puddle.
o My Goodness, they got from Hong Kong to the center of the Pacific fast!
o At the end of the movie they use the Mechwarriors to nuke the monsters. Why not use missiles to nuke these monsters while far out at sea? Added bonus: missiles don't carry people. Which again brings up the issue of why have Mechwarriors in the first place? They aren't doing anything that properly designed tanks, planes and missiles can't do a hundred times more effectively. They're great if you want to watch mechanical sumo wrestling, but, as this movie demonstrates, that's about it.
o Why do all the monsters and action sequences in a CGI movie look the same? This is advanced animation. This is cartoons on steroids. In theory the variety should be endless! In practice it is monotonous. Suggestion to film makers: If you're making a $100+ million movie, hire two or three animation houses to work on different scenes so you give us viewers a relief from the monotony.
o In this same vein, why did all city battles look the same? Why did these monsters have the same powers? Why were humans having problems dealing with such monotonous monsters?
o Have I seen these characters before? Yes! All of them! Many times! Come on guys! There are nine billion people on earth these days. Can't we get some more variety on the screen?
o Mind melding is linked to stick fighting? ...Ah well.
o The "break the rule" types didn't do anything innovative but fight a monster over a fishing boat instead of a city at the beginning of the movie. Pretty limited.
o The "You dregs of humanity are all we have to solve this problem with." ploy is so tiresome. This time it was even worse because in addition these Mechwarriors were now considered has-been technology for dealing with this problem. Dregs of humanity plus dregs of technology! And as a cherry on top, this plot revelation ended up making no sense, and no difference.
In spite of all of the above problems, this movie wowed many viewers. Why was this so neat for some viewers?
The best I can come up with is that action movies are now high-tech replacements for circus acts. And likewise, the Godzilla-style movies, with a monster coming out of the ocean to smash buildings, and people in the streets pointing at him, and then running frantically to avoid him, must be stroking a common emotion. Which one, I'm not sure, but given how successful the many movies that have employed this theme are, it's powerful.
It's common, but it's not one I feel. For me seeing this gets monotonous.
The silver lining for me is: We now have more stuff to make spoofs of.
-- The End --