Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim (2013)
Legendary Pictures / Double Dare You Productions
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Also discussed: Pacific Rim Uprising (2018).

Reminder: This blog contains plot spoilers, possibly in the main body as well as in the plot summary section. Read on at your own risk!

Just when interest in giant monster movies seemed to be on the wane in Japan, it started to pick up again in America. Cloverfield (2008) presented a new take on the genre, the kaiju movie as found footage. There’d been a fashion for “found footage” genre films since the runaway success of The Blair Witch Project (1999); the Norwegian film Troll Hunter (2010) did something similar a couple of years later with the giant creatures of Nordic folklore. Super 8 (2011) took this to the next narrative level, a film about child characters capturing footage of a gigantic alien creature on a handheld camera but presented as a big-budget family movie in the tradition of Steven Spielberg, co-produced by Spielberg and scripted and directed by JJ Abrams, who’d also been responsible for Cloverfield.

While all this was going on, scriptwriter Travis Beacham and director Guillermo del Toro were developing a film that would combine massive, colourful visual spectacle and slambang action with human (melo)drama. Del Toro was probably best known at this point for the Spanish-set dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and two adaptations of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic book series (2004, 2008), and was a fan of Godzilla and Japanese manga. Beacham, who’d previously been working with del Toro on a cancelled project, came up with the idea of a blockbuster pitting giant robots, with two pilots neurally linked to each other, against giant monsters. Beacham conceived of the multiple-piloted mecha as a way of exploring themes of loss and survivor’s guilt; del Toro latched onto the concept as a vehicle for a simple, positive message about people learning to work together to survive. The project was taken up by Legendary Pictures, who’d recently announced that they’d acquired the licence from Toho to make a new Godzilla movie, of which more next time.

The prologue: In 2013, a creature of no previously known type emerged from “the Breach”, a dimensional portal along a line between two tectonic plates at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and attacked San Francisco. It took six days for the US military to kill the creature, dubbed a Kaiju (from the Japanese word), during which thousands of lives were lost. Six months later, a different Kaiju attacked Manila. More Kaiju followed, each one being given a category number and a nickname. (It’s never clarified who comes up with the names or on what basis – some, like “Knifehead” are bluntly descriptive, but others are less obvious. The category system is also never explained, except that higher numbers are clearly worse. Are they assessed purely on their size? Or maybe on their speed, like severe weather events?) When it became clear that the series of attacks would continue, an international team of scientists and engineers collaborated to create pilotable humanoid machines that could match the size of the Kaiju. Referred to as Jaeger (from the German word for “hunter”), these machines were controlled through a neural interface by an on-board pilot, but because of the extreme mental strain of piloting the Jaeger, the burden was spread across two pilots connected to each other. The Jaegers were able to successfully combat the Kaiju when they appeared, and people grew complacent.

In 2020, brothers Raleigh and Yancy Beckett are deployed from their base in Alaska to stop a category 3 Kaiju in their Jaeger, Gypsy Danger. The Becketts are eligible pilots because of their family bond – the neural linking process, called “the Drift”, requires that the pilots are comfortable and compatible with each other, and the closer the bond, the better. The fight goes worse than expected – the Kaiju dismembers Gypsy Danger and kills Yancy before Raleigh can finish it off. Severely wounded, Raleigh is able to drive Gypsy Danger back to shore but later resigns as a pilot.

In 2025, support for the Jaeger programme is at a low. The frequency of Kaiju attacks is increasing, as is the strength of the Kaiju – category 4 appearances are now commonplace. The Kaiju seem to have learned from their predecessors’ experiences and are routinely destroying Jaegers before themselves being stopped. Unwilling to keep paying for the production of new Jaegers, the governments of the world propose to fund the Jaeger programme for just eight more months while the coasts of Pacific nations are fortified with large walls, following which the Jaegers will be decommissioned. Stacker Pentecost, the Marshall in charge of the programme, is ordered to muster all remaining Jaegers in Hong Kong to hold the line while the walls are constructed.

