Monsters, Robots, and a Blockbuster for the Ages

Pacific Rim
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
Four Stars

By Rollan Schott

Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” is the movie “Transformers” would like to be when it grows up, a wet-dream of comic book, science fiction, action, and monster movie tropes a whirl in a melting pot of hysterical blockbuster equilibrium, the kind of heedless, silly gusto that elicits a fevered “Oh hell yes” when the credits roll. There are a number of “Oh hell yes” moments in “Pacific Rim”, actually. Del Toro is the kind of director that can conjure them effectively. Here he has taken a skirmish between monstrous aliens and skyscraper-sized robots and imbued it with a clever wit and a modest humanity. Startling what that little extra can do to a movie like this.

At some point around present time, a bizarre rift appeared along the ocean floor, deep in the Pacific Ocean. Out of the mysterious opening crawled a giant, monstrous creature we first see trudging into San Francisco Bay, through and over the Golden Gate Bridge as though it were unheeded police tape. Fighter jets and guided missiles were hurled relentlessly at the creature, dubbed the Kaiju, and it was finally brought down several days and several hundred miles after it first reached shore. The moment was memorialized, the fallen heroes lionized, and mankind moved on. But a few months later another appeared, and then another, then another, and it became clear that more sophisticated means of defense would be necessary.

Queue the Jaeger Program, an army of enormous robots manufactured by the international community to combat the Kaiju before they could reach our shores and ransack our cities. The Jaegers are controlled by two pilots, rigged in simulator body-suits within the robots’ heads, piloting the machines by thought and body movement. Because the interface of the system is too complicated for a single human mind to manage, two pilots must synchronize their minds, a process called 'drifting', and train themselves to manage and contain each others’ memories while guiding the machines in unison.

This we are told in an opening scene that is as oversized and gloriously bloated – at around twenty-something minutes – as the whole of the film. This early montage and initial battle are awe-inspiring. It’s a gratifyingly tongue-in-cheek moment when, nearly a half hour into the film and following an epic, almost climactic fight sequence, the title page finally appears, Del Toro’s coy method of suggesting that yes, there’s plenty more where that came from.

When the story proper begins, the Jaeger program has been defunded after the Kaiju, in their evolving state, have become too large and too powerful for the robots to combat reliably. The world governments don’t have any better ideas, and control of the Pacific Rim is slipping away. What remains of the Jaeger program have convened in Hong Kong under the command of General Pentacost (Idris Elba), coordinating an underground resistance effort to take the fight to the Kaiju for a change. This involves digging up retired pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), who’d left the program after his co-pilot and brother was killed in battle, and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), a young upstart under Pentacost’s paternal wing.

The rest is effectively fodder for massive-scale action sequences between the Jaegers and Kaiju, though there is some clever comic relief courtesy of a couple manic scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) working with the program. The reason “Pacific Rim” is such a splendid movie is because these action sequences are inventive, beautifully photographed and coherently composed, and because Del Toro brings enough generic humanity to his characters to lend the action just the right touch of emotional weight.

Should we pretend, this is a grand metaphor? That there is a wealth of subtext? I feel like this would be a disservice to Del Toro’s achievement. Sure, this is a movie about trust, and sure, Dr. Geiszler alludes to greenhouse gasses making the planet more enticing to the Kaiju than it otherwise might have been, but indeed it is the headlong, vacuous simplicity of the narrative that makes this such a puritanical entertainment. “Pacific Rim” has satisfied for me a long unfed appetite for good old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster camp, genuine, original and competent, and on these humble grounds it is one of the best films of the year.

A Superman Movie for Batman Fans

Man of Steel
Directed by Zack Snyder
Three Stars

By Jon Fisher

Superhero movies used to be almost wholly perceived as dead-on-arrival garbage, but no longer are they merely fodder for children and adolescents. Serious-minded adults now look to superhero movies for entertainment, intrigue and even a reflection of the zeitgeist. American society goes through distinct cycles with regards to superhero popularity – “Batman moments” and “Superman moments”. Sure, there is the odd Spider-Man or Iron Man that maintains its own level of steady popularity, but the two juggernauts of superhero lore are indisputably the Caped Crusader and the Man of Tomorrow. And their popularities rise and fall according to the needs of their times.

