Ten Statements About....PACIFIC RIM (2013)

GIANT ROBOTS!

"Today, the apocalypse is cancelled."

1) While Guillermo del Toro not only is clear about this being his version of a kaiju film (it’s not for nothing that the film is dedicated to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda), this owes more to Starship Troopers than any Godzilla film imaginable.  del Toro structures this film as a war movie, with all the military politics and soap operatics that entails in the modern world...and he makes it work.

2) And because it owes a lot, structure-wise, to Starship Troopers, it doesn’t surprise me that del Toro builds its narrative structure firmly on the back of Indris Elba.  Much like Michael Ironside in the previous film, Elba serves as expository device, guiding force and character mirror, giving the entire film a consistent tone it might not otherwise have.  Because he’s a rock in the center of a very chaotic story, Elba grounds the film and leaves the other characters free to have their own little storylines.

3) Thank God that del Toro respects us enough to let the relationship grow naturally between Charlie Hunnam’s Raliegh and Rinko Kinkuchi’s Mako.  Hell, give him credit for making it clear that the two are heading for a romantic relationship without hitting us over the head with it.  The two never even kiss, never say anything that expresses their feelings, yet we know.

4) Considering how much I despised him in Torchwood as Owen Harper, I have to give Burn Gorman a lot of credit--and maybe an apology--after his turn as Dr. Gottleib.  Gorman submerges himself in Gottleib, allowing himself to be used as comic relief while retaining a sort of dignity as a scientist.

GIANT MONSTERS!

5) You wanna know a way to retain a sense of reality for your science fictional world?  Fill your world with character actors who look more or less like real people.  Outside of Elba and Ron Perlman, this is a movie populated by people we may recognize vaguely, but only vaguely.  Since there’s rarely a moment where we stop and go, 'hey, it’s _______’, we’re able to lose ourselves in the world.

6) I respect how del Toro, knowing we’re jonesing for robot vs. kaiju action, never lets us go thirsty for giant creatures beating each other up.  Sure, there are only a few set pieces...but in the spaces in between there’s always something to remind us this is a world under attack by monsters primarily thanks to a series of news reports.

7) Boy, given what he goes through in this film, Ron Perlman must be the best friend ever.  And he also must have the least amount of ego.

...oh, and these guys.

8) It gives me great satisfaction that when the World Leaders believe the Jaeger Program is failing, they end up with a new plan--namely, to quote Centurion, ‘a fucking wall.’  And it gives me greater satisfaction to see how that shakes out.

9)  I have to wonder if there is a way to connect the Pacific Rim universe to the Hellboy universe.  There are strong commonalities in the way the entropic elements work in each adventure, and one could see a comic-book-y ‘unified field theorem’ going on in the mind of comic-book fan del Toro.

10) You’ll notice I haven’t talked much about the actual, you know, robots fighting monsters thing.  That’s because the action sequences kick ass, they’re well thought out, and it’ll feed that primal need we all have to see big honking things roaring and smacking each other around.

Overall...del Toro does it again--finding a way to do something big and shouty that appeals to our younger selves while giving us a degree of nuance you’ll never find in most other big budget blockbusters.

I went to the Atlas again for this, and through the use of strategic bathroom breakage managed to avoid the bulk of the Regal Firstlook (fuck you, Firstlook).  Amongst the trailers I saw were Elysium (the new Neil Blomkamp, who seems to be making a subtle sequel to his District 9 judging from some of the tech on display), Anchorman 2 (I just don’t get why the first was so amazing--I found it stupid and puerile--that it needed a decade-later, inferior looking sequel), Ender’s Game (which looks like it would be the kind of science fiction film I’d want to see if, you know, the person who wrote the original wasn’t a homophobic ass) and Seventh Son (a fantasy movie that bugs me for, at turns, obviously wants to be a franchise and wanting me to buy Julianne Moore as an evil witch/dragon).  We are entering some dark, dark days, my friends.

Ten Statements About....KING KONG ESCAPES! (1967)

"Sometimes, I wanna get you low/yeah. yeah. yeah. like being
stoned..."

