Pacific Rim: Guillermo del Toro’s Revenge!
Pacific Rim, the new film by Guillermo del Toro, is very loud and silly and we enjoyed it. We like to think of it as Guillermo’s Revenge, and as the movie got louder and sillier we made up this litany in the voice of Guillermo del Toro.
“You didn’t hire me to make Alien Resurrection, so here’s a bunch of vicious aliens!
“You didn’t hire me to make Transformers, so here’s a bunch of giant robots!
“You didn’t hire me to make Avengers, so here’s a portal between worlds!
“You didn’t hire me to make Godzilla, so here are giant beasts laying waste to an Asian city!
“You didn’t hire me to make Battleship, which is just as well because that was idiotic, but here’s a horde of monsters coming from the bottom of the sea!
“You’re not hiring me to remake Top Gun, so here’s a reenactment of Maverick vs. Ice Man!
“You didn’t hire me to make King Kong, so here’s a monster rampaging through the streets of a big city! (Hmmm, Del Toro was supposed to direct The Hobbit until his falling out with Peter Jackson, who remade King Kong.)
“You never made a live-action version of Voltes V, so let’s volt in! (Stop that. There’ll be no singing of that theme ever again.)
“Let’s set it in the Pacific Rim to get that lucrative Asian market. And let’s mention Manila because the audience in Manila will cheer when they hear “Manila”! (And we did! Hey, we clapped during Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy’s plane flew over the Philippines on a map.)”
Of course he got a five-rating from some of us five minutes into the movie, when we are introduced to Charlie Hunnam and his abs. That’s it, we have to watch Sons of Anarchy. In the near future the earth comes under attack from Kaiju, monsters rising from the deep, and the earthlings defend themselves by building huge robot fighters called Jaegers. (Every time someone said jaeger we thought we were required to take a shot.)
Jaegers are operated by pairs of muscular gesture gamers (not exactly, but sort of). The neural interface requires the pilots to do a kind of mind-meld called “the drift” which requires them to get in each other’s heads. But the monsters get smarter, the jaegers are defeated, and before long the fate of the planet rests on a motley band of fighters led by Stringer Bell from The Wire and featuring Rinko Kikuchi and cast members of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, True Blood, Homeland and The Unit. Go earth! (Now that Hollywood really needs the Asian market to guarantee profitability, we can expect more Asian faces in blockbuster movies. That’s why there are Asians and Anglo-Africans in Thor’s Asgard.)
Idris Elba shouts, speechifies, and gives probably the hammiest performance of his life, but by default (No one else says anything memorable) he is the star of the film. And we like Charlie Day, more so when he’s the resident geek/kaiju groupie.
One of our friends would not get into the spirit of the movie and kept questioning the logic of building giant robots to fight the monsters. Fine, they’re not efficient. Okay, they’re kind of dumb. Here’s a serious question: If you were the President of Earth and hordes of monsters attacked human populations, how would you fight the monsters? Apart from sending fighter jets with nuclear warheads. Any ideas?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 15th, 2013 at 06:31
Why not…build GUNDAMS instead? Or even EVA-units in Neon Genesis Evangeleon?
July 15th, 2013 at 08:29
there’s MIB as well, when the blackmarket dude got swallowed by the alien and got his way out
July 15th, 2013 at 11:17
I loved Pacific Rim!
I did think that its makers MUST do Voltes V and Daimos. That’s no longer an impossible dream with this one, especially given that the control of the mechas here is pretty much Daimos-esque… thank goodness Rinko did not do a “Reeeechard” with Charlie Hunnam but rather kicked butt with him.
The entire thing was Voltes V-esque as well. Idris may as well have been Dr. Smith (or Prof. Hook) manning Camp Big Falcon. Daddy issues with the Aussie guy can be analogous to the Armstrong brothers and their dad. Rinko may as well have been Jamie Robinson (making Idris also somewhat of a Gen. Robinson analogue… especially given the general’s fate in the TV series).
I half-expected horned or winged aliens on the other side of that portal.
I just wish that when Gipsy took out the sword, the slice/dice woud’ve been in a V shape as an homage.
Of course, we don’t know Del Toro would even have known about Voltes V, but hey, wishful thinking never hurt anyone.
July 15th, 2013 at 11:19
Oh, and yey for Charlie Hunnam’s abs. I’ve always had a thing for him from waaay back when he was in the original UK Queer as Folk (boy was he young then, but then again, so was I). I must rewatch that now.
July 15th, 2013 at 12:12
Oh, Independence Day is also there. Idris’ speech about cancelling the Apocalypse sounded and felt a lot alike US Prez (Bill Pullman) speech before the big fight (“… We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day! “).
This movie gave me a lot of deja vu moments.
