This morning we had the chance to sample a little of Guillermo del Toro’s much anticipated Pacific Rim. It was a handful of scenes edited down for this presentation including a skim through the prologue to the film, a couple of scenes from the early part of the film and then an extended look at a battle scene which forms a large part of the trailers seen so far.
There are no explicit spoilers here but some of the build up is explained so tread cautiously if you want to go in fresh.
The director introduced the footage with an explanation of the visual style (Gothic tech was his handy phrase) and described the enjoyment of creating a world steeped in old/new technology. FutuRustic I’d call it. The worlds of del Toro are always a joy to behold and while this was certainly more formulaic than some of his other work there was enough to distance it from its numerous disaster movie bedfellows.
What the trailers have hinted at but not shown explicitly is that the creatures from the bottom of the sea don’t gush out like a Roman Candle made by Hieronymus Bosch but instead emerge over time, giving us plucky humans the chance to pull together and make our stand against them as they slowly come. And we stand very, very tall indeed in our enormous robots and are successful in meeting the opposing forces.
The prologue was a very interesting journey from our present day to a time in the future where the giant monsters have been defeated and the massive robots are decommissioned, remnants of a war which is over.
Del Toro spoke of his playing with the palette of his future. From the neon wash of the cities under fire and the monochrome bleakness of a winter beach which plays host to a significant moment in the film, one which marks the beginning of a new phase in the attack. There were a number of very interesting visual touches, exactly what you’d expect from the director but it’s good to see that these aren’t lost in amongst the enormous battle scenes. Del Toro has his signature on this film from what we saw. The beasts are solid, and organic and raise the bar for Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla movie in particular.
Two scenes we saw stand out. One is a moment we’ve seen many times before, involving a young girl running down a deserted city street trying to outrun the destructive power of a huge monster behind her. With a number of well placed, and well paced, sequences and details (a red shoe in particular) we are drawn into her plight. It is hard for films such as this to gather enough emotional momentum to be truly effective. The Roland Emmerich effect of throwing a dysfunctional family against the end of the world rarely has any emotional power, here’s hoping Pacific Rim is a little more sophisticated in that regard.
The second scene has been glimpsed in trailers many times and is the night time fight between the rejuvenated Jaeger Gypsy Danger and a nasty looking enormomonster (not its real name obviously). Del Toro choreographs the fight very effectively so as not to lose the scale of the battle but crucially we don’t get lost in what is happening. What we saw was not quite the operatic battle del Toro spoke of in his introduction but, of course, this was only preview footage.
From what we saw today Pacific Rim will deliver on its promise and be a crowd-pleasing huge robots vs monsters battle royale, but there was enough visual flourish and cartoonish sensibility to make us think that this could be something very interesting indeed.
