Pacific Rim (2013) Review

Pacific Rim
Director: 
Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi

Sometimes I see a film that makes me realise how angry I am at all films. Pacific Rim is one of those films. I was expecting so much from this film because I love Guillermo Del Toro (Dir.) and it is sci-fi, almost apocalyptic and Idris Elba. Maybe one of the reasons I was so disappointed with this film was because I was expecting so much. However, this is not only a review of Pacific Rim, this is also a rant to get across how angry I get when I see a film with one main female character surrounded by a sea of angry white male characters; penis fest does not even cut it.

First of all to the film itself – good look, dire storyline. I was absolutely amazed by the very opening scene in which you think you are drifting through space, then suddenly you see you’re actually under water, coupled with the commentary about how you always think aliens will come from space but they actually came from underwater, this particular opening scene was amazing, the highlight of the whole film for me. There were also the fights between the Kaiju and the Jaegers, which looked incredible, but then again I am an absolute sucker for CGI fight scenes between inhuman species; the detail is always amazing. For me, these were the only positives of the whole film.

The storyline was utter shit, it was everything I have already seen before and I was in no way impressed. You have no idea how much I hate unnecessary and unbelievable love stories, but guess what, we have one. I would have much preferred to see more of the relationship between Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) and Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), I would have liked her character to have grown up differently to the point where she was already experienced and as good as or better than Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam). But no, she was just a poor innocent female who had to be saved by the big strong white man.

And now, a rant. Why are there no women in films? There were two women in this film, and one of them never spoke, you saw her for about a minute throughout the whole film, then she died. Mako was just a non-character; like they’ve given her so many conflicting character traits that she didn’t exist. One minute she was strong and sassy, the next shy and scared, we were shown that she could hold her own in a fight, then suddenly Raleigh (white man) was fighting for her which instantly makes me hate a film. We are constantly bombarded with the idea that women are weak and defenceless and that we need to be saved by a man, and the people who go to see these films see this as normal, so women think they need to be saved and men think they need to save them – THEY DON’T. I wish the film industry would stop stereotyping men and women and stop creating a love story out of nothing just because there are two characters of the opposite sex, it is out-dated and needs to fucking change. I want to see a non-white female character who doesn’t need to fall in love or be saved to be on screen.

I probably have more to rant about but it’s getting late, I’m tired, and I just wanted to get as much of this down as possible before I go to sleep.

5/24

By Abigail Travers

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