Pacific Rim may have a title tailor-made for a porn movie offshoot, but we’ll only be discussing its script here.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from IMDB) As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse.
About: This script was penned by Travis Beacham, well known in the spec world for writing the extremely popular Killing On Carnival Row. Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labrynth), who directed the film, also helped with the writing. The project came to light in an interesting way. Del Toro was originally attached to direct Killing On Carnival Row back when the script first came about, which is where he first established his relationship with Beacham. He had heard about and was intrigued by Beacham’s new treatment, Pacific Rim, a couple of years later, but was working on other projects, particularly “At The Mountains Of Madness,” with James Cameron producing. Late in the development of that project, however, the studio freaked out about the price and the project was killed. Del Toro was devastated, even reportedly crying after it happened. He really really wanted to make that movie. But he rebounded quickly. “Mountains” died on a Friday, and on Monday he signed on to make “Pacific Rim.”
Writers: Travis Beacham and Guillermo Del Toro.
Creating an original property is hard these days. There’s just so much competition from pre-established properties that have had years upon years to burrow themselves into our collective minds. Where do we fit something new?
The idea is to create something so big, so in-your-face, moviegoers can’t ignore it. Pacific Rim is definitely big, but is it too big? Almost immediately after the trailer was released, it was drawing comparisons to Transformers. Another “Big robots doing battle” movie. We’d already seen that. What’s new?
Well what’s new is unfortunately something the average audience member doesn’t care about: the director. Guillermo Del Toro is a much more sophisticated and interesting director than Michael Bay. Bay’s going to give the 14 year old A.D.D. crowd exactly what they want. With Del Toro, the hope is that he’s going to have something in store for the adult audience as well.
The question is, did that actually happen?
Pacific Rim starts out the way most sci-fi actioners start out, with voice over explaining what’s led us to where we are now. Well, a decade ago, huge monsters started appearing in the sea. These gargantuan freaks of nature made dinosaurs look like kittens. But unlike kittens, they had a nasty habit of going into cities and destroying Chick-fil-A’s and Pinkberry’s.
The world realized that traditional defenses weren’t going to slow these guys down. In order to defeat them, they would have to build really big robots. These were called Jaegers. Now for these robots to be effective, they would have to hook up the pilots’ brains directly to them. But here was the trick. One brain wasn’t enough. It got overloaded. So you had to hook TWO pilots up for each robot.
The Jaeger Program had its ups and downs, but was eventually scrapped in favor of a giant coastal wall. The remaining Jaegers, including former star (but since fallen) pilot Raleigh Becket, were discarded off to Hong Kong where they’d be called on if needed.
It didn’t take long before they were needed. The “Life Wall” was a bust and the monsters began appearing more and more frequently. It appeared they were coming through some sort of parallel world bridge at the bottom of the ocean. The Jaeger Program leaders believed if they could drop a nuclear bomb in that hole, they just might be able to get rid of these monsters forever.
I walked into this movie knowing almost nothing about it. I had the script but decided not to read it. I saw the beginning of a trailer but (like I always do when I sense it’s something I’m going to see) I closed my eyes and tried really hard not to listen to what was being said. So when I finally plopped my rear end in that theater seat, I had very little knowledge of what was to follow other than big robots fighting big monsters.
What followed over those next 30 minutes were… not what I expected. I told you the whole reason I was excited about Del Toro making a robot fighting movie was that we were finally going to get that “sophisticated” version of Transformers we never got with Bay. Well, shit. Throw that idea out the window. Pacific Rim wasn’t as goofy as Transformers, but Holy Shit was it cheesy. And I’m not talking Kraft American Cheese Singles here. We’re talking aged gruyere cheese.
Starting with the visuals, which were so bright and shiny I had to dig out my old Oakleys. The opening sequence where Raleigh loses his partner was even cheesier than the Top Gun sequence it was stolen from. The newcomer who played Raleigh – This guy might as well have worn a T-shirt that read “Cliché Action Hero.” The Russian pilots were more ridiculous than the Russians in Rocky 4, if that’s possible. And the comic-relief! Ahhhh! Are we sure those actors knew they were in a Guillermo Del Toro film or did someone play a joke on them and convince them they were on an episode of The Big Bang Theory? They were so beyond goofy, I almost had to look away whenever they came onscreen, especially “Looks Like Hitler Without A Mustache” Guy, whose fake limp was so exaggerated, he deserved a six month acting time-out. The dialogue wasn’t Sharknado bad or anything, but I did cringe at the cheesiness of it more than once (usually when Cliché Action Hero – who sounded like he was experimenting with seven different accents at the same time – said something).
Man. I was so disappointed. This was not the movie I was expecting. Afterwards, I did some digging on the internet and found that Del Toro envisioned Pacific Rim to have an “incredibly airy and light feel” to it, in contrast to the “super-brooding super-dark, cynical summer movie.” Um, what?? Since when is the “super-brooding super-dark cynical summer movie” a rule? I thought it was the rare exception. There’s like, The Dark Knight and Inception and that’s it. “Incredibly airy and light” is what EVERYBODY does with their summer film.
Humph.
Well, after I accepted Pacific Rim for what it was trying to be, I re-shifted my expectations and watched the movie for what it was. Once that happened, I started enjoying it more. One of the things I found really clever was the dual-piloting idea. I always love a writing idea that 99% of the writers out there wouldn’t have come up with. Everyone else would’ve placed one pilot in those robots. But by having two, and coupling that with this “mind meld” they were forced to accomplish in order to operate the robot, you created a much richer more interesting environment going on inside the robot.
Instead of having one guy talking to himself (boring), you could have characters speaking to each other during each battle, each problem. Once you have that, you can create conflict (the partners don’t always agree) which is always going to increase the level of drama.
And I liked how they took advantage of this idea and kept pushing it. A really neat byproduct of the mind meld, or “drift” as I think they called it, was the backstory. We work so hard as writers to look for ways to sneak our characters’ backstories in without slowing down the plot. It’s one of the hardest things to do because, despite the benefits of knowing the characters better, too much backstory gets boring. So I liked how every time we went into the “drift,” we got flashes of the pilots’ key moments in their lives.
One of my favorite scenes was when Raleigh’s co-pilot, Mako, got lost in the “drift” and remembers the moment when she first saw one of the monsters. We see it through her eyes, as a little girl, and have a much better understanding of who she is as a result. It’s not an Oscar worthy scene or anything, but it’s really hard to get ANY extensive character development into a tentpole movie, so kudos to Beacham for figuring out a way.
And I really liked the story behind the monsters’ origins. The whole “come from space” thing has been done to death. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. But these things coming through a porthole in the ocean connected to a parallel world – it was different. Granted, you probably have to be a little geeky to like that kind of thing, but to me it was just refreshing. And where it really helped was the ending. There was no flying around, trying to take down big spaceships with nuclear-armed jets. Instead we had an underwater porthole that needed to be breached. This gave us a climax we haven’t seen before. That was cool.
You know what this experience reminded me of? The first time I watched The Fifth Element. I didn’t know what I was watching at the time. It was too goofy, much wilder than I was prepared for. I only later, in subsequent viewings, embraced its quirkiness and began to appreciate it for what it was. I’m hoping the same thing will happen with Pacific Rim.
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: From this point forward, I’m going to consider ways to fit two characters into a situation that’s traditionally meant for one. It provides you with so many more dramatic opportunities – from character development to conflict – if you have two people playing off each other. Loved how Pacific Rim incorporated that into these robot cockpits.
