HIGHLIGHTED UPCOMING FILM
PACIFIC RIM, 2013, directed by Guillermo del Toro
The director of BLADE II, the HELLBOY films, and PAN’S LABYRINTH doing a sci-fi summer blockbuster about giant robots battling giant monsters? Ridiculous you say? Far from it – del Toro has come a long way since writing and directing unique World Cinema films with either a horror or fantasy flavour as evidenced when he made his first “mainstream” transition with Blade II (2002); often dubbed the best film of the Blade trilogy; which he infused with his love of fantastical creatures in a horror setting.
But his pet project was always the titular character of the HELLBOY films (2004, 2008) which also featured his muse Ron Pearlman in the lead role of a good-guy demon battling to protect humanity. Even the word “humanity” is a key to understanding del Toro’s oeuvre, as his characters often represent the best-and-worst of our species (e.g. courage, greed, curiosity, evil, etc.). The point is, humanity is depicted in his films as being the cause of their predicament (e.g. the mechanical vampire-like device in CRONOS, 1993, or the titular mechanical army in HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, 2008) and for this PACIFIC RIM should be no different, as the Kaiju (giant monsters) in the film arrive not from space but from the Pacific Ocean [alluding to the BP Oil Spill of 2010 and other such disasters] and before long, humans are forced to build giant robots to battle the creatures in a fight reminiscent of the Titan-Olympian battle from Greek mythology.
You might think “monsters coming from the ocean battling humans? doesn’t that sound like CLOVERFIELD (2008) produced by J.J. Abrams [who also wrote and directed the Spielberg-homage monster film SUPER 8 (2011)?” and the answer is not “yes”. Whilst that symmetry of origins for the lead monster(s) is similar it no-way represents unoriginality and artistic depth, as personally CLOVERFIELD and SUPER 8 were far from being “excellent” – CLOVERFIELD was nothing more than an MTV movie with annoying human characters and SUPER 8 was little-more than a rip-off Spielberg cinema, which demonstrates Abrams over-rated spectacle and left this reviewer in boredom for STAR TREK (2009 – on that note the new STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, 2013, seems a right snooze-fest, and gives little hope that the direction in STAR WARS EPISODE VII, 2015, will be any good because of Abrams).
Although it has been 5 years since del Toro’s last film (HELLBOY II), this film should demonstrate that whether Hollywood has succeeded in recruiting him, del Toro is very much an auteur and chooses his projects carefully, and makes them into visual splendors regardless of the budget or box-office gross. If you are a fan of his cinema, or just enjoy the Kaiju monster movies of Japan such as Godzilla, maybe even just want to watch a decent summer blockbuster, then PACIFIC RIM should be the choice you make.
