Am I the Only Person Who Doesn't Like Pacific Rim?

Let me start off by saying that while I haven't really seen any Guillermo Del Torro movies, I have enjoyed what little I have seen of Pan's Labyrinth. And as a sucker for giant mechs, I enjoyed the battle scenes between the Jaggers and Kaiju.

That being said, I can only say that the battle scenes are the only good things about the movie.

Spoiler Warning for Pacific Rim Beyond this Point

The premise for the movie is this: kaiju (alien sea monsters) are entering Earth through the tectonic cracks at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, so Jaggers (giant mechs) had to be built so humanity could fight back against the monsters. They designed their mechs based on the kaiju for best effectiveness, so the mechs need two pilots to share the neural load so that the pilots don't die from a fried brain. In sharing that neural load, they end up getting to know each other by seeing each other's memories, knowing their thoughts and such to synchronise their attacks to make the mechs work effectively. As such, each pilot work as each hemisphere of the human brain.

And now that you all know the premise for context, I shall begin my rant (you might want a cup of tea for this, it's long). See the movie now if you absolutely want no spoilers.

Spoiler

1) Failure to Exploit a Gold Mine
Given the premise about having two pilots needing to access each other's minds in order to work in sync, you would think that there would be plenty of potential for the kind of drama that fuels all the best mecha anime in existence, and with Guillermo Del Torro, there aught to be some deeper commentary about human kinship, the human psyche, and perhaps humanity itself or some other deep philosophical stuff like that. That is not the case for Pacific Rim. While the action scenes are awesome, they are too far and few between, with the majority of the film made up with the personal lives and drama of the pilots... and most (or all) of the drama is stuff that is already seen in other Hollywood action blockbusters (I'll talk about the Hollywood clichés later).

Yes, I understand that the protagonist lost his brother while they fought a Kaiju and the love interest Mako lost her family and barely survived a Kaiju attack in her childhood. Personal loss of the people you love is tragic, but there is little of anything important on the thematic standpoint that I can take away from it all as it all only served to move the plot forward. I want to see the filmmakers to take advantage of the premise: aside from Mako nearly using a laser cannon while she "chased the rabbit" (following someone else's memory rather than letting everything go) to a traumatic memory of her childhood, what are the other issues of piloting a Jagger? What if a pilot had a secret that the pilot doesn't want certain people to know about (i.e. if a pilot is gay/lesbian but is closeted to certain people)? And if other people know these secrets, what kind of drama will ensue? And with this drama that unfolds, what would thus be an ethical ramifications of keeping/sharing/holding secrets from other people? Would opening up to other people against your own will make people more open as a consequence? Say what you want about Neon Genesis Evangelion, at least Anno actually put in the effort to create deeper meaning to his work even if it makes doesn't make much sense (at least until he admitted that he barely knew what he was doing and that any meaning found within the show is the work of the audience).

Maybe the problem for this case is the format of this film (it's a movie, thus limited time to show the audience the story), but I think this problem can be overcome with density of expression (packing in as much information and ideas in each scene as possible; Revolutionary Girl Utena is a good example of density of expression in a visual medium) or by making sequels (if you have giant mechs fighting monsters, this would be Hollywood's queue to plan for sequels for a franchise). Then again, this might be a reason why stories with mech are serialised as television shows.

Also, the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice-versa. If you are using that concept, get it right.

2) Even Unprepared Tofu Has More Flavour and Texture than the Characters
I never cared much for the characters at all. Sure they all are trying to save the world and some even had personal losses, but they are still Hollywood stock characters. Has anyone heard of the Seven Deadly Sins of Writing? Aside from writing vampire stories (I think the list was made before Twilight was released), the other deadly sins I learned were stories based on dreams (main problem is the lack of importance of coherent theme), stories that take place in fantastical places you can enter via portal (problem is they are cliché; Narnia pretty much is the only well known story like that) and war dramas, where the plot is essentially everyone scrambling to stop a threat against a homebase/country/planet/etc while the conflict piles on and on until the climax and denouement (such as what Tom Clancy writes, but since I don't read Tom Clancy, I can't confirm that). The main problem with war dramas is that while they focus on the actions of trying to stop the threat, the characters suffer from the lack of focus. Gundam, one of the first mecha anime that became popular and one of the pillars upon which all mecha anime are based, fixes the problem by having the story be more about the drama of the pilots not just fighting on the battlefield, but also their everyday lives off the battlefield, and how both settings can affect each other.