Construction workers in Alaska, including Raleigh Beckett, are disheartened by a news report from Sydney that a Kaiju took less than an hour to break through the wall already constructed there; it was ultimately defeated by a Jaeger. Pentecost flies into the Alaska construction site in person to recruit Raleigh back into the Jaeger programme. In the “Shatterdome” facility in Hong Kong, Raleigh meets Mako Mori, who has been assessing potential new co-pilots for him, and Drs Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb, a chalk-and-cheese pair of scientists researching the Kaiju. In the Shatterdome’s hangar, only four Jaegers remain: Crimson Typhoon, a larger model piloted by Cantonese triplets; Cherno Alpha, an antiquated model with a head resembling a nuclear reactor that’s piloted by a Russian husband and wife; Striker Eureka, piloted by Australian father and son Hercules and Chuck Hansen, who took down the Kaiju in Sydney; and a refurbished Gypsy Danger.

Pentecost’s plan to end the Kaiju threat is to use Striker Eureka, the fastest of the four Jaegers, to send a massive thermonuclear warhead through the Breach while the other Jaegers provide cover against any nearby Kaiju. The Breach only seems to manifest when Kaiju are coming through it, but the bookish Dr Gottlieb believes the accelerating frequency of incursions will cause the Breach to stay open, allowing Pentecost’s bomb to pass in the other direction and collapse it permanently. The overenthusiastic Dr Geiszler has determined that the outwardly very different Kaiju are all genetically identical, based on his study of recovered organic samples; he has the still-living brain of a Kaiju in a tank and is keen to use Drift technology to mine it for insights into the attackers’ motivations, but Pentecost vetoes that. Regardless, Geiszler experiments behind Pentecost’s back using his own improvised hardware.

The trials to find a new co-pilot for Raleigh take the form of bouts of bōjutsu, as a test of mental as well as physical strength. Raleigh easily defeats the slated candidates and suggests Mako try instead when she criticises him for holding back. Mako herself is eager to fight in a Jaeger because she lost her family to a Kaiju attack. The two prove to be very well matched, but Pentecost is reluctant to allow Mako the opportunity. It will later be revealed that he’s over-protective towards her because he adopted her after the Jaeger he was piloting killed the Kaiju that orphaned her; he’s also on long-term medication, having been irradiated by the power source of his early-generation Jaeger. A Drift test with Raleigh and Mako inside Gypsy Danger is carried out and goes well at first, but when the pair tap into each other’s memories of losing their family, the trauma powers up Gypsy Danger’s weapons systems and the test has to be cut short.

Geiszler tells Pentecost that he’s learned from his experiment that the Kaiju are the bioengineered tools of beings that travel across dimensions, exhausting each world and abandoning it for the next one. The environmental damage caused by human activity has made the world more suitable for their species, so they’ve decided to press their attack now. The Kaiju incursions to date have only been laying the groundwork for the extermination of humanity. Pentecost asks for more information, but Geiszler has burnt out the Kaiju brain he had. Pentecost reveals that, in order to keep the Shatterdome running without the funding it needs, he’s been selling Kaiju remains to a local black market dealer called Hannibal Chau, and directs Geiszler to Chau’s address.

Two category 4 Kaiju emerge simultaneously from the Breach and the three active Jaegers are dispatched to intercept them off the shore of Hong Kong. Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha are very quickly destroyed, while Striker Eureka is immobilised by one of the Kaiju emitting an electromagnetic pulse. The other Kaiju heads inland; Chau suggests that its masters were alerted by Geiszler’s attempt to Drift with what Geiszler believes is a hive mind shared by the Kaiju, and have sent this pair to find him. Kicked out onto the street, Geiszler takes refuge in a public bunker. Raleigh and Mako head out in Gypsy Danger and arrive in time to save Striker Eureka from the EMP-emitting Kaiju. Meanwhile, the other Kaiju has homed in on the bunker Geiszler is hiding in. The people in the bunker are saved when Gypsy Danger draws the Kaiju away and kills it. The surviving pilots are taken back to the Shatterdome and hailed as heroes, while their Jaegers are recovered and quickly repaired in anticipation of their next mission. Chau’s team move in to dissect the Kaiju carcass, but discover that it was pregnant when the child tears its way out and attacks them. The newborn Kaiju swallows Chau before dying of strangulation by its own umbilical cord. Gottlieb, who has been sent to find Geiszler, helps him prepare to Drift with its brain.

