'Pacific Rim' — A Rock-Em, Sock-Em Godzilla of a Movie

By Leslie Combemale

Ask any sci-fi fan, they'll likely tell you this past weekend's big movie, "Pacific Rim," was in their top five most-anticipated releases of the year.

Plot: Giant robots fight giant monsters. The world is at stake. Oh, and it's directed by Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy").

Let me get one thing out of the way for the sake of the fanboys and girls. Yes. It is entertaining. Do go see it.

For the rest of you, let me tell you a bit more about why you might want to choose robots fighting monsters in IMAX on a hot July weekend.

["Pacific Rim" is playing at AMC Courthouse Plaza 8. Click here for showtimes in and around Arlington.]

The reason to see this movie is the mind-blowing, beautiful and inventive production design. Guillermo del Toro is known for far broodier and darker movies like "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth."

In creating the look of this movie, del Toro wanted to find influences in art, instead of older monster movies like "Godzilla." He referenced the artist Goya and the art of George Bellow's boxing paintings. As a consequence, there is a warm color palette used in the set decoration that recalls a World War II nostalgia, with its flying aces, airplane hangers and rusted metals. 

There is also a surprising blending of over-populated, "Blade Runner" excess chic with "Alien" minimalism. The nine monsters, or "kaiju," all have aspects of Japanese monster movies as inspiration, but their design is also based in real animal anatomy. The robots, or "jaegers," have a specificity of design as well based on their origins. The American jaeger Gypsy Danger, for example, incorporates elements from New York's famous art deco buildings, while the Russian Cherno Alpha is based on the that country's T-series military tanks.

Del Toro also hired Industrial Light and Magic to create effects for the film. He envisioned an extremely romantic visual quality, which led to highly saturated color palettes in the battle scenes and in the ocean sequences. He used Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" as a reference, wanting to bring colors and movement never before used in underwater technical effects.

The idea for "Pacific Rim" was to bring an idealistic, optimistic crisis story to younger viewers, where they would get a sense of drama, color and action without the darkness often present in intense action blockbusters. Indeed, del Toro delivers a sense of fun without bad taste and lots of action without excessive bloodletting. There is little or no cursing and far less misogyny and testosterone-laden posturing than one might expect from this kind of action flick. There are, however, a few scenes of apocalyptic destruction that might be scary for children of any age, so parents must, as always, use their discretion.

As to its weaknesses, there are characters with backstories and character arcs that are not optimally fleshed out. Also, the script is little concerned with pithy or clever dialogue, staying focused on forward movement to keep the under two-hour running time in check. Don't look for too many memorable quotes. Expect instead various near-future versions of "Let's do this!"  

On the other hand, kudos to the writers for creating several colorful and memorable secondary characters we can enjoy, most notably Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as two mathematician/scientists, and Ron Perlman, a del Toro mainstay, as kaiju black-marketeer Hannibal Chau. Perlman is a hoot, taffying out his scant screen time with another of his over-the-top portrayals.

The leads, Charlie Hunnam ("Sons of Anarchy"), Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel") and the woefully under-utilized Idris Elba ("Prometheus"), all add color and depth to their roles as the jaeger pilots and commander. The casting of these slightly less-recognizable actors puts the story more front and center, but they all perform with aplomb, and make the characters their own.

This is one of those movies that benefits from IMAX and 3D, both of which are used to full advantage. While ILM is no exception to all special effects houses in Hollywood, which seem to make a muddled mess of all closeups in battle scenes, there are still enough mid- and long-range camera shots to clarify which robot is beating up which monster, or vice versa.

About "Pacific Rim," one thing is certain: For anyone who enjoyed Japanese monster movies or played with Rock-em Sock-em Robots as a kid, this is the perfect mashup of two childhood pastimes. For a high-budget action movie featuring monsters, it is more visually beautiful than anyone would have any right to expect. 

For that reason, if ever you had the vaguest curiosity about it, by all means go enjoy this cacophonous pummel-fest, courtesy of the big scaly feet crushing Tokyo in slow motion trapped for many years in Guillermo del Toro's imagination. He has carried all his childhood memories into the present, bringing them together with the best talents in Hollywood. We are all the more entertained for it.

Leslie Combemale, "Cinema Siren," is a movie lover and aficionado in Northern Virginia. Alongside Michael Barry, she owns ArtInsights Animation and Film Art Gallery in Reston Town Center. She has a background in film and art history. She often is invited to present at conventions such as the San Diego Comic Con. In 2013 she will moderate "Legendary Animators of Classic 60s Cartoons" at SDCC. She previously moderated "The Art of the Hollywood Movie Poster" and is a perennial panelist on the Harry Potter Fandom panel. Visit her art gallery online at www.artinsights.com, and see more of her reviews and interviews on www.artinsightsmagazine.com.