The first film in the Pacific Rim franchise dropped back in 2013. I was there opening weekend. I love giant robots fighting giant monsters. Pacific Rim is an entertaining film and you know why I love the Pacific Rim IP? It’s FUN.
I will always maintain that the first Pacific Rim is a sneakily brilliant film that doesn’t deserve the “big dumb robot movie” label that it gets. Yes, it is a film about said giant robots punching giant monsters, but the way the movie uses things like colors and leitmotifs to reinforce themes and it’s structure (it’s a traditional sports movie — not a disaster movie — with an old, crusty retired veteran coming back to coach a new generation) is nothing short of genius, are far more thoughtful than a typical turn-your-brain-off action film.
It also did a really good job of world building with background information, especially in respect to the Jaeger. These are not simply your standard giant anime robot, they are bots pushing the absolute limits of theoretical human technology in the near future and they BEHAVE like it. Hell, Cherno Alpha was specifically designed to fake out Kaiju by having the cockpit be in the chest instead of the head and to have dual nuclear-powered flamethrowers that never got used or mentioned in the film but were the basis for the Jaeger design for everything from the shoulders up. Of course, because of Newts drift, the Kaiju knew exactly where the cockpit was and killed the pilots. But I digress.
Pacific Rim 2 was actually a lot of fun. Sure, the special effects are a massive step down (a tad better than your average movie on the SYFY channel), but to make up for it they basically stuffed the film with enough goofy ideas to fill up two sequels. John Boyega is incredibly charming in it and daresay he got more to do and showed more range in Uprising than in all three of those space opera sequels.
So, bring on the new new. The first season of Pacific Rim: The Black (Animated by Polygon Pictures) hit Netflix and is now streaming. And this show … Well, I’ve seen it before (spoilers.)
I find the humans are the bad-guys trope here to be infuriating and cliché. The amoral militaristic group of survivors is played out and by far the weakest element in the show. The brain-wiped super-soldier girl has also been done to death and it’s never good when protagonists feel like side characters in their own story. But most of all, I miss the fun.
The Black was not what I was expecting at all. The series is thematically dark in a way that the movies were not, but in a way that is a logical outgrowth of the world established before. Mass destruction by giant monsters would be traumatizing. Sharing every memory and emotion with another person would EFF you up and mess with your sense of identity. While I have some quibbles with it (see above), I thought the series was effective it what it set out to do, especially in some of the quieter scenes between the siblings. It is 100% watchable and I’m reluctantly looking forward to the second season hopefully, with a little more cheese than grit.
–Dagobot
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