So, you’re all set and jazzed to see what capable director Guillermo Del Toro will offer us all with his new stunner of a film, Pacific Rim. And it’s a kind of a big deal, because he backed out of The Hobbit, to make this sci-fi battle monster zone movie, and it could maybe pay off, since the early reviews of The Hobbit have left some dismayed and perhaps crying sullenly in their homemade Shire made out of balloons — but then you remember what Michael Bay has done to the robot movie genre and now you’re full of trepidation, fear, and hatred!
Urgh, that forever cheddar-dick, Michael Bay. No one has destroyed America’s love of robots like this man. Under his tutelage robots became large cartoons that spewed oil-based bodily fluids on people, and that’s when they didn’t careen around a movie screen in some big, awful CGI snarl of loud smashes and incomprehensible interlocking doodads that skated along stupidly and blindly.
They didn’t give you the fun adventure with a side of humanity that the first Ironman had, nor did they try and attempt to have a heart or soul, or minimally a purpose like in 2011’s Real Steel. No, Michael Bay’s robots were big clunky doofus Bots sent from an alien planet.
What Pacific Rim tries to do is take the sea monster theme that we remember fondly from films like Leviathan and even Deep Star Six, and say, “Hey, you and your paltry ship of crew members won’t be able to fight these things off. Better get yourself a huge Battle Bot that you control to do it for you.” And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s direct and right to the point. There’s no trying to get back to a mothership or a mother planet, or anyone trying to figure out some sort of ancient Robotian code. Just pure and simple — eradicate the mofos that want to kill humans. We’d like to think this can work. That this in its simplicity won’t need to be evaluated and messed with. All this needs is cool action, a great leader-type, which we may get with Idris Elba, and some badass fight scenes without all the camp and frantic nature of a bunch of robots and their human friends running around like the anxiety meds have worn off prematurely.
But Michael Bay is hard to forget. He’s the robot thief that makes films like these easily able to slip into a cheesy mess of one-liners and false bravado. He’s a ruiner of all things. But we’ll try and put him out of our minds when we watch Pacific Rim because it looks like Del Toro may have found the balance — not an easy thing to accomplish in the world MB ruined. But we’ll say this, the first time someone says, “Get the Zorboeox Zion Cube and stick it in its Hyper Cortex Memory Port! Fast! Do it now!” That’s it. We’re launching Michael Bay into space with a box set of the Transformers movies and a sun visor. Good luck, Chappy!
For now, though, hopefully, this new movie will make us all forget.
Watch the trailer!
