Let’s own up to this fact, gamers want everything big in life, the guns, the scenes, the blasts and of course the outcome…. Catastrophic. So while most of the gamers waited on Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel to kick open an epic summer movie marathon, it didn’t appear that great on the receiving end. Lacking a proper DC style script made it worse on the magical duo of Snyder-Nolan. The film wasn’t a complete trash, but it lacked that firepower to be called a gamer’s feast. I mean, gamers can be really excited action movie lovers given the strengths we all share. The summer was summing up quickly; enter Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Out of nowhere.
Guillermo Del Toro has epitomised some of the generation’s best known movie genres. Like Horror, with The Devil’s Backbone, Magic with Academy Awardee Pan’s Labyrinth and Action with the two gorgeously outrageous Hellboy movies. So why would gamers turn their attention to his latest, Pacific Rim, for all the big orgasmic movie moments? The answer lies in the movie itself. Conceptualised on a pretty done to death format, i.e. of alien invasion, the film however rolls out to be something else. Something even bigger than all the previous alien ooze combined. Like the movie tagline goes, Go Big or Go Extinct. That is what the director was personally aiming for in my opinion. He knows that people will casually jump to the conclusion that this is just another robo movie like Transformers, with a touch of Godzilla and maybe some resistance protecting the ideal. For me, Pacific Rim is a feast that every gamer deserves to drool on for 120 minutes.
As far as the story goes, the first attention seeking moment for Pacific Rim goes to the massive similarity in its story to a game title that we have often drooled our hearts out on – Crysis. Remember how Crysis began? When some forces found alien tech inside earth’s burrows and used it for paramilitary measures? And it altered mankind’s evolution by alerting the aliens already hiding on earth? Pacific Rim is not bringing in some scientists to the blame game, as the aliens start trolling earthlings by their own choice. But the way they troll is something which is similar to nearly all of Crysis stories. The Alpha CEPH, or the Alien Mother, sends its children to earth’s surface to plunder and take back what is theirs. Very colonially. With Pacific Rim, the aliens are land seeking parasites, who were waiting inside earth’s surface for the perfect time. With heated carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere, they felt it was time. These aliens move from one planet to other in order to survive. They use a bridge that connects the top earth with their lair inside the cyst.
The recap intro of Crysis 3 will prove the point I’m leading you to. Hear it from Prophet:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wayskEgwCiM]
Victory costs, like Prophet said, and in Pacific Rim, the core of all that superhuman strength is this single question, what are you prepared to sacrifice today? For Marshal it was his co-pilot, for Rayleigh it was his co-pilot twin brother Yancy and for Mako it was her entire family when the monsters breached Tokyo. For Prophet it was forgetting that he was a human being, taming the beastlike strength that was necessary to fight the alien ceph. To be “maximum” everything. The same goes for the soldiers who rode the giant robots called Jaegers (German for Hunters) in Pacific Rim and fought the Kaijju (Japanese for Monsters) on land and water.
The tough part comes in the question, is Pacific Rim like Transformers fighting Godzillas on water? I’d strongly say Pacific Rim is larger than these two concepts coming and clashing. I have minimal praise for Michael Bay the director’s approach in making the Transformers trilogy, as I find nothing extraordinary except the fact that a nerd like Sam always gets the hottest women to date. If one considers Transformers from the game titles, I’d say Pacific Rim will be a treat if you’ve loved your Transformers: War for Cybertron or Fall of Cybertron. The core approach of every Jaeger is to combat using hands, and unleashing a lethal drop kick or two. Both the categories, Jaegers and Transformers, can boast of cannon fists, colossal figures and giant treads, crushing everything beneath.
Del Toro is a sentimental sci fi lover, and he adds that one layer that separates Autobots and Decepticons from Jaegers. These man made monsters need human pilots to ride it and co ordinate its moves. For which it is equally important for two co pilots to share a common bond, gel with each other and infiltrate each other’s memories to completely become one. This whole idea is borrowed from beautiful co-op missions that we often gamed on with friends and family. Even multiplayer games like The Last Of Us Factions need you to co-ordinate with your teammate to reach the goal. If you go alone, you go to die.
Then comes the resistance bit. The Jaegers are driven by survivors who have gone big in order to stop the apocalypse. Stuff like Killzone and Resistance always comes to my mind for these situations and themes. That fair fight in Resistance 3 between the survivors and the Chimera in Haven is attributed for in the movie. You can easily imagine Hale or Joseph in your mind and have a grand view of the Kaijju apocalypse.
Pacific Rim and Crysis are identical twins born to different mothers, especially because the visual and action galore that prompts you to buy every Crysis title is the same key that will drive you crazy in Pacific Rim. Some of the sequences from the movie are so intense that you wish the movie theatre was your home and you could just throw your legs around. It’s like the same feel every time you play against the Ceph Master Mind.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlpKVvF9Us]
A lot of questions have been raised about Pacific Rim, with loads of negative reviews flying in from left and right. A famous review site, who once voted Man Of Steel 9 out of 10 have also berated Pacific Rim with a mere 7.5. If you’d ask me, go for it if you’re an out and out gamer. Do not look into how deeply each character is portrayed, after all it’s the action and plunder that matters. The weight of the movie is just like any of your favourite Sci Fi game titles.The momentum is unlike any. And some of the fights actually resemble the video game boss fights that you were sleepless on. This is a movie that deserves to be watched in public theatres. All I could think while watching the movie was, why isn’t the joypad in my hands?
To get a glimpse of what Pacific Rim is all about, check out the trailer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guMumPFBag]