Two more category 4 Kaiju are detected, but they remain near the Breach as if waiting for something. Gypsy Danger and Striker Eureka are scrambled once again. Hercules Hansen broke an arm in the last mission and is unable to co-pilot with his son, so Pentecost takes his place even though he’s been told it would be medically too risky for him. With only two Jaegers left, and the rate of Kaiju appearances rising exponentially, this will probably be the last chance to enact his plan to launch a nuclear strike against the Kaiju’s masters. He delivers a rousing pep talk to the pilots and ground crew (the one in which he announces that they’re “cancelling the apocalypse”).

The two Jaegers are launched into the ocean and dive down to the Breach to find the two Kaiju patrolling it. Geiszler and Gottlieb return to the Shatterdome in time to warn the pilots that they’ve discovered, from their recent Drift with the fresh Kaiju brain, that the Breach will only allow passage between the dimensions if it detects Kaiju DNA. Although it looks as though the team could simply drop their bomb into it, the Breach would reject it and send it back – their only chance is to descend into the Breach with a Kaiju. At that moment, a third Kaiju is detected rising from the Breach, the first ever category 5. In the fight that ensues, Gypsy Danger is badly damaged but succeeds in killing one of the Kaiju. The other two Kaiju converge on Striker Eureka, the Jaeger carrying the nuclear payload; Pentecost and Hansen detonate the bomb to buy time for Raleigh and Mako. Gypsy Danger is a sufficiently old model of Jaeger to still have a nuclear power source – it can be used as a backup bomb. Carrying one of the Kaiju, Gypsy Danger launches into the Breach. As the life support systems fail, Raleigh ejects Mako, sets the Jaeger’s reactor to self-destruct and ejects himself before it explodes at the other end of the dimensional passage. The Breach collapses and both Raleigh and Mako are recovered alive.

In a mid-credits scene, a still-living Hannibal Chau cuts his way out of the infant Kaiju’s corpse.

This is without a doubt the best remake of Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) you’ll ever see.

I jest, but the scenes of the Jaegers being airlifted into battle are strangely reminiscent of Mechagodzilla’s 1993 and 2002 film appearances. The similarities end there, though – Pacific Rim is a very slick and clearly expensive film that manages to transcend its pulp aesthetics with some moments of genuine human interest. The writers’ intended themes of dealing with loss and learning to co-operate are evidently there, but it’s also easy to see the intimacy of the Drift as a metaphor for love in various forms. (Well, right up until Stacker Pentecost is required to Drift with Chuck Hansen for plot reasons and the script handwaves away all the technical issues around that.) There’s the sibling love between the Becketts, the parent/child love between the Hansens, Dr Geiszler’s fannish love of the Kaiju, and eventually the romantic love between Raleigh and Mako. This last is clearly indicated but never explicitly spoken – something that sets Pacific Rim apart from the typical Hollywood blockbuster and makes it a little more similar to the Japanese films it’s pastiching.

