![pacific rim movie 2013 pacific rim movie 2013](https://www.alternateending.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/iB0RsWVoOXzicPi2Yy5xmTYMbho.jpg)
But in Pacific Rim the problem is that we already spend far too much time getting to not-know them. Normally, when a film provides characters as underdeveloped as these, the solution is to spend a little more time letting us get to know them. Rounding out the cast are Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a mismatched pair of Kaiju researchers, and Ron Perlman as a black marketeer specializing in Kaiju organs. Raleigh's stiffly upper-lipped boss in the Jaeger program, played by Idris Elba with an uncharacteristic lack of charisma, is Stacker Pentecost (I told you!) and his eventual new co-pilot and budding love interest is Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi, of Babel). In the early going, Raleigh is essentially indistinguishable from his brother/co-pilot Yancy ( Homeland's Diego Klattenhoff), though the film solves this problem by killing the latter off about 10 minutes in. The movie's visual achievements notwithstanding, Pacific Rim's greatest breakthrough may be that it's the first Hollywood blockbuster to sport a title less descriptive of its plot than of its intended market.Ĭharlie Hunnam (of Sons of Anarchy) stars as Generic Caucasian American Hero Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket-yes, I know, but be forewarned that the names only get worse from here. Indeed, almost every element of the film seems designed for a seamless translation to foreign audiences, and while in some areas this is not a bad thing (the international cast, the Hong Kong setting), for the most part the result is a bland narrative appeal to the lowest common denominator. But overall, the plotting is tedious, the characters drab, and the dialogue evidently contrived with the specific intent of losing nothing in the process of dubbing or subtitling. There are a few nice visual moments scattered here and there: a gag involving a Newton's cradle a scene of workers sitting on the girders of the half-constructed Wall that recalls iconic Manhattan skyscraper photos an introductory shot peeking under an umbrella in the rain that's reminiscent of a similar shot in Hellboy. The problem is pretty much everything that takes place in between. Mechagodzilla.) The final half-hour or so of the film is similarly spectacular-more Jaegers fighting more Kaijus-even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of that initial confrontation. Let's begin with the good: Pacific Rim's visual effects are extraordinary, in particular an early Jaeger-Kaiju battle that takes place off the nighttime coast of Anchorage-an irresistibly kinetic and immersive churn of metal sinew and lizard flesh and sea foam. (Let's see: liberal filmmaker, border wall intended to keep out "aliens"-I'll give you one guess how well this works.)
![pacific rim movie 2013 pacific rim movie 2013](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTY3MTI5NjQ4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTU1OTU0OQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Though a few brave robot-jockeys continue to fight the good fight, the program is largely mothballed, with the governments of the world instead investing in the construction of a giant "Wall of Life" intended to keep out the transgalactic interlopers. Within five years, the Jaeger program is all but abandoned. But in 2020, the balance of power shifts as a new and more formidable species of Kaiju surfaces. This arrangement works out nicely for several years, with the implicit contest between Japanese Godzilloids and German engineering consistently favoring the latter. Humankind quickly comes to the conclusion that (tagline alert) to fight monsters, we must create monsters of our own-specifically, towering mechanical men called "Jaegers." (The word is German for "hunter.") Though this "Kaiju"-the term is a genial nod to the Japanese giant-monster movies of the 1950s and '60s-is ultimately defeated by the military, another materializes six months later, and then another, and another. The story begins in the near-future, when an interstellar portal opens up deep in the Pacific Ocean and belches forth a lumbering monstrosity that lays waste to San Francisco. So now that Pacific Rim has landed ashore, which is it? A feebly written special-effects-fest explicitly engineered for the international market? Or a work of next-generation visual imagination? The answer, I fear, is both-though the balance tilts somewhat toward the former. The Loss at the Heart of Guy Fieri’s Entertainment Empire Megan Garber