July 15th, 2013 at 12:56
Jaegers. (Every time someone said jaeger we thought we were required to take a shot.) – Same here!
July 15th, 2013 at 13:47
I personally have a fondness for huge energy weapons. Ion cannons from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.
July 15th, 2013 at 15:36
I love this movie. And I love Ramin Djawadi’s score. It felt like all the actions scenes from all the anime that I watched when I was a kid was going to happen.
July 15th, 2013 at 18:41
If I remember the original Macross, they were able to stop the war w the aliens using the power of song!
As the chief (and cheap) exporter of singers worldwide I propose we hold a global nonstop karaoke-fest (just don’t allow anyone to sing My Way) to create a sonic force field and drive these kaiju away. If they end up dancing to the music then we’ll keep singing (lord knows almost any Pinoy can be goaded into taking up a karaoke mic w enough encouragement) until they drop dead of exhaustion!
July 15th, 2013 at 18:47
greeneggsnham: Like Mars Attacks! where the earthlings discover that
the music of Tom Jonessome music causes the aliens’ heads to explode.A karaoke-thon might not just repel the kaiju, but cause them to commit suicide. Very efficient.
July 15th, 2013 at 21:31
Ahhh yes Mars Attacks, where Sarah Jessica Parker was rightfully turned into a dog! :p
July 16th, 2013 at 06:52
Here’s one thought that was slightly sobering and dark that was pointed out to me by an internet acquaintance about the situation in the Shatterdome: it’s that the facility was created because the humans lost every other land mass in the Pacific Rim to the Kaiju. No more Tokyo, no more Manila, no more Sydney, etc. It’s also entirely possible that just because that bridge collapsed doesn’t mean it’s over. They could as well open another portal and keep invading–and there’s nothing but half-constructed walls to repel Them. A sequel would really be dark.
July 16th, 2013 at 07:54
Tom Jones was in Mars Attacks but it wasn’t his song that killed the Martians. It was Indian Love Call by Slim Whitman.
July 16th, 2013 at 14:29
Yes, but who plays Lynn Minmay? Ooh, Lady Gaga! She’s basically an alien already, having apparently hatched from an egg.
July 16th, 2013 at 16:06
@volume-addict: I’m not sure it was necessarily implied that every other land mass in the Pacific Rim was lost to the Kaiju.
We saw Sydney being attacked, but it was foiled by Striker Eureka. There was definite massive damage, but I don’t think it was lost.
Same with Manila – we did see that it was contaminated by that massive poop, but I don’t think it was wiped out of existence (since we still saw footage of the place).
As an aside, I’m not sure the writers did their geography well. If the Kaiju were coming from the Pacific, then Manila is not likely to be the first target in the Philippines as it does not face the Pacific Ocean. Samar, Leyte, Bicol, Quezon, etc. would have been hit first – not unless the monster did go through Quezon and Rizal before ending up in Manila, which is possible but unlikely. I suspect writers just went the “capital” syndrome with the Philippines, wherein they assumed the more famous capital would automatically be the target.
(Hong Kong also seems much too “farther in” already, but I can buy it since the Kaijus were honing in specifically on Newt.)
As for the sequel, they’re already working on it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2557478/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Meanwhile, “Mars Attacks?” One of my faves! Hilarious as hell. Now I have to re-watch it again.
July 16th, 2013 at 22:24
allancarreon: Budjette says that in one of Del Toro’s interviews he mentions Filipino monsters. Should we prepare for aswang with two mouths? Ron Perlman as a kapre? (We can see it, minimal prosthetics.)
Shouldn’t Guillermo get back to work on At The Mountains of Madness, though? Supposedly it’s the movie he really wants to make.
July 17th, 2013 at 03:29
Jessica: really? Okay, now I have to find that interview! And maybe the manananggal can have ties to that winged Kaiju in the movie. Ron Perlman as a kapre – I will pay money to see that.
“At The Mountains of Madness.” Another I would pay good money to see if Guillermo does it. I think only he and Joss Whedon could do H.P. Lovecraft any justice. I’m not sure there has been any high-profile Cthulhu film; if not, then there should be one. These two should collaborate on anything Lovecraftian.
July 17th, 2013 at 21:22
i love the mad scientists! (a horrifying thought: i will be utterly useless in apocalpyse scenarios! i’ll just volunteer as head screamer in case all the alarms malfunction!)
loved the bit of Tiktik deja vu there…
at sabi ni seatmate, hanlaki naman ng golden shoe ni hellboy! parang barko!
yup, i really enjoyed this movie :D
July 17th, 2013 at 22:42
Since the setting is Japan-based, hmmm,, why not call the hero of Japan…Son Goku of Dragonballz?
Son Goku seems to be conniving with immortality via the dragon balls.
Parang siya lang ang may “balls” na kayang lumaban sa mga kaiju na ito.