The Same Ol' Zombies, Only More So

World War Z

Directed by Marc Forster

Three Stars

By Jon Fisher

I imagine that, fifteen years ago, starring in a zombie movie would have been considered a major step back in Brad Pitt’s career. How the popular culture landscape has changed – zombie literature, formerly of an audience of societally fringe-dwelling nerds and goths, has not only become accepted in the mainstream, but arguably the world’s biggest movie star now describes a zombie movie as one of the most fun movies he’s made in a long time. In addition to that, a zombie serial (The Walking Dead) has become one of the most popular television shows around in the more cinematic, post-Sopranos TV landscape. The source material for that show is complex and harsh, with a focus on the human dimension of a zombie apocalypse. The source material for World War Z, written by Max Brooks (who, we must note with a whiff of suspicion, is the son of Mel Brooks), attempts the same level of complexity. I enjoyed the book for its devotion to and interpretation of the zombie mythology, but concluded that Brooks wasn’t much of a writer. All of his characters sound the same, whether they are a blind geriatric rural-dwelling Asian or a pair of American school teachers.

The W.A.I. Family is Growing

I suppose we’ve been working toward this moment for a long time. I’ve known Jon Fisher for many years now, though we’ve never (yet) met in person. Jon and I became acquainted through an Ebert and Roeper Facebook group, and began networking our movie blogs. His delightful website, The Film Brief, has gone through many phases, looks, styles, functions. My own has gone through more. From ‘Go See a Movie’, to ‘Ghost on Screen’, and now as ‘Wide Angle Iris’, we have frequently sampled each others’ reviews, recorded podcasts debating our divergent opinions and convened annually for three years now to compile our Pantheon of the greatest films of all time. We linked to each others work on social media and grew each others’ web presence. We were two college kids on opposite ends of the world with a love of great film and a passion for the conversations they elicit. But over the years life has made the upkeep of our respective sites more difficult and inconvenient. Full time jobs and the burden of adult responsibilities post-graduation have slowed our output. And so it is with great pleasure now, that I announce that Jon and will be combining our efforts to maintain a single site, right here at WAI.

Water Levels, Nukes, Drones, and the Casual Diplomacy of "Oblivion"

Oblivion

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Three and One Half Stars

Science fiction is less a genre than a society, and to join, one must pay tribute to the council of elders. More than any other genre, fans of science fiction scour their films for references to the titans of its heritage. The allusions are often scattered throughout as deliberate, coy visual cues, not unlike a word search. It is customary, for example, to represent any malicious artificial intelligence with the ominous red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" ("Red Planet", "Moon", "WALL-E"...). But that's just one example, and one of many that Joseph Kosinski conjures in the clever and striking "Oblivion", a science-fiction blockbuster in the classic sense, placing lavish visuals and exciting action in the service of simple and elegant political ideas.

Nothing Behind Us, Everything Before Us, As Always it is On the Road

On the Road

Directed by Walter Salles

Three Stars

Note: This is the first review I've written since the passing of my hero Roger Ebert. I'd like to dedicate this review in his honor.

I've looked forward to reviewing Walter Salles' adaptation of Jack Kerouac's landmark novel, "On the Road", if only because it would afford me the opportunity to write about the book itself, which is among my very favorites. Kerouac had captured, in vibrant color, an entire cultural movement. The Beats, they called themselves, an underground generation of progressive liberation, punctuated by sex, drugs, and jazz, that laid the foundation for the  hippy movement of the late sixties. He told a tale of the last days of an untamed American countryside, as the coasts had just begun to close in on each other, and cries of freedom still disappeared into a sprawling, wild openness, populated sporadically by strange and eclectic characters that seemed as if from another world.

Roger Ebert Remembered

Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)

"Thank You." Roger Ebert opened his last blog entry this way, a gesture of gratitude and reflection that hinted ominously at tragedy. Ebert went on to confess that he would be dialing back the near superhuman output of reviews, blogs, and other writings he had maintained for years. He is not as he was, he told us, but he would continue on at a pace more befitting a man of 70 with recurrent cancer. Two days ago he wrote this. And now, today, while at work, a friend of mine texted me the news. Roger Ebert was dead.