Anyone see Pacific Rim yet? No? Shame on you, since overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth should've made it clear this is one of those rare, original films in which the main goal is to make things 'fun'.
So naturally, I was waiting to see uber-conservatives bash the film as 'libturd propaganda' or some crap like that. But I have yet to see any such criticism. I guess they were tuckered out from decrying how White House Down pointed out the obvious about the military-industrial complex, and were just waiting for Elysium before dishing out that sort of criticism en masse again.
But I guess the real reason was because the little bits of libby-goodness in Pacific Rim were perhaps TOO subtle for the average Tea Partier to pick up on.
Journey below the orange kaiju turd to find out why. SPOILERS AHEAD
EDIT: Wow. BOTH of my first two diaries hit the community spotlight? Just from some rambling? Well, time to find a better topic for the next one. Here in Florida, that shouldn't be hard....
OK, as everyone knows by now, Guillermo del Toro's love letter to Japanese cartoons and Godzilla films deals with giant alien monsters called 'kaiju' rising from a rift in the Pacific Ocean and laying waste to cities. In response, the world's governments build massive fighting robots, called Jaegers, to counter them. But they're so big, they require TWO brains plugged in at the same time to operate, so their pilots must work in tandem to fight effectively.
But the kaijus eventually adapt (or perhaps they gasp evolve!) and the Jaegers become less effective. At this point, the leaders of the world decide to defund the Jaeger program, and opt to start building massive walls around the coast to keep the kaiju out.
Sound ridiculous? Well, the hilarity of such an absurd idea is a stab at many things we fight against every day. The film hints that the more affluent move inland to flee the kaiju, while coastal residencies are where the poorer denizens must live. Well, there's a rich character played by Ron Perlman that lives in Hong Kong, but he has a private bunker. The rest of Hong Kong's citizens must make use of public underground shelters...which can prove woefully ineffective. And as you may expect, the looming extinction of humanity does not help the world economy. So what jobs are available? Incredibly dangerous construction jobs building said wall, which increasingly desperate workers are anxious to get their hands on.
Oh yeah, and when the 'Wall of Life' proves utterly useless when a kaiju busts into Sydney, Australia...said leaders STILL insist that the 'Wall of Life' is the best option. Could we view that as an allusion to the conservatives' dogged insistence on giving tax cuts to the rich, no matter what? Or perhaps the stubborn insistence to keep banking on fossil fuels?
And the reason the kaiju are coming in the first place? Turns out their creators see this moment as the perfect opportunity to invade, as pollution caused by humans (global warming in particular, I believe) practically terraformed Earth for the invaders. Cue whining about tree-huggerishness not seen since the likes of Avatar.
What else? Oh yeah, the way the Jaegers must be operated by two pilots at once. Along with allowing an avenue for greater character development than your typical monster movie, it destroys the notion that in war, glory can be yours and yours alone. To win such a conflict, teamwork is a necessity, and you must rely on those who fight beside you. Perhaps not what your typical Tea Partier, who'll boast of singlehandedly taking out a theater full of Aurora shooters if he/she had just 'been there', wants driven home.
Another thing that'll piss off certain conservatives is the main cast ain't lily-white. Sure, the main character is (Charlie Hunnam), but the commander of the remaining Jaeger pilots is black (Idris Elba) and the main character's Jaeger co-pilot winds up being a Japanese researcher (Rinko Kikuchi). And Pacific Rim makes no attempt to make it look like America, and America alone, is going to swoop in and singlehandedly save humanity. Acting as if the United States must cooperate with the rest of the world to win a conflict? BLASPHEMY!
Sure, Elysium looks like the ultimate film representation about gross income inequality and environmental degradation, and I remember one diary hailing The Lone Ranger as a film with overarching liberal themes. But Pacific Rim was a smartly-made genre film that expresses a lot of sentiments we share without being preachy (a common criticism of Avatar). If it's still in theaters where you live, you owe it to yourselves to give it a shot. At the very least, you know you'll piss off some Tea Partiers by giving a Mexican director (who probably took the job of a 'real' American) your money.