"This is Mondo Island, the home of Kong. And in addition to Kong, there are mammoth reptiles living on the island that have long since become extinct on other continents. This island could be called a living museum of the prehistoric age."

1) I know that this is an American/Japanese co-production and that the American half of the money was put up by Rankin-Bass, but damn is it weird hearing main villain Dr. Wu (pronounced 'Who,' so you know the amount of confusion inherent in young Tom when he first watched this movie) sound just like Burgomeister Meisterburger.

2) Boy, if I had to choose between Linda Miller's soppy, whiny Susan and Mie Hama's sultry Madame X, I know who I'd choose to follow.

3) And while we're on the subject of Madame X...I am thoroughly fascinated by how this movie really, really wants to be a spy movie without giving us any details whatsoever. Madame X constantly refers to her country, but never once is said country referenced, even obliquely. There's even this one moment where Rhodes Reason's Carl Nelson rules out a number of countries she can't be from, but is interrupted before revealing which asian nation she does represent. And there's references to Wu's past as a traitor and a criminal with a relationship with Nelson....and yet we never get a sense of what he did.

4) And can we also unequivocally state that Dr. Wu is the single most inept mad scientist ever? He builds Robo-Kong to mine 'element X' without checking to see if the thing is properly insulated against magnetic interference or anything. So he kidnaps the real Kong thinking he'll be able to mine the stuff....except that the glare from the element allows Kong to breaks Wu's hypnotic hold on him. Hell, at one point Wu admits to Madame X the real Kong is better than Robo-Kong! This dude's a total ineffectual tool.

"Of course I am Doctor Who...I stole this cape from Jon
Pertwee himself!"

5) I love how everyone just assumes that Kong is benign, even after the big monkey scoops up Ms. Drippy and starts making faces with his rubber mask. What if, I don't know, Kong decided to eat the woman after picking her up? She'd be more useful in that context....

6) But give this dopey lil' film credit....this thing is paced in such a way that we always get some form of giant monster action before we get bored. Yeah, it might be something like Kong digging in the side of a cave....but hey, Giant Monkey!

7) And since we're on the subject of the Giant Monkey....don't get me wrong; I will always take a man in a suit over a collection of CGI pixels. But watching this beast in the high definition drives home the point that this is one sorry kaiju. The different pieces of the suit don't quite blend together, and the 'concealed' zipper is anything but, as it makes a noticeable raised line in the back.

"Oh, and you should have heard all the puns that Bond putz
would use..."

8) There's a really muddled storyline concerning Susan and Akira Takarada's Jiro. There are intimations that Jiro and Susan are romantically involved, or at least romantically attracted. Hell, Dr. Wu taunts Craig with this fact when he's lowering the temperature of their cell to coerce him into cooperating. And yet, even with all the cues--it's Jiro who saves Susan during the climatic battle between Kong and Robo-Kong, it's Susan who runs into Jiro's arm at a moment's notice--there's this reluctance to pull the trigger. It's as if the Rankin-Bass people were really, really nervouse about the idea of a white woman being an Asian man's girl.

It's even more puzzling given how overt the script plays the attraction of Madame X to Craig....

9) I can't quite accept that the Mei Hama of this film is the same woman who played Kissy Suzuki in You Only Live Twice. Maybe it's because she's acting in her own language, but she's so much more alive and engaging than the mannequin in a white bikini she was in the Bond film.

"Sir!  Rubber Snake off the port bow!"

10) I am utterly fascinated by the way the special effects seem to vary wildly, sometimes from shot to shot. While I can never get past the model-ly goodness of the film, some of the vehicles--especially the rather Thunderbird-esque hovercraft that transports the main trio to and from Mondo Island--are actually quite good, and the destruction scenes in Tokyo are energetic and fun. But then you get that lame-ass fight with the snake in the first act, or the long shots of Robo-Kong on that tower obviously are a toy that's falling off, and the rear projection shots are frequently wince-worthy. Still....

Overall...even with all it's flaws, it's hard to deny that this flick has a dumb energy in its lame spy cliches and crazy concepts. Not necessarily required viewing, but if you want to spend a lazy afternoon and come into it with both eyes open, you may find yourself enjoying this.