Pacific Rim: Exactly As it Should Be

When we last left writer/director/eternal man-child Guillermo del Toro, he was exploding our retinas at the sake of a worthwhile narrative with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Between then and now he played a part in bloating The Hobbit, helped bring a few young filmmakers' projects to life (Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Mama), saw his "At the Mountains of Madness" adaptation collapse, and produced 1000 films while planning to produce 10,000 more.

Despite the fact that he's operating at pace causing cokeheads to stand up and take notice, del Toro has apparently still found sufficient down time to dig through his DVD shelves in The Bleak House and be inspired enough by old episodes of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "The Vision of Escaflowne" for another film.

That film, Pacific Rim, is a re-confirmation (as though anyone needed to be reminded) that Guillermo del Toro is the kind of filmmaker many of us either wish we could be or wish we could see more of: the unabashed fanboy who embraces his child-like imagination, wants to have fun with his films and, the best part of it all, has the ability to pull it off in a quality manner. In this day and age of tent-pole franchises and pre-established properties, there are very few filmmakers who would think, "wouldn't it be cool to see giant robots fight giant inter-dimensional aliens?" and be able to get that thought translated into a feature.

Luckily for us, del Toro is one of those filmmakers and even more luckilier, he tackles the task gleefully. Pacific Rim is chock full o' scenes in which giant robots, called Jaegers, which are co-piloted by a pair of humans neurally synced to their machines and each other through a process dubbed "drifting," beat the shit out of and have the shit beaten out of them by giant aliens, called Kaiju, which have entered our reality through a dimensional rift in the Pacific Ocean in a largely successful attempt to play Godzillain major cities across the world.

In between scenes of Jaegers using ocean freighters for batting practice against Kaijus' heads, del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham attempt to tell a story of earth's last line of defense consisting of characters with names like Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), Herc Hansen (Max Martini) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). All of these characters have a past battling the Kaiju, scars that have carried through to the present day blah blah blah.

Look, if you're watching Pacific Rim, it's probably because you want to see the guy who envisioned The Troll Market and lives in The Bleak House stage battles between mammoths in the streets of earth's metropolises. Those thrill seekers will not be disappointed with Pacific Rim, which is the exciting, visual adrenaline rush of massive scale that has so far escaped the summer movie going audience.

Lacking the self-seriousness of Man of Steel, the absurdity of White House Down and the tonal schizophrenia of The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim knows what you're there to see and it delivers it superbly with visually impressive CGI battles that are easy to follow, quickly paced and perpetually reminding viewers of both their narrative stakes and physical scale. Del Toro has always hinted at forces and universes larger than our own in his past films—the Ogdru Jahad in Hellboy, the King and Queen of the underworld in Pan's Labyrinth—and with two universes intersecting in Pacific Rim, the director skimps on the close-ups and gorges on extreme wide shots to emphasize man's seeming insignificance, which contributes emotion, awe and scope in ways that the obvious Act I exposition and leading man Charlie Hunnam's questionable acting fail to do.

Even with all that, the best aspect of Pacific Rim is that the whole thing is an inherent snub to the gimmick of 3D. Del Toro has admitted that he didn't want to shoot the film in that awful, studio-enforced novelty, and viewers unwise enough to have decided to take in the film while bespectacled will miss a great deal of detail and immersion during the CG fight scenes, which are almost entirely nocturnal, due to the post-conversion darkness. It's a shame because those unfortunate viewers will have missed out on the most fun summer movie so far.