Pacific Rim: The Black is a bleaker take on the franchise, and all the better for it
TV Reviews Pacific Rim
Pacific Rim is the kind of movie that works almost too hard to lend thematic heft to what is an otherwise simple premise: giant robots fighting giant monsters. That’s a base-level, macro-lizard-brain pleasure, and Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham’s ode to anime, kaiju, mecha, and tokusatsu taps into that with all the bombast and chaos they could muster. Its drifting conceit—in which two co-pilots of the mechs (called Jaegers) mentally and emotionally link up to best control the massive machine—comes across too nebulous and under-explored to make its dramatic side hold water. Or perhaps it’s just a concept that doesn’t quite cohere for American audiences; the first movie underperformed in the U.S. but was a massive success overseas. Pacific Rim earned a more bombastic sequel that didn’t do as well. The latest iteration of the story is at once more expansive than the films and bleaker, though the anime influences still hold.
Pacific Rim: The Black is a far cry from its source, ratings-wise. The overwrought fun of the first film was a PG-13 wrecking wonderland; The Black is a violent, dark, hard R. Within the first five minutes of the pilot, Jaeger pilots are directly killed by a kaiju monster; after 10, an entire city population has been wiped out. And it gets only more dour from there. Pacific Rim: The Black is a much more depressing, bleaker take on the franchise, and arguably is better for it. Here, Australia is the setting for these oversized battles, but unlike the films, the battle between humanity and monsters is effectively over. A last-ditch effort involves the parents of Taylor (Calum Worthy) and Hayley Travis (Gideon Adlon) co-piloting a Jaeger to fight off the last batch of beasties as they also guide a bus filled with passengers (adults and children) to safety. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps, the military group in charge of the Jaegers, then implements what appears to be some kind of final attack called “The Black” (the exact nature of what this is unclear, but the comment “We’re on our own” is telling). The Jaeger and the people on the bus are the only humans left. In desperation, the elder Travises mech-march off into the desolate unknown to find help, leaving Taylor, Hayley and the rest in a hidden oasis community. That was five years ago.
A vague, hollow hopelessness is palpable in Pacific Rim: The Black’s early going. It underpins everything, especially in the first two episodes: the wide, empty expanse of dead fields and arid canyons; the dilapidated buildings and cars across ruined urban landscapes; the sparse color palette and haunting score that background it all. That hopelessness is best expressed through the interactions between Hayley and Taylor, the two siblings who respond to the dire reality and developing failures in honest, painful ways. Hayley’s more gung-ho, determining spirit is sapped immediately as she blames herself for an early-going disaster within the community, an event that transforms Travis’ initial reluctance to break from the status quo into a a more active resolution to find a way forward. These feelings, constantly in flux over the course of these three episodes, are portrayed in ways that feel earnest and nuanced ways, even if they represent familiar anime tropes: elaborate dream sequences, flashy shouting matches, haze-filled flashbacks. They’re all done well, though, and never overtake the most effective choice: the small, personal, one-on-one moments where the two siblings just talk and connect over their shared trauma and need for one another.
Even the Travis siblings’ discovery of the last Jaeger comes across as a fleeting victory. Named Atlas Destroyer, its AI is a blunt, honest computer called Loa (Erica Lindbeck) that adds a soft layer of humor to the situation, but the reality is that it’s a weaponless mech with little power and little tech to actually fight off encroaching kaiju. Hayley has no idea how to drift or pilot the thing, and Taylor only passed a written pilot exam. The Jaeger is less a cool, ass-kicking battle machine and more of a shell of protection, and a mobile setting for reflecting on the past, present, and future. Pacific Rim: The Black spends a lot of time pushing back on the films’ frenetic use of explosions, battles, colors, and destruction for something richer, darker, and emotionally draining. (There are cool, ground-shattering monster/mech fights, and they look great and dynamic, but don’t seem to be the emphasis of this show.) Lives are lost, society is gone. What to do from there is the central question.
Yet it’s at the end of the second episode, and most of the third, where that question starts to take a backseat for less interesting mysteries, threatening to become more of a generic, multi-layered sci-fi conspiracy thriller. A surprising discovery in a P.P.D.C. laboratory, for example, ends up distracting from the raw interplay between the Taylor and Hayley; the much bigger creature lurking about the ruined city is pretty recognizable but is clearly meant to set up more (uninteresting) questions. By the end of the third episode, the siblings are caught up in some kind of black market, paramilitary refugee camp that’s warring with another unseen one—by the time someone brings up the ominous “Sisters,” Pacific Rim: The Black becomes less an anime version of The Leftovers and more like a subplot from a Metal Gear Solid game. Even the mysterious “Black” from the first episode takes on a more epic, enigmatic tinge.
