Expectation can be a terrible drug to come down from. With only the tiniest bits of information and foreknowledge, one can allow oneself to be intoxicated on the rush of expectation that comes from approaching a new film, especially one with a dynamite premise from a beloved filmmaker. The rush of the anticipation leading up to those first frames, and the seemingly fulfilling opening moments to follow, can bring an audience member a kind of moment immeasurable joy, creating a wave of euphoria that crests, breaks, and then rolls back the longer the film goes on, leaving behind only the flinty bedrock of a single thought: This is all there is.
This may seem an odd complaint to level against a film such as Pacific Rim. After all, the trailers and marketing for this film promised two things – monsters and robots, and the epic battle between the two – and in that literal sense the film delivers. During the course of two hours there are indeed giant monsters, and giant robots, and we do get to see them engaged in city-flattening brawls. So what is the problem? Why, if this film gave me the only two things it told me I would get, did I feel so deflated and underwhelmed and disappointed?
Because Pacific Rim could have done more. It may not seem fair of me to allow my hopes for what could have been to so greatly affect my estimation of what is, but look at what raw materials we had to work with. The plot alone is enough to get one’s inner six-year-old positively rabid with excitement.
Years after the first of the Kaiju – building-sized inter-dimensional monsters – broke through a rift at the bottom of the ocean, mankind has turned the killing of the monsters into a propaganda stunt thanks to the creation of the Jaegers, impossibly large robots so complex they have to be controlled by two pilots in a “neural bridge” that lets them share memories and thoughts. Pilots became rock stars, Kaiju became curiosities, and all seemed well. Now, though, the Kaiju are becoming more resilient, their appearances more frequent, and their threat much larger.
At the behest of Commander Pentecost (Idris Elba), disgraced Jaeger pilot Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) must join a coalition of the remaining Jaeger pilots for one last bold assault on the source of the Kaiju threat, while at the same time navigating his own troubled past, and forging a bond with his new co-pilot, Mako (Rinku Kikuchi).
A mid-summer action film with this premise, bursting with entertaining and capable character actors, ramped up with big-budget special effects, and helmed by one of the most inventive and heartfelt genre directors currently working (Guillermo del Toro) should be a home run. It should have been big, it should have been bold, it should have been special. It should have been more than the dull, faint, repeating echo of its premise.
Blame the genesis of my disappointment on Guillermo del Toro. From his intimate work in Pan’s Labyrinth to his bombastic romp through Hellboy to his mastery of dread-filled tone in Mimic, del Toro has proven that he not only has an eye for stunning visuals in terms of creature design and composition, but that he is also able to keep a firm handle on the human core of even his nonhuman characters. Yet the characters in this film are stock and static, seemingly born with substandard action film clichés coded into their DNA.
These characters begin on a note, and continue to pound that note in the slight hope that their monotone could be mistaken for character consistency. Their place in the narrative is delineated in bold exposition delivered in staggeringly firm declarative sentences that echo in the metal-hulled halls of various factories and hangars. The rival openly states his disdain for the hero; the hero openly states his affection for the girl; the lab techs bicker over who is more adept at predicting the peril about to befall the world; et cetera. They feel things we are given no baseline to expect, but helpfully say their feelings aloud. They do things seemingly on a whim, and then helpfully explain not only their purpose in doing these things, but the outcome of the thing they did.
In the world of Pacific Rim, explanation takes the place of reason.
Maybe none of this would truly matter if the film didn’t spend so much time trying to convince the audience that these were people worth caring about. Raleigh and Mako talk openly about their special connection, but they do so almost immediately, giving us no time to see it before we are told to expect it. Elba’s Pentecost is a fun throwback to the no-nonsense leaders of old, but he only seems to want to obfuscate his past so that he can reveal it at the most dramatically relevant time.
All of this stagnant character work could be forgiven if the promised fights had any kind of dynamism or intelligence to them, but they don’t. There is never any sense of the flow of the battle, of the tide turning, of the opponents engaging in a dance of death that will leave one of them felled. They are just two dumb foes brutally pummeling one another until the plot dictates that one of them die, at which point one of them does. The bulk of the full-length battles we see occur in close up, shot in darkness, often in the rain or in hip-deep water. This robs the film of any sense of scale or magnitude, sapping the awe and wonder out of what should be a euphoric, otherworldly experience.
There is no joy in having to level these criticisms against a movie like Pacific Rim, a film I was eagerly anticipating despite my lackluster response to all but the most recent marketing materials. I expected the one of a kind wonder that del Toro so often delivers on the screen, combined with the scale and visceral thrill that the plot could provide. I expected the melding of horror and humor so singular to him, not the soulless and ultimately monotonous spectacle actually delivered.
As I said, expectation can be a terrible drug to come down from, and so to anyone who might still be thinking of courting Pacific Rim, all I can say is this – keep those expectations low, or the crash is going to hurt more than the meager rush can assuage.
Pacific Rim opens on Friday, July 12th.