Can Pacific Rim Save the Summer?
By Dan Zinski
This has been a pretty crappy summer movie season so far. I mean let’s face it. What has been the signature great summer movie? Where is this summer’s Dark Knight or Dark Knight Rises or Inception? Hey, I just realized those are all Christopher Nolan movies. IS THERE NO ONE OUT THERE BESIDES CHRISTOPHER NOLAN WHO KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A DECENT SUMMER MOVIE?
Making a great summer movie is obviously very hard. Even Christopher Nolan doesn’t always pull it off. He produced Man of Steel. And Man of Steel is no one’s idea of a great summer movie. Maybe hiring the guy who screwed up The Watchmen and inflicted that absurd piece of crap Sucker Punch on the world wasn’t such a great idea after all? Chris?
What about the other candidates? Star Trek: Into Darkness? Not horrible but also far from great. Sure there’s some nice action but the movie also has many flaws. Chris Pine is just not a compelling Kirk. He’s DiCaprio with a coke hangover. And I’m sorry but I’m just not buying the nostalgia trip. I appreciate that you only want to bring me back to my childhood by staging the movie’s big emotional scene as a shot-for-shot re-do of the big emotional scene from Wrath of Khan but OH MY GOD COULD YOU PLEASE JUST FORGET ABOUT NOSTALGIA AND MAKE SOMETHING NEW THAT CAN STAND BY ITSELF FOR FRIG SAKE?
In case you didn’t notice I am bent out of shape by the nostalgia thing. I think it’s hack and I think it’s pandering. It’s inexcusable with a property like Star Trek. You have this big rich gigantic universe to draw from and you resort to rehashing old stories? How about use a little imagination and conjure something original that will excite us? I guess J.J. Abrams isn’t about originality. I weep for Star Wars.
Other movies we might nominate for Movie of the Summer? I’m not seeing too many viable candidates. World War Z is meat-and-potatoes action. The Lone Ranger is a total disaster that should be forgotten as soon as possible. Fast and Furious 6? Don’t make me laugh. No movie with “6” in the title can possibly be the best of anything. No movie with Vin Diesel can possibly be the best of anything. Which reminds me, HOLY CRAP THERE’S ANOTHER RIDDICK MOVIE COMING OUT.
Tell me God, what did we do to piss you off? Was it the whole worshipping golden calves thing? Can we push the reset button on that?
My point here is simple: there has been no signature summer movie so far in 2013. There have been some successful movies. There have been some flops. There have been some decent flicks and some bad flicks. But there has been nothing to really capture the imagination of film-goers. Nothing that we will still be discussing ten years from now. No definitive awesome Dark Knight-level game-changing blockbuster.
Of course there is still a little bit of summer left. There’s a whole slate of movies still coming up and maybe just maybe one of them will leap out and claim the prize. This week you have one movie getting tons of buzz, one movie that might have a legit shot at being THE summer movie of 2013. That movie is Pacific Rim.
What does this movie have going for it? It has a big-time legit director in Guillermo Del Toro. That is an important factor. Christopher Nolan has demonstrated the importance of a big-time legit director. Not only does a big-time legit director bring a certain artistic oomph to a film, he also has the clout to get the movie made the way he wants it and not the way the studio brass imagine it in their little silly childish money-grubbing minds. Hollywood movies, especially the expensive ones, are made by committee. That leads to watered-down product. The Nolan flicks are better because Nolan is the one guy ultimately making ALL the decisions. There is a singular vision at work.
Del Toro has the distinctive vision and by all accounts he has the clout to get a movie made the way he wants it to be made. But here’s the problem as I see it. Stating the situation as plainly as I can. Pacific Rim, just going by the trailers I’ve seen, looks dumb as ass. It looks like typical Michael Bay-style summer movie smash-bang explodey giant robots smash big monsters crush baloney with the human element reduced to zero.
Why does this alarm me so much? Well human element is important. I’m not saying the movie has to be Terms of Endearment but there has to be something for the audience to latch on to otherwise it’s just stupid spectacle. You can say the Batman movies are just big empty superhero movies that happen to be well-crafted but at least Nolan sets those stories in a world that feels passingly real and is at least to some degree relateable on a human level. They’re not just big dumb clattering action spectacles. They have a soul.
Pacific Rim looks like a big dumb clattering action spectacle. And if that’s all it turns out to be? Then it will not be the movie that saves the summer of 2013. The movie that saves the summer of 2013 – if it ever comes, and time is running out so PLEASE COME SOON – will be the movie that finds the happy medium between human-scaled intrigue and soaring spectacle. The Dark Knight movies and Inception straddle that line beautifully. The stories are compelling AND there is stuff blowing up and collapsing and gunfights and people punching each other. They’re not really great works of art but they’re effective popcorn movies that provide enough substance to go with the silly thrills.
I really hope my impressions of Pacific Rim prove to be wrong. I hope Del Toro has worked a true human element in with his giant robots and monsters and slam-bam-gee-whiz-whoopdeedo. Cause really, there is nothing more boring than just sitting there watching stuff get smashed for two hours. I don’t need Del Toro’s version of an Emmerich flick. What could be more soul-crushing than that? Besides another Riddick movie.