Perhaps the revelations and discoveries in future episodes will make sense and open up brand new characters and storylines that will bring more to the exploration of what it means to fight for survival when all seems lost. That may be an old saw, both in the West (the endless Walking Deads) and in the East (Attack On Titan), but Pacific Rim: The Black’s emphasis on its brother and sister leads provides a specific point of view that’s deeply, earnestly engaging. There’s a danger that its forays into Lost-esque mysteries will derail from this, but hopefully it won’t stray too far from its strength, which is, surprisingly enough, hopelessness.
54 Comments
I know that it’s an anime staple, but I hate when shows kill the interesting characters (the adults/parents) to focus on the characters I don’t care about (teenagers.)
Interesting. I had no plans to watch this but I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the review Kevin!
Was mildly interested in this but the review actually makes it sound really cool. A darker, more somber look at this universe sounds like an interesting approach.
I had completely forgotten that this was coming out, but your review has intrigued me! Plus it’s only 7 episodes, so it should be a quick watch.
The first movie wasn’t bleak enough?? sheesh
In 2013 it was bleak. If you released it in 2021 it would be the feel good hit of the summer.My problem with original was that the mechs were so disposable. We spend a good ten minutes meeting them all and seeing them transported into battle, then they promptly get shredded. You came for the mechs, right? Let us see them kick a little ass at least.
They really didn’t put enough emphasis on how drifting with the Kaiju brain gave the enemy the specs on all the available Jaegers. The two Kaiju were specifically designed to counter the Jaegers that were considered ‘field ready’ at that point.
Hell, Cherno Alpha was specifically designed to fake out Kaiju by having the cockpit be in the chest instead of the head and to have dual nuclear-powered flamethrowers that never got used or mentioned in the film but were the basis for the Jaeger design for everything from the shoulders up. Of course, because of Newts drift, the Kaiju knew exactly where the cockpit was and killed the pilots.
Gipsy Danger was the anomaly since Mako was personally handling its
reconstruction and apparently kept the changes she made from the base design to herself.
We also never really got to see how advanced Striker Eureka was compared to the prior generation’s Jaegers since it was neutralized fairly quickly. The same thing would happen to Saber Athena in Pacific Rim 2, where I believe it was meant to be the most advanced of the Jaegers from that group as well.
given how thin the plot was of the first one (but still loved it), is watching the sequel necessary to enjoy this?
not really
I guess I’m the one that has to say it. Pacific Rim 2 was actually a lot of fun. It reminded me of certain comic book sequels to movies where they just throw a bunch of goofy ideas out there because, why the hell not? It’s not as well crafted as the original, obviously, but I found myself grinning through that entire film, even though the special effects are just a tad better than your average movie on the syfy channel.
I agree! The common criticism of Uprising I always see is that the robots feel too floaty; that great care was taken in the first movie to really hammer home how big and heavy these machines are. And like? I’m already suspending massive amounts of disbelief about a giant metal man punching a dinosaur from another dimension, what kind of shit do I give if that metal man can do a backflip or not?Sucks what they did to Mako though.
I mean, the special effects are a massive step down, but to make up for it they basically stuffed the film with enough goofy ideas to fill up two sequels. So all in all, it doesn’t bother me.
I love when people are watching cyborgs warp through space time and talk to suns, but then the cyborg doesn’t have to power up often enough so NOPE suspension of disbelief has BEEN CANCELED
Fridging Mako in service to appeasing the Chinese movie going audience was a crime.
GOD it was such BULLSHITMako is the best, justice for Mako.
All the stars.
Was that why they did it? I thought the actress didn’t want to come back for more than a couple days, so they killed her off early so she wouldn’t have to hang around.
I’ve never heard anything like that and this is consistent with Hollywood’s kowtowing to the CCP. Usually it’s via censorship, but they’ve also jammed in some pretty obvious stuff too. ID4-2’s pointless China-centric part of the opening. The setting of the Tranformers:TLK whole Dinobot sequence. Humanity saved in “2012″ because China had the foresight to build the arcs. Sandra Bullock saved in “Gravity” by going to a Chinese station. (Bullock also re-made “The Blind Side” featuring a Chinese table tennis player, but I digress)
So do I think they kicked Mako to the curb so they could feature an entire set-in-China scene and introduce Chinese characters to appease the CCP?
