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Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: October 15th, 2013.
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Rob Kazinsky
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
Guillermo del Toro's 2013 movie Pacific Rim is set sometime in the future where a crack on the ocean floor has opened up a path for giant monsters known as Kaiju to head towards the surface and wreak havoc. With the monsters laying waste to cities all over the world, humanity designs some massive mech suits dubbed Jaegers to combat the Kaiju menace. The Jaegers are piloted by various personal and they prove quite effective.
When the movie gets rolling, the Jaeger program is being sunset. Giant walls have been built that engineers swear will keep the Kaiju away from the population centers. When the first of the massive walls comes crashing down, however, it's up to the few remaining Jaeger teams to suit up and stop the monsters once and for all by sending a powerful explosive into the crevice from which they keep coming…
Pacific Rim is not a complicated story, but it doesn't need to be. Guillermo del Toro directs this movie with one goal in mind, and that's to entertain you. His approach? Giant mechs versus giant monsters and all the massive devastation that something like that can bring. Sure, we get some character development. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), the American Jaeger pilot, lost his brother in a battle some years ago and he carries that with him. They team him up with a female Japanese pilot named Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) whose childhood memories of Kaiju devastation in her homeland have left some scars. Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) manages to 'drift' through a Kaiju's mind in order to find a solution to the problem, this changes him quite a bit. There's Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), a black marketer who runs a 'salvage operation' that has found a way to profit off of every single piece of the Kaiju's body possible. And let's not forget Herc Hansen (Max Martini), a Jaeger veteran who pilots a mech with his son, Chuck (Robert Kazinsky).
The real reason to want to watch this one is for the action scenes though. Del Toro's love of monsters and robots and sci-fi and horror and action and 'stuff' has basically drenched this movie in fun (the film is dedicated to Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda). Think of it as Robotech vs. Godzilla and you're basically there. It's not deep, but you've got to give the cast and crew credit for delivering the goods. The art design and production design are fantastic, the effects, while primarily handled through CGI, are impressive and the performances are fun even if they do come in a distant second to the explosive action set pieces.
The end result is a movie that is a complete blast to watch. This is action done right and on a scale far more massive than what most of us are used to. It'd be easy to compare this to the Transformers movies as they both involve giant robots but Pacific Rim is a lot more enjoyable simply because it tells a better, more cohesive story and it offers up better, cooler and crazier action scenes. It might all add up to little more than disposable entertainment, but there's no shame in that. Del Toro didn't set out to make the next arthouse drama, he set out to make a movie where giant mech robot things battle giant monsters, and on that level Pacific Rim is a pretty raving success.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Pacific Rim arrives on Blu-ray framed at 1.78.1 widescreen in AVC encoded 1080p high definition and it looks just as beautiful as you could hope for. Colors are gorgeous, detail is outstanding, skin looks like skin and the digitally shot feature is transferred to Blu-ray in flawless condition. Black levels are nice and deep while shadow detail impresses throughout. Texture is consistently revelatory and contrast is always dead on. The visuals here are outstanding and this HD representation looks excellent.
Audio options are provided in English language DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, English language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Spanish, French and Portuguese language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mixes with optional subtitles offered up in English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Turn this one up and don't worry about pissing off your neighbors. The mix here is a bombastic assault, one that uses the surrounds to really put you in the middle of the action scenes with stunning directionality. This is a reference quality mix, one that offers up perfect bass response and expertly balanced levels so that the dialogue stays easily discernible even when a giant robot is punching a giant monster in the middle of the ocean.
The extras on disc one start off with an audio commentary from Guillermo del Toro that tells you pretty much everything you could want to know about how and why this movie exists. He's a director known for his love and enthusiasm of genre pictures and that really comes through here as he talks about where the ideas came from. After that he details the history of the production while offering up a bunch of technical information as well. He covers the contributions of the cast and crew who worked with him on the film and he covers the effects work and design work in a lot of detail as well. This is a very fun talk, it's enthusiastic and packed with information and it ranks up there with the best of his commentary tracks.
From there, we get just over an hour's worth of Focus Points. There are thirteen of these included and you can watch them on their own or hit 'play all' to enjoy a barrage of short but sweet behind the scenes bits and pieces that focus on a specific aspect of the production.
A Film By Guillermo del Toro (4:47) / A Primer On Kaijus And Jaegers (4:09) / Intricacy Of Robot Design (4:53) / Honoring The Kaiju Tradition (4:30) / The Importance Of Mass And Scale (5:45) / Shatterdome Ranger Roll Call (5:39) / Jaegers Echo Human Grace (4:01) / Inside The Drift (4:36) / Goth-Tech (4:39) / Mega-Sized Sets (8:54) / Baby Kaiju Set Visit (3:07) / Tokyo Alley Set Visit (3:17) / Orchestral Sounds From The Anteverse (4:04)
These are short but to the point and some of them are quite interesting, particularly the ones that focus on the creature and robot design work. The segment about the sound design is also quite interesting. As these are geared towards very specific aspects of the production, thankfully they don't really cross over with what's covered in the commentary and when they do they have the added advantage of using visuals that the commentary doesn't. These are definitely worth checking out.
Disc two has also got some great stuff on it, starting with an interactive still gallery of sorts dubbed The Director's Notebook which is, as it sounds, essentially a look into the notebook that the director used while working on this project. Here we get access to a bunch of text and graphic information as well as some video segments that are linked into the other content. It's well designed and well laid out and serves to give us further insight into del Toro's creative process.
The second disc also includes a seventeen minute featurette entitled The Digital Artistry Of Pacific Rim which shows how ILM's computer effects were created to bring the mech suits and the Kaiju monster to life. We also see how the backgrounds where the battles take place were created and more. Additionally, check out The Shatterdome, which is as massive video and still gallery of design and production related artwork and clips. This compliments the VFX featurette rather nicely and gives us scores and scores of odd bits and pieces to sift through. It's pretty easy to get lost up in this and spend a lot of time here!
Rounding out the extra are four minutes worth of Deleted Scenes (The Wall Of Life / Excuse Me / Theft / Catch You In The Drift, Dad), a five minute featurette on the drift scenes in the movie called Drift Space, a four minute Blooper Reel, animated menus and chapter stops. As this is a combo pack release, in addition to the Blu-ray disc we also get a DVD version of the movie and a download code for an UltraViolet copy of the movie. All of the extras on the Blu-ray disc are in high definition and the first pressing of this release comes with a snazzy lenticular cover slipcase.
The Final Word:
Pacific Rim is a blast. Guillermo del Toro 'gets it' - he's a big kid with an even bigger budget and with this movie he's made a picture that puts entertainment and spectacle first but is still able to tell a decent enough story and present some likeable characters. This might not be deep, but it is a whole lot of fun. The Blu-ray from Warner Brothers is not only jammed with great supplemental material you'll actually want to watch but it also provides a reference quality presentation offering up flawless audio and video. A great release through and through.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