And that’s the other kind of love that’s on display – del Toro’s love of Japanese pop culture. To the eyes of a hardened fan of kaiju eiga, this film has been made by a director who clearly Gets It. Yes, it’s nice that the characters are a step above baseline cardboard cutouts, but the true purpose of Pacific Rim is to look like a cross between a live action Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) on a massive budget and the Shōwa era Gamera movies if the Daiei special effects team had had access to CGI. (I mean, the Kaiju that kills Yancy Beckett at the start of the film even looks like Guiron (1969) – coincidence?!) Spectacle is what we’re here for, and the film delivers it very well and plenty of it. The Kaiju and Jaegers feel weighty, they have a definite presence, and the design work is eye-catching throughout. There may not be a lot more to Pacific Rim than that – we’re long past the years when kaiju movies can reliably be expected to have something to say about current affairs, and well into the twilight years when the genre largely feeds on itself. But it serves very well as a tribute to its predecessors.

Two things del Toro reportedly wanted to avoid with his movie about huge, destructive pieces of defence hardware were sensationalised scenes of civilian death and any hint of the "military recruitment video” aesthetics that the Transformers movies (2007-present) are so famous for. This may explain why the Jaegers Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha meet such abrupt, unglamorous ends and why the Jaeger/Kaiju battles seem to take place in conveniently deserted cities – both points that might otherwise count against the film. We do at one point see some people in an anti-Kaiju bunker in Hong Kong, which makes some sense of that side of things. I think the only time we see civilians in peril, other than in Mako’s backstory, is in the scene set in 2020 in which Gypsy Danger picks up a fishing vessel in the middle of a fight and shoves it off towards safety – a nice touch. The inner city battles and the use of things like shipping containers as bludgeoning weapons help to sell the scale of the monsters, but it’s always nice to get the human’s-eye view. As far as the lack of militarism goes, it is notable that the Jaeger pilots and ground crew are knocking around in casual clothes and have no rank, but Stacker Pentecost – with his non-military rank of Marshall – does make his first appearance in what appears to be an air force parade jacket with a chest full of medals, and there’s inescapably something of the military academy about the Shatterdome.

Among the cast, I think Idris Elba is the standout as Pentecost, taking what could easily have been a one-note character and giving him some much-needed nuance. At this point in his career, he’d just recently played the god Heimdall in the Marvel movie Thor (2011) and the ship’s captain in Prometheus (2012) and was starring in the long-running TV crime series Luther (2010-19). Rinko Kikuchi, playing Mako, might have been best known at the time for her leading role in the Murakami adaptation Norwegian Wood (2010). British viewers are likely to have spotted Burn Gorman as Dr Gottlieb, not long out of his role as Owen in the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood (2006-08); and Charlie Hunnam in the leading role as Raleigh Beckett, who had played the title role in a film adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby (2002) shortly after his star turn as teenager Nathan in the original Queer As Folk (1999-2000). Hannibal Chau is a lovely character part for Ron Perlman, who had worn the red make-up and prosthetics in del Toro’s Hellboy films (2004, 2008). But the cheekiest bit of casting must be the computer interface for Gypsy Danger, which is voiced by the same artist as the evil computer in the Portal game series.

Pacific Rim didn’t really need a sequel, but it got one anyway in 2018. Pacific Rim: Uprising has its redeeming features. It does a good job at the start of depicting a world that’s survived an apocalypse, with a bored, hedonistic younger generation playing with the leftover parts of the old war machines and the Jaeger defence corps repurposed as an authoritarian police force. The revelation of returning character Dr Geiszler as the villain builds logically on events in the original film. Following his and Dr Gottlieb’s desperate act of communing with a Kaiju brain, he’s become addicted to the experience and is now working on behalf of the would-be invaders, now dubbed “Precursors”. Meanwhile, his expertise has legitimately given him the access he needs to sabotage humanity’s defences. The movie toys with the less frequently seen trope of swarm kaiju in Geiszler’s Kaiju-piloted drones and the physical combination of three Kaiju in the climactic showdown. It’s a good showcase for John Boyega, who had just attained international stardom as one of the leads of the new Star Wars trilogy (2015, 2017, 2019). But for all that, it’s a by-the-numbers sequel and a somewhat hollow experience. Not to mention that, by the time of its release, it was screening in the shadow of Legendary’s new take on the titans of the genre, Godzilla and King Kong.