Pacific Rim: What We Know About the Upcoming Film

As a precocious young boy, I spent a lot of time enacting my wide-scale destruction fantasies. I would construct buildings out of Legos or wood blocks, populate them with all my favorite action figures, and then unleash my dinosaur toys (yes, I was that kid) to wreak havoc. Multi-colored bricks would go flying, plastic arms and legs crushed under lizard feet, and my little mind thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Well, it seems that Guillermo del Toro thought it was a pretty awesome idea too, as he’s bringing all the demolition and giant lizards of my imagination to theaters in the form of his new movie Pacific Rim. Now it’s understandable if you’re not quite sure what the hell I’m talking about.

After all, the trailers and TV spots that have been released look more like footage from a Michael Bay daydream than a film with a cohesive plot and mythology, which it very well may be. This thing looks like a jacked-up mishmash of so many different genres that it’s hard to tell what’s what. So in order to help you decide whether or not to shell out your hard-earned Jacksons, I’ve watched all the Pacific Rim trailers and broken down some of the film’s inspirations. Think of this as the Netflix suggestions in reverse – if you love any of these genres, you’re probably going to get a kick out of Pacific Rim.

The first broad genre that these trailers bring to my mind is the good old-fashioned disaster movie in the style of Bay and Roland Emmerich. Anyone who eats up the mayhem caused by mother nature (or aliens) in movies like Armageddon, 2012, and Independence Day should absolutely get their money’s worth in Pacific Rim. My guess is that either at the beginning of the movie or through flashbacks, we’re going to see a lot of things get blown up, crushed, eaten, and otherwise completely destroyed.

According to the trailers, gigantic otherworldly creatures have crossed into our world through “a portal between dimensions in the Pacific Ocean” and proceed to just ruin our day. Prominent cities like San Francisco and Manila get stepped on by these invaders, with bridges, buildings, and what is sure to be millions and millions of people getting wiped off the face of the earth.

I’m sure the destruction will continue throughout the movie, but my bet is that the bulk of the good stuff is going to come when these big dudes are running unopposed. The wanton carnage we can expect from this version of first contact should put any asteroid/tsunami/earthquake movie that’s come out in the last twenty years to shame.

I’ve seen several sites estimating the cost of the collateral damage caused during the climactic fight at the end of Man of Steel at around $750 billion – considering that many, many more cities will be destroyed around the globe by these creatures, Pacific Rim is going to blow that number out of the water (so to speak).

There’s another sub-genre that Pacific Rim is clearly drawing from, and it’s quite possibly one that I am making up right here on the spot. But I feel confident that at some point in the long and documented history of nerdgasms on the Internet, someone out there has written fan-fiction depicting the ultimate battle between Godzilla and the Transformers, and it inspired the hell out of Guillermo del Toro and fellow Pacific Rim screenwriter Travis Beacham.

A mash-up like that is a fanboy’s dream, and there are some very basic similarities between the concept of a hypothetical “Optimus Prime vs. Mothra” short story and the battles at the center of Pacific Rim.

First and foremost, we clearly have the giant robots, known as “Jaegers,” which is unfortunately most likely a reference to the German word for “hunter,” and not, as I had hoped, a tribute to Jaegermeister, which in my imagination had become the drink of choice in this particular apocalyptic future. There also seem to be Kaiju – the name of the race of ginormous aliens – of all types, including your more standard Godzilla-style lizards and, glimpsed in the trailer, some sort of winged variety that are strong enough to carry the Jaegers around like so many field mice.

Seemingly the only difference between the Jaegers and Autobots is the fact that the former need two human pilots to operate them, as opposed to (at least in the movie universe) getting their power from the sound of Shia LaBeouf whining.

Here’s hoping that he and any version of Matthew Broderick’s scientist character from the god-awful 1998 Godzilla are absent from Pacific Rim, though it’s possible that the “Dr. Newton Geiszler” character played by It’s Always Sunny’s Charlie Day will fill that role (but if he asks for a milk steak at some point in the movie, all will be forgiven). 

I have no everloving clue if Pacific Rim is going to be a watchable movie. It could very well be a hot mess, and I kind of expect it to be, considering Guillermo del Toro’s hit-or-miss directing career and that the other screenwriter is one of the guys responsible for Clash of the Titans. But it’s pretty clear that Pacific Rim is probably not going to pretend to be anything more than all-out balls-to-the-wall spectacle, and that’s OK. I’m pretty sure it’s going to make a zillion dollars this summer, because the Transformers series sure did, and those movies suck.

And let’s all be honest with each other – audiences go nuts for big things hitting bigger things with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, especially if a large portion of that world gets obliterated in the melee.

If Pacific Rim sticks to that, it’s safe to say that if it hasn’t gotten too cynical over the years, the part of me that used to love bashing Legos with toy dinosaurs is going to enjoy the ride.