PACIFIC RIM

Well, what to make of this one?

PACIFIC RIM is one of the brainchildren of Guillermo del Toro, a 2013 theatrical release, SUPPOSEDLY ABOUT SEA MONSTERS AND THE BATTLE AGAINST THEM.

I don't really have much to say about this movie because WE NEVER GET TO SEE the sea monsters.  We didn't get to see where they came from.  We didn't get to see them wade ashore and really recruit en masse, the way only a giant sea monster can.  We didn't even get to see them really settle in up on dry land, or -- as I was frankly hoping -- taking some good-sized hunks of dry land under the sea with them, like the parts of 2012 I enjoyed best.

 

Weirdest of all, the story made the monsters into differently-shaped, differently-abled, differently-challenging creatures ALL MADE FROM IDENTICAL GENETIC MATERIAL.  It betrays a rather shaky knowledge of DNA on del Toro's part.  But maybe he just found it too scary an idea to use in his movie that ALL OF US, OF ALL DNA CONFIGURATIONS, ARE AGAINST YOU LANDSCUM.  One thing this guy does constantly is tame down really scary movie concepts into something a lot more child-friendly.

And how does he do it in this one?  Aside from making the menace from the sea into basically something UNRELATED to our sort of sea life and ESCAPING FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION TO MESS WITH THE FEATHERLESS BIPEDS FOR NO REASON, he focuses the whole story on these people in giant robo-suits who wade into the ocean to get into fistfights with the monsters.  Imagine a potentially great story like this turning into a landscum coming-of-age, fight-team-fight-until-we-win-the-day sort of story and there you have it.

If you're looking for a sea-monster recruitment drama, let me suggest something from Toho Studios, or one of the analogues from American film studios...