Absolutely.
(Because it has to be said: I am NOT anti-Chinese. I simply have no use for a Communist regime committing all manner of atrocities like the systemic genocide of the Uighurs.)
That’s right — China was the reason we even got a Pacific Rim sequel. Then why not just not have Mako at all, and replace her with a Chinese actress? Let her and Charlie Hunnam show up for a cameo where it’s like, “Sorry we can’t help, but we got kids now.”The fridging did not sit well with me — or anyone else, obviously.
Maybe that’s why they set the climax at Tokyo getting its shit ruined, or that’s just paying tribute to the kaiju movies of old.
The travesty of killing off the central Japanese character in a film series that’s a love letter to Japanese mecha and monster films.
Its hard to establish how big your fighting machines are when your fight scene is on top of a frozen, featureless lake of indeterminate size.The city smashing was fun though, even though (or because) one Jaeger had a “lassoo a building to pull it down! It does nothing!” attack.
I wholeheartedly agree. It was when those 3 kaiju combined into a mega kaiju and fought those brightly-colored Jaegers brandishing martial-arts weapons it dawned on me: I am watching a Power Rangers episode on truck-stop speed, and I’m all in for it.
i actually think the second is slightly better. boyega is incredibly charming and, frankly, in the first one i felt like i could barely see what was going on.
That’s a bridge too far for me, but Boyega was absolutely great in it. I have no clue why they didn’t let him use his native accent in the damn Star Wars movies. His American accent is fine, but letting him just keep his English accent supercharges his charm.
I daresay Boyega got more to do and showed more range in Uprising than in all 3 STAR WARS sequels.
I still haven’t seen it and I LOVED pacific rim 1
Adjust your expectations, but it’s absolutely worth your time.
Expectations adjusted haha
Pacific Rim: Uprising feels like an above-average sequel to a dark and violent movie that attracts a large fanbase of kids…who should be too young to have even seen the first one! So the writers create a kid character for younger audiences, the script watches its language (and any sex if the first one had it), the violence gets toned down and the physical comedy tuned up, and instead of John Boyega and Scott Eastwood having an argument/Male Bonding moment over shots in a bar they have it over ice cream in the pantry.
I can definitely see how it feels like the cartoon adaptation of the hard-R movie that they used to release in the 80s, like for Rambo or Robocop.
Uprising was okay, but the super robot nerd in me wishes that we could get a Shin Getter Robo Armageddon type sequel of it where it’s just an all out war and everything just keep escalating like crazy. I imagine that humanity just so fed up with the kaiju problem that they send in a massive jaeger fleet inside the rift to be rid of the invaders once and for all, which obviously goes south pretty fast and the new team’s only hope to finish the mission is the sudden reappearance of Raleigh inside the rift who went MIA several years ago on a solo secret mission to retrieve and repair what’s left of Gypsy Danger and its AI which still houses Mako’s brain pattern.
I can’t remember liking much about it, but do remember finding the ending really dumb, where the resolution was to fly one of the mechas into the atmosphere and then crash it into the monster. Like after all that, to kill the monster all you really needed was a big rocket? You didn’t need the mechs stuff at all?
Dunno. The main appeal of Pacific Rim (apart from the deliciously bombastic soundtrack) is seeing giant robots in ‘live’, realistic-looking format, as opposed to the million drawings of them we’ve seen, especially in the anime genre.So, whereas the film is a bit special, an animated series looks a bit “oh look another giant robots anime”.
I mean, when you could see them through the rain or darkness or rain and darkness or darkness and ocean silt
The Japanese also do live-action Mecha shows — although it’s true they all seem to grow from human-sized to gigantic and back every episode….
the concept of a “training” Jager is also fucking stupid.
Only just finished the first episode, but I’m liking it so far. Unless things really shift gears, I wouldn’t say it’s super-bleak or ‘Hard R’ (I feel like I see worse in Shonen manga), but it is a more serious take that I enjoy – reminds me of the original script for the first Pacific Rim, where the monsters seemed a little more terrifying. Still not a fan of the 3D anime look on the whole, but it works well and the English voice actors are good.