That is not the case here in Pacific Rim. If you may or may not have noticed, I never mentioned the protagonist by name the entire time; only Mako, his love interest, and that is only because I have seen her suffering during her childhood, walking the broken streets of Tokyo wearing only one red shoe finding her family who likely died in the kaiju attack. Sure the protagonist lost his brother while he fought a kaiju, but Mako experiencing the protagonist's brother's death triggered her to relive the most traumatic event of her life; she is suffering greatly by that kaiju attack the second time, and it's clear that she never really got over it like the protagonist and his dead brother (if he didn't, why didn't he have a flashback and flip out like Mako?).

Mako had the most character development out of everyone in the movie, but that's not saying much as it seems no one underwent a change of any kind (unless you count that predictable romance between the protagonist and Mako, but as I said before, sharing memories with each other apparently didn't affect their relationship much according to the plot).

The scientists are the worst characters of all, most particularly the one with more screen time. The lack of dimension in these characters is so bad that I really wanted to yell at that kaiju fanatic scientist to shut up! Even Jeff Goldbloom never acted that extremely dorky, and he's typecast as Hollywood's resident dorky scientist character. This brings me to...

3) This Movie Has Hollywood Written All Over It!
The characters are stock and that is a problem. What adds to the problem is the casting. I can accept that everyone is good looking (it's standard for every Hollywood blockbuster after all), but good looks can only go so far if you are playing the protagonist; I can't understand it, but nowadays Hollywood has the problem of thinking that casting a young male actor in a lead role is good enough to carry the movie. The actor needs charisma for goodness sake! The actor/actress playing any lead role needs to be charismatic enough to convince the audience that they are really the people they portray (yes, even if you are playing a geek like Peter Parker, you should be charismatic enough to make Peter pathetic as a human being before getting superpowers; Toby Maguire oversold the pathos, but the actor for the new Spiderman movie portrayed Peter just right; pathetic, but not completely pitiful and is actually resourceful). The lack of charisma is actually a problem with many modern day young action movie actors; does a good modern action protagonist have to be bland? Personally, I blame Michael Bay and Shia Labeuff for setting that precedent.

And then there's the plot: it's so riddled with clichés and it's paint-by-numbers predictable that I felt emotionally removed; if I know what's going to happen, why should I care? I kept thinking "They will win the battle and I know there is little personal at stake for the characters in battle." Seriously, I think two Jaggers were destroyed and no one seemed to have mourned the pilots' death; even the three pilots for the three armed Jagger who had a mention while they played basketball were never talked about again after they died; either no one liked them or the base is full of really really cold people who see their soldiers as fodder. The latter can't be the case because the father/son duo had some time together before one of them died with Mako's adoptive father (I can't recall who went in to pilot the Jagger with Mako's adoptive father; that's how bland they are, I can't differentiate between them), so the survivor must have mourned heavily for his father's/son's death.

Yes, there are jump-scares during moments when you think things are safe for a moment, but they are just that: jump-scares. They don't really do anything to twist the plot other than to kill off Ron Perlman's character during that one scene.

At least they didn't make the protagonist and Mako kiss at the end; it's good that they avoided sentiment, but I would have made the protagonist unconscious and have Mako try everything she can to revive him like CPR. You know, have her work for the reunion at the end.

One response I might get is "well of course it's predictable Hollywood garbage; the point of it is to turn of your brain and let it all happen." If it is written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, I expect something deep and thought provoking. To be fair, I will give the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn't entirely Del Toro's fault; I think the other writer is suspect, although he is apparently responsible for the story according to IMDB, but I have to ask who is responsible for not doing anything with the concepts and premises that could have made this story amazing.

If what is under the spoiler tag is TL;DR for you, here is the summary: I had high hopes and expectations for Pacific Rim, but I got a lot of missed opportunities and many flaws.

Someone once said that a movie is like a puppet show; the performance is designed to amaze and distract you from the puppeteer. If the puppeteer fails to distract you, he isn't doing a good job with his performance. I felt like I could see the strings and the puppeteer, but maybe since I took a creative writing course I sneaked back stage. Or I may have sat too close to the stage.

What are your thoughts on Pacific Rim? Does anyone else hate it as much as I do?