Pacific Rim Review: Your Godzilla Is In My Anime...No, Your Anime Is In My Godzilla...

In the near-future, giant monsters (kaiju) spill out of a dimensional rift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and start destroying cities. Mankind fights back by building enormous, humanoid war-machines (jaegers). The jaegers require two pilots who plug their brains into the machines and into each other (through a process called "the Drift"), sharing thoughts and memories. For a while, this works...but more powerful kaiju start to come through the rift and the "Powers-That-Be" decide to replace the jaegers with a big wall along the entire Pacific coastline. Of course, this isn't going to work, but it does provide an excuse to have only four jaegers left for the final series of battles. The head (Idris Elba) of the soon-to-be-demobilized jaeger program wants to drop a massive nuclear bomb into the rift, collapsing the dimensional tunnel. He recruits a burnt out pilot (Charlie Hunnam in full "reluctant hero" mode) to help pilot one of the jaegers. Stuff happens, robots get smashed, kaiju get cut in half, and our hero and heroine (Rinko Kikuchi) save the day, vaporizing the evil aliens who are sending the kaiju to Earth in order to soften us up for conquest. The End.

Most of the characters are one-dimensional archetypes you've seen in a million other movies. Reluctant hero, disagreeable rival, gruff guy-in-charge...it's like watching Sands of Iwo Jima with giant robots. Hey, I'm going to take any opportunity to reference a movie with both John Wayne and John Agar. There is a linear plot that offers no surprises and a story that is very reminiscent of Neon Genesis Evangelion - which is not a surprise, since Pacific Rim is an homage to Godzilla (and other kaiju) movies and anime. Still, Evangelion shows how you can take a similar story and create a rich, challenging plot and three-dimensional characters.

There is an annoying comedic subplot involving a pair of scientists (at least, I think it's suppose to be comedic; I didn't actually laugh at anything in this subplot...but, it has odor of comedy about it) that just eats up time - and exposes the audience to toxic levels of over-acting - that could have been spent developing other, more interesting characters, some clunky exposition (the Drift seems like it is explained every five minutes) and what appear to be dropped plotlines (the biggest one being why the jaeger program is being ended, since the wall being built is easily destroyed; there is a hint of a darker, more conspiratorial story that was dropped in favor of...well, scenery chewing scientist sub-plot).

But, hey, giant robots beating up monsters!

Anyway...the film looks great. The action sequences are well done and memorable. The world that Guillermo del Toro and the rest of the creative team have made is interesting and believable. Some of the acting (particularly scenes between Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi, as well as every moment that Ron Perlman is on-screen) rises above the workmanlike. The sound design and the score by Ramin Djawadi fits the scope of the movie. In short, it is an enjoyable, big-budget, bombastic summer movie...even if there are obvious missed opportunities to have created a more complex, nuanced story with more interesting, well-developed characters.

Still, giant robots beating up enormous monsters...what's not to like?