I'm Pretty Sure it was Supposed to be Bad

Pacific Rim

Yes, the movie.

Some have called it Mecha vs. Monster porn.  I can see that. Others simply called it bad. I can see that too. The “live Anime” tag is pretty accurate as well.

I’m not going to review Pacific Rim, I’m going to rant about a few things.  Problems that I see in a lot of stories today, and especially in action movies.

Plot.  Oh for a plot!

Pacific Rim had a plethora of interesting hooks and gotchas:

There are huge monsters coming from a crack in the ocean floor, attacking major cities

Humans built giant robots to combat them

Because the interface with the robots is so intense, it takes two humans to pilot one robot

The two humans have to share a consciousness in what they call the drift

The monster attacks are becoming more frequent and more powerful

Our main character’s brother dies at the beginning of the movie—they were still linked

The main character pilots his heavily damaged robot by himself (supposedly not possible)

The governments shuts down the robots and starts to build a gigantic wall along the entire Pacific coast—both sides

There is an entire black market industry around the monster leftovers

We have a general who is dying and is the only other person to pilot a robot solo

There is a girl the general rescued years ago who desperately wants to be a pilot

There are pilots from different countries who have different experience as well as egos

We have brother and sister pilots, father son pilots

Two cracked scientists figure out part of what is going on, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to figure out the rest

The monsters are going to kill us all if these pilots don’t stop them

You see, there are a lot of interesting hooks in there, that could have taken awesome twists and turns. Just think about the repercussions alone of sharing a conscious with another person...

But NOOooo…

We get the very simple plot of “Monsters are going to destroy the world unless we beat them up a lot” glued together by pretty much what I typed above.  Given in just as much time.

My question is this…when will the movie-goers of the world rise up in retaliation and ask for 15 more minutes of plot and that much less CG action?  Focus, curse you!

The same is true in books, and most venues for stories.

My hope as both a writer and a reader is that this trend will change. It’s not just great action or a great voice or a quirky character that makes a story, it’s a balance between them all that gently leads the reader through the plot and delivers them at the end with a new perspective on some aspect of life.

Giant monsters vs. huge robots is cool, but if I don’t care about why they’re fighting or the people involved, then I’m going to change the station.

Although I do have to admit that Pacific Rim did wash away most of the girlie-ness that I accumulated over the two months before my wedding. So I guess it did it's job.