Pacific Rim is one of the greatest,
dumbest action movies I've seen in a long, long time. And I mean
that in the best possible way. This movie isn't dumb like, say, Star
Trek Into Darkness, whose villain's behaviour can only be reconciled
by assuming he is both working for and against another villain
simultaneously, or The Dark Knight Rises, which completely wastes the
entire emotional arc of the trilogy by having the people of Gotham
not do a damn thing to save themselves. No, Pacific Rim is dumb in
the biggest, coolest, most fantastic way possible, in the kind of way
that doesn't let silly little things like reality and physics get in
the way of grandiose displays of pure spectacle.
For example, there's a scene in the
trailers where the hero's robot, Gipsy Danger, wields a cargo ship
like a sword. This scene is dumb as a box of hammers. Just picking
up a ship like that from one end would probably snap it in half
amidships, nevermind dragging one end along a pretty long causeway.
And then it gets swung through the air and collides with a giant
monster. Multiple times! You can punch a hole in the hull of a ship
like this by hitting it with a particularly sharp rock; the chances
that it would've remained intact long enough to serve as a make-shift
weapon for not just one, but several strokes, is essentially nil.
But it looks cool as hell!
