Pacific Rim‘s tagline makes no bones about what this big-box, sci-fi slugfest is about: To Fight Monsters, We Created Monsters. And so it goes for the better part of two hours: metal and bone crunching action featuring colossal, outer-dimensional creatures known as “Kaiju” that rampage across land and sea while their equally gargantuan, manmade adversaries, or “Jaegers,” fight back to save our planet from extinction. Kaiju are your typical mauarauding monsters hellbent on urban destruction, while Jaegars are robotic warriors piloted by a dynamic duo of too-cool-for-school humans. Sound too simple? Unfortunately, it is.
Let’s be honest, no one goes to a 3D special effects blockbuster for the mental challenge. And yet, even a visually driven spectacle can be supported by creative storytelling, compelling sub-plots, and the occasional standout characters. Pacific Rim can be best described as a clumsy mix between Godzilla, Transformers and Avatar that fails to capture the magic of any of these movies. Though formulaic, Avatar‘s narrative arc compellingly moved the story both backwards and forwards, backed by mesmerizing visual imagery. Transformers, meanwhile, successfully balanced action with humor, heroism, and most importantly, Megan Fox, to create the kind of easy-viewing smash-em-up movie that can be watched over and over again. Admittedly, Godzilla was a pretty mediocre film – but so was CGI back when the remake came out in 1998 – and the great leap forward in monster animation, coupled with pop-culture nostalgia managed to hold my attention for the most part.
Pacific Rim does deliver some truly spectacular scenes of monster-on-robot mayhem, and it’s always fun to watch entire city blocks getting crushed under the weight of a perfectly executed reptilian judo flip. Aside from this, however, the movie’s main characters feel very two-dimensional (bordering on annoying), the storyline a little too repetitively predictable, and the attempts at humour downright amateurish (despite the inclusion of Charlie Day, one of my favourite television comedians from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.) Even the special effects aren’t immune to criticism – in some scenes, the action is so zoomed in and so fast paced that it’s practically impossible to tell who’s taking the beating and who’s dishing it out (which is kind of the whole point of this movie.)
Reviewing a movie like Pacific Rim feels a bit like reviewing a fast food restaurant. It would be silly to to expect a gourmet meal, or to earnestly dissect the quality of what’s on offer. Nonetheless, the guilty pleasure of junk food is sometimes enough to overlook the fact that 85% of your meal was deep fried in yesterday’s oil. You might even walk away with a smile on your face. Unfortunately, I didn’t see too many smiles last night.
Many people – myself included – will probably want to see this movie regardless of what the reviews say. Some movies just need to be watched on the big screen, and I can’t imagine watching this on a TV or computer screen. If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to watch it in IMAX 3D. Not only does the screen size add to the breathtaking effects, but IMAX’s 3D glasses seem less annoyingly tinted than those in regular 3D theaters. And let’s be honest – if you’re going to be eating a Big Mac meal, you may as well supersize that sucker.
Pacific Rim releases in theaters in India on Friday, July 12, 2013.