I am thoroughly disappointed with the failure of Pacific Rim.
No, I don't belong to that overzealous group of people that had helped the film score an insanely high 8+ rating on imdb within first few days of its release (now it has gone down to a more reasonable 7.8). The online community of the movie fans, even today, have a little bearing on a movie's overall fate. Nevertheless, Pacific Rim is a good film and deserved success.
Many of you might object at the last two words I mentioned above. What is so special about this movie? It doesn't offers a groundbreaking stuff in terms of special effects, story, characters, or even execution.The trailers of the film very clearly outline the basic plot of the film. It's basically giant robots controlled by humans taking on huge monsters. Sounds kiddish, eh? Let me take you back to the year 1996. This year saw the release of Independence Day, a sci-fi disaster film that paved way for special effects laden blockbusters in the disaster genre. We watched with awe as the prominent cities and landmarks of USA (including White House) blew away like a pack of cards. Never before we had watched a realistic looking destruction at such a large scale. For many years afterwards, Independence Day was the yardstick for a visual splendor onscreen. Very soon Hollywood presented before us films like Deep Impact, Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow in which the catastrophe strikes at a global level and we see famous monuments around the world falling victim to it. Of course, for the US studios it was the step in the direction of creating a new market for their films. For us, though, it was a pure delight. As the superhero genre saw resurrection in the early 2000s, they too incorporated heavy spectacle and we began witnessing destruction of cities like New York and Metropolis in more detailed, more gruesome manner. We too had evolved as a viewer and falling skyscrapers or dismantled bridges now hardly elicited an awe if there was no solid logic or purpose behind it.
And then comes Pacific Rim in 2013; a movie with a pretty straightforward plot and hardly any twist. You don't even recognize the lead actors. The first trailer of the film had actually reminded me of a Duck Tales episode in which beagle boys take control of giant robots and move around the city causing destruction. A natural thought was that it was pointless to make a film like this, and spending $190 million on it is nothing short of insanity. But then I saw the name of the director (Guillermo del Toro) and decided to give Pacific Rim a try. It was then that I realized that how pointless my own thoughts were.
As expected, there was little in terms of story, characters, suspense, or even an intriguing backstory. Surprisingly, I didn't complain after the movie had ended. and that is because I had enjoyed most of the two hours of what I had seen on the big screen. I was back in the time seeing a Kaiju creating havoc in Hongkong just like Godzilla made New York its play ground way back in 1998. And perhaps that is what the director Del Toro wanted. He wanted the child within us to enjoy this film. The film derives its strength from refining those sequences which we pass on as kiddish now. It is a quintessential monster cum disaster film that incorporates elements from 50s and 60s as well as 90s and use the latest advancements in technology to make it a visually thrilling experience for all of us. All the fight sequences have a calmness written all over them. You get ample time to savour it, enjoy it. This is what the makers of the film perhaps wanted. For once let's go back to the time when the blockbusters essentially meant entertainment and not served as a source of social commentary like today where even Superman has lost all its fun quotient.
Pacific Rim was indeed a very difficult film to make. The makers succeeded in doing so, but we failed him.
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