“Pacific Rim” is undeniably the largest-scale production del Toro has ever worked on; his resume bounces from fantastical supernatural tales to sci-fi horror stories to comic book adaptations (“Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Mimic,” and his two “Hellboy” films, respectively), but everything he’s ever done has been linked together by a golden strand of human feeling. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is about a young girl’s fortitude against oppressive totalitarianism; “Mimic” about the power of partnership; “Hellboy” about picking your own family and creating your own legacy—ultimately, they’re all about personal choice, about what individuals can do to combat fear. And so “Pacific Rim” goes along in the same way—what can one person be capable of? What about two people working together? How do partners succeed in a way that a lone rogue couldn’t?
Of course, these themes are all set against, you know, huge-scale fights between ugly alien monsters and scrappy robots. But still! There is an emotional, intelligent core here!
“Pacific Rim” introduces us to a very imminent future in which a portal underneath the Pacific Ocean has unleashed gigantic monsters called “kaiju” (in Japanese, the word means “strange beast,” and is a reference to the country’s sci-fi films about gigantic monsters, like Godzilla), which started out big and have grown larger and larger as the years have progressed. All the countries of the world joined together to create similarly huge robots called “Jaegers” (German for “hunter”), which are piloted by two humans; the humans lock together mentally thanks to a “neural handshake” that allows them to see each other’s memories and understand how they think, and therefore, how they move and fight. So while locked in “the Drift” together, the humans can do whatever the other does at the time; the robot mimics their movements, and so they’re able to fight these monsters—and to win.
For years, things are going well. Kaiju bones end up in museums. Japanese comedy shows make fun of them. They’re transformed into children’s toys. But when the kaijus reach “Category 4” size, displaying new properties like acid blood and forked tails, the Jaegers just aren’t that effective anymore. And when one of their most successful pilots, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), experiences his brother and co-pilot dying during a fight together, he’s out. Five years later, the Jaeger program is essentially dead, much to the chagrin of project leader Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba, of “Prometheus,” “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance,” “Thor,” and “The Losers”), because the world’s governments have decided on a foolhardy plan to build walls to keep the kaiju out instead. (A nice little bit of political commentary there from del Toro, who happens to be Mexican.)
But Pentecost isn’t going to give up, and with four Jaegers remaining at a base in Hong Kong, he reaches out to Raleigh to return for one last fight. Pentecost’s ragtag group also includes prodigy student Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), scientists Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day, of “Monsters University,” “Horrible Bosses,” and “Going the Distance”) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman, of “The Dark Knight Rises”), engineer Ops Tendo Choi (Clifton Collins Jr., of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Star Trek”), and hotshot pilot Chuck Hansen (Robert Kazinsky, of “Red Tails”), Raleigh’s rival. Everyone thinks they have the best idea for how to win—Newton wants to “neural handshake” with a kaiju, Chuck think it’s all about brute force—but no matter what, they have to be triumphant. The kaiju are coming regardless. They don’t have a choice.
This is, ultimately, somewhat straightforward: good guys fighting bad guys. But del Toro does enough with these characters to make them appealing and relatable: Hunnam as Raleigh, although your typical maverick fighter, is also sensitive and encouraging; you feel for him when he says sadly, “I can’t have anyone else in my head again.” Kikuchi is fantastic as Mako, a strong young woman aiming for revenge against the kaiju. Elba is a pillar of handsome, riveting masculinity, even if he gets some of the cheesiest lines as the movie’s strict resistance leader. And Day is clearly a del Toro surrogate, exceedingly knowledgeable about the kaiju and intrigued by how humans use them, like black market businessman Hannibal Chou (a sneering, sarcastic Ron Perlman, of “Conan the Barbarian,” “Drive,” and “Season of the Witch”), who has set up in shop in a city built around a kaiju’s bones.
But the strong, multiracial, multinational cast (remember what I said about the film being inclusive?) isn’t its only strong suit; it’s in the small details del Toro focuses on, both in how humans interact with each other (how often do we see cities evacuated before a giant action sequence? “Man of Steel” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” couldn’t be bothered to save human bystanders, whereas here, serious attention is paid to how humans care for each other) and how the monsters and robots fight. The kaiju are all snapping fangs, multiple mouths, vicious claws, huge wings, angled limbs; they’re stuff of a beautifully designed nightmare, and del Toro makes sure to show us everything, to educate us about his vision instead of just presenting it. (One of the best scenes is when Raleigh, in the Drift with Mako, wanders through her memories, teaching both himself and us about the trauma that drives her.) And so although “Pacific Rim” is, yes, about “a has-been” and a “rookie” proving their mettle, it’s in a fully realized, strikingly rendered world, one that maintains its believability the vast majority of the time. Del Toro is “canceling the apocalypse” his way, and it’s fantastic.
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