Really surprised to read this because what I watched was a well executed but very standard mecha Vs monsters anime.Nothing about it, bar the design work, said Pacific Rim to me.Know why I love Pacific Rim? Because it’s FUN. It’s intentionally goofy! It used shit that anime takes for granted and turned it into a super crunchy, mechanical feeling, bombastic, hydraulic goof fest.This show… I’ve just seen it all before so many times.Its a great set up and it looks good to run for a few seasons and, as its own thing, it’s pretty good. But as a Pacific Rim thing? It’s way off base.
i liked it even less because it breaks so many established rules from PR1.
the first was not a complex film so far as plot but actually did a really good job of detailing its world with background information, especially in respect to the Jagers. these are not simply your standard giant anime robot, they are bots pushing the absolute limits of theoretical human technology in the near future and they BEHAVE like it. every single one of them are absolute maintenance whores, which adds that layer of real feel to the entire film.
drifting? supposedly a rare match? fuck it all the mains and a few of the side characters can drift! because fuck rules!
i find the humans are the bad guys trope here to be both the most infuriating and most cliche.
Fully agree about the amoral militaristic group of survivors. That is by far the weakest element in the show, but the brain-wiped super-soldier girl is also tropey as all hell.I think it’s suffering a little from being half a season that Netflix is calling Season 1 which they like to do with their original animation for some reason. But those seven episodes, bar a couple of really neat moments are pretty underwhelming.
ignoring just how cliche it is, it just utterly ignores the message of the first film of humanity coming together. they spell it the fuck out in the opening 5 minutes! but nope, lets fall back on worn out ass old story telling we’ve been doing for decades with a lousy coat of paint piggybacking on a mixed franchise.
what this should have been, was the covering of the Kaiju War. give me a time frame of just before the first Jagers are finished to the winding down of the PPDF. show me the story of how humanity rose to fight giant monster aliens, got knocked on our ass with the loss of Gypsy Danger, and were pushed further to the brink before it catches up with the first film. there is SO MUCH STORY in that frame, why didn’t we get that?
hell, show me the solo Pentacost fight! and the level of damage it did to him as he continued to soldier on.
Am here for the “Atlantic Rim” love.
arctic rim must have used the menthol H
“Pacific Rim” reflected del Toro’s love of two things he grew up watching – old kaiju films and lucha-dora wrestling – and he just wanted to make something that fed the 5-year olds in us who enjoyed Saturday mornings.
I’m looking forward to the bleaker Atlantic Rim sequel Atlantic Rim 2: Bull Butter.
I was surprised at how much of Atlantic Rim…didn’t suck.I mean, the stuff on the ground was “Durr…”, but the scenes with the Mecha v. Big Monster action were better than I expected. The Asylum has been doing some fairly decent CGI given their tight budgets — and occasionally, when they veer away from doing “mockbusters”, they turn out the odd decent film.
Well, it had Edgar Montrose saying “Bull butter” and “get on the horn!”. Although the lack of him detonating anything was a bit of a disappointment.
I only watched that one by way of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Yeah, I can’t blame you. The acting, and I use the word advisedly, is largely not great — Graham Greene’s Gen. Hadley was okay, but our young heroes were…Well, put it this way — with years of acting school, they might improve enough to be on The CW.
I’m pinning him and I’m shaking and I’m fighting with him! Spitfire comes in, dude! He’s got a full payload. The 50 Cal didn’t even leave a scratch. He pulls up sharply, comes around for a second run. Spitfire balls up, dude, he comes in close! Drops it, nails it, BUH BOOOOOM! The thing is gone!
This review stops after 3 episodes? When the whole 7-episode season is available to watch? It’s not until Episode 6 that we findSPOILERMei, the girl who brought Taylor, Hayley, and the boy to camp figured out Shane lied to her, the giant Kaiju-mech is a drone that survived the feedback loop that destroyed all the others in Uprising, got a mind of its own, and made a connection with the boy in the tube. And it turns out by 7 the boy can turn into a kaiju, too. And watching them nuke the kaiju that destroyed their village in Episode 1 ruled.END SPOILER
Hayley’s more gung-ho, determining spirit is sapped immediately as she
blames herself for an early-going disaster within the community
She should be blamed and I can’t believe the brother doesn’t bring it up more, particularly when she gets bent out of shape when he doesn’t like one of her ideas.I’m not even sure what the point of it was, it’s not like there’s any growth that comes out of it. She feels kinda bad, but it doesn’t change her actions in any way.I would also not characterize her as gung-ho. Stupid and reckless is more apt and I don’t know that she’s any less so at the end of the season.
Which isn’t to suggest that her brother is any brain trust either. He just realizes that actions have consequences and at least attempts to put some thought into what he does.Which even though all of that was pretty negative, I did like the season. I just wish they had dealt more with the very serious mental issues that would have arisen due to her actions in the beginning.
you’re expecting a level of thought the second movie couldn’t manage