Thursday, September 19, 2013

Watching Pacific Rim proves I am a Toei fan

Pacific Rim is a symbol of anti-Hollywood trends such as superheroes. Despite having unmemorable Caucasian actors as protagonists, toleration of other culture was the reason to purchase tickets for this film.

However, I watched the beginning of the film and could not get over how anti-Toei the shots were establishing the action and the cuts were. We, for whatever reason, did not get to see the whole mech, when it could have been a good time to or a cut is too rushed so we are unable to see the attack. Maybe it was my theatre, maybe it was the 3D IMAX experience, but something just didn't feel right.
 
Although Mako Mori's story was interesting, it was not fully developed. Possibly will be in developing the franchise. I am used to Toei's use of 80s tropes and was sorely missing them in this film. Although the Mako Mori storyline is similar to previous mech characters storylines such as that of Shin Getter Robo Armaggeddon, it just did not have an impact on me.

The story about the brothers was interesting, but was filled with a bit too much Hollywood jock story that the film just did not appeal to.
Normally in Showa era giant robo/kaiju cinema, there is the jock, the lancer loner, the female, the comedy relief, the brain. While I understand it's not realistic to have people of these actual qualities piloting a giant robot, its more cinematic, appealing to viewers of all ages and is less complicated to screw up.
Now we have the jock, the female jock, the twin jocks, the father jock, the father and son jocks, did I mention the jocks?
What is cool is that we get to see more of different cultures working together. However, even that doesn't work, because we don't really get anything interesting to learn about these separate cultures. What is cool about being Russian? Chinese? American? Can they really work together? Were their world at war prior to the Kaijus?
We don't really get a good taste as to what makes the characters similar or what makes the characters different in character tropes. So what do we really get?
I really would've enjoyed a Quentin Tarantino moment where they discuss things that they like outside of Giant Robots.

Idris Elba was the only saving grace in the film and he died without any reason to care for him, other than that he was the original pilot of the Jaegers.

I could have even wished for an auteur's development of characters, such as that of Christopher Nolan, but let us not get ahead of ourselves.

Now. Forget everything I said, and let's talk about what worked with Pacific Rim.

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