I recently went with my brother to see Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s big-budget love letter to the Japanese kaiju and mecha genres. In case you aren’t familiar with the basic concept, giant monsters called Kaiju emerge from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and lay waste to coastal cities. Humanity responds by building giant mechs called Jaegers to do battle with the Kaiju. Robot-on-monster carnage ensues.
We pre-gamed our viewing of Pacific Rim with Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third and unfortunately-not-final installment of the venerable Michael Bay franchise, and Atlantic Rim, one of The Asylum’s “mockbusters” in the tradition of Transmorphers, Transmorphers: Fall of Man, and Transmorphers 3: Transmorephers. I may have made up that last one.
I picked these two movies because of the superficial elements they share with each other and Pacific Rim (giant robots, destruction) but was surprised to discover other interesting points of comparison, which I want to discuss here. Atlantic Rim and Transformers are both terrible movies, but while the latter is a big-budget Hollywood production, the former is merely a cheap imitation of a big-budget Hollywood production. By contrast, Pacific Rim and Transformers are both big-budget productions, but while Pacific Rim left me feeling exhilarated, Transformers left me feeling dead inside. Finally, Pacific Rim and Atlantic Rim share an identical premise because the latter happens to be a shameless rip-off of the former.
Atlantic Rim / Transformers
Both Atlantic Rim and Transformers: Revenge of the Moon are terrible movies for a number of reasons. Provided you aren’t a member of The Asylum’s target audience (in other words, you didn’t buy Atlantic Rim thinking it was Pacific Rim) Atlantic Rim does little to disappoint. Sure, the writing and pacing are broken, the acting is horrible, and the special effects are ugly and cheap.
Often, Atlantic Rim doesn’t even bother with special effects. Instead, it treats us to close-ups of actors yelling “LOOK AT THAT THING! ARE YOU SEEING WHAT I’M SEEING?” Similar money-saving tactics (e.g. padding the running time with stock footage and pointless, overlong scenes) are evident throughout. However, I find it difficult to hate Atlantic Rim because, leaving aside for a moment the sketchy business model that brought it into this world, it doesn’t try to manipulate its audience. Transformers does.
Transformers: Fall of the Moon is chock-full of mind-numbing action and cheap gimmicks, but also the kind of “manufactured epic-ness” exemplified by movies like Armageddon. (What’s that? Michael Bay directed Armageddon too?) “Epic-ness” is most often created through slow-motion action scenes and an all-too-common kind of score. The purpose is to trick the audience into thinking that what is happening on the screen is meaningful and dramatic, even while details like characters and story have been largely ignored. Splice in weak attempts at humor and sex appeal, add a healthy dose of product placement, and you have Transformers in a nutshell.
From a conceptual or marketing standpoint, Atlantic Rim is worse than Transformers. For all the lack of creativity behind the Transformers franchise, there is even less at work in Atlantic Rim. (Transformers doesn’t masquerade as a completely different movie.) From an audience viewing perspective, however, Transformers is worse because it panders constantly in an effort to convince the audience that they are watching a good movie. Whatever its other faults, Atlantic Rim never does this. In short, Atlantic Rim fools its audience before they watch the movie, Transformers fools its audience while they watch the movie. Each is guilty of its own brand of money-grubbing laziness.
Pacific Rim / Transformers
Leading up to the release of Pacific Rim, fans and critics alike found an easy point of comparison in Transformers, mostly because Transformers was the only big-budget movie about giant robots in recent memory. Thankfully, Pacific Rim successfully manages not only to differentiate itself, but also to beat Transformers at its own game. Pacific Rim matches or exceeds what Transformers achieves in terms of action, style, and spectacle, while earning an emotional response without resorting to Transformers-style pandering.
The story is nothing original, but it is effective at drawing the audience in. Whereas Transformers: Fall of the Darkness is a rambling sequence of action set pieces and lowbrow filler, Pacific Rim possesses structure and focus. For example, the first real triumphant moment of Pacific Rim doesn’t occur until halfway through the movie. The buildup to that moment is well-executed. Never once in Transformers do I feel the threat of the Decepticons or the possibility that the Autobots will be defeated. Pacific Rim punishes that expectation early on by methodically and repeatedly tipping the odds against humanity. So, even though I know that the heroes will ultimately (SPOILERS) triumph, the threat of failure is close and convincing enough that the inevitable moment of triumph feels all the more satisfying.
In addition, Pacific Rim is supported by consistency of tone. Transformers recklessly shoves too many shiny and funny and sexy things into every scene—and the tone suffers for it. The movie shifts so quickly between action and humor and drama that I have trouble knowing how to respond at any given moment. One moment, it’s all Ken Jeong and over-the-top Hangover-style antics (because it’s Ken Jeong). Next, an office is literally shot to pieces. Later on, Shia LaBeouf is implanted (painfully) with a device that will turn him into an unwilling spy for the Decepticons. I thought it was supposed to be a dramatic moment, so why was the same device played for laughs not two minutes later?
Pacific Rim may be ridiculous, but at least it’s consistent. Without all the abrupt shifts in tone and the inexplicably serious bits, I can settle down and enjoy the movie for what it is. Even the cheese (ELBOW ROCKET!) feels strangely at home, while similar gimmicks in the Transformers film feel out of place and pointless. “We need a scene with wingsuits in it because Michael Bay saw a wingsuit feature on 60 Minutes and decided we need wingsuits because wingsuits are awesome.”
Finally, Pacific Rim contains a number of creative touches that enhance the believability of the world. The opening montage necessarily glosses over a lot of material to set the stage for the movie, but effectively conveys some interesting aspects of the post-Kaiju world. Jaeger pilots achieve celebrity status and show up on talk shows. For a while, Kaiju-fighting becomes more and more part of the ordinary routine. Or take the setting of the Bone Slums in Hong Kong, a whole district built in the shadow of an old Kaiju skeleton. These touches lend the world of Pacific Rim a believable, organic quality that is at odds with the detached, manufactured feel of the Transformers movies.
In short, Pacific Rim earns the fun it’s having. It has flaws, but it isn’t shoddy or manipulative. I felt bored and drained after watching Atlantic Rim and Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, but I felt enlivened after watching Pacific Rim. I can’t ask much more from a movie about giant robots.
