Hello there puny humans,
today I want to talk to you about something that has been bugging me for quite some time. When I watched
Pacific Rim I had an amazing time and it became one of my favourite films. Nevertheless, I understand that this is a movie that is targeted to a specific audience, so not everyone might enjoy it the way I did. What I
can't accept, however, is the phrase: "Well, it's just the same shit as Transformers".
It isn't. Sure, it has giant robots/aliens fighting each other, but that is as big of a similarity as the one between the Spielberg-classic
Jaws and the god-awful
Shark Attack-franchise. So let me enlighten you with the following article, where I will examine a few elements of these films and highlight their differences:
1. The Right Direction
Granted, this is not the best argument, as almost every director has hits and misses, but just look at the filmmakers who conceived these projects: In one corner, there is Guillermo del Toro. A man, whom you will most likely associate with the dark fantasy drama
Pan's Labyrinth, which was nominated for 6
Oscars and won 3. During his career del Toro himself has earned a total of 27 different film awards and has also published three novels that then spawned comic books and a TV series.
In the other corner is Michael Bay. A nine-time
Golden Raspberry Nominee, who actually won the infamous award twice:
Worst Director and
Worst Film, both in 2009. Further, this guy's directing style has gotten its own nickname in Hollywood, "Bayhem", which is obviously a wordplay on "mayhem", a term that literally means chaos or confusion. I mean, we are talking about the person that wanted to turn the
Ninja Turtles into aliens...
2. Less Is More
Of course, these films are not intellectual cinema. They simply want to entertain in a spectacular fashion.
Pacific Rim understands that. Sure, the whole two-pilots-for-a-jaeger thing was a tiny bit complicated, but otherwise the story is very simple and straightforward: Huge Aliens attack our cities, so we fight back with huge robots. There isn't much more to it. But exactly that is perfect, because we don't need more.
The
Transformers movies on the other hand shoehorne too many unnecessary subplots and too much mythological non-sense into their story-line. With all that overflow, you'll need a few seconds to realize that at the end of the first movie, they defeat the bad guy by giving him "the cube", so the thing they tried to hide from him during the entire rest of the film. Ultimately, this means that if our "heroes" hadn't been there to "help", a whole city would have been
saved from destruction... awesome! -_-
I won't even start to rant about the second film, which was such a clusterfuck that even its director admitted it in an interview with the
Empire: "The real fault with [Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap."
3. Shooting Action - or: "What the fuck is happening?"
Now, as previously stated, the action is the one big thing both of these films really are about. But here too, the movies have little in common. I talked about Bayhem before and I am going to explain it further:
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| Action Scene from Transformers 2 |
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Michael Bay tries to make his shots as epic as possible, which is a commendable plan, but as always he goes too far over the top. Most of the time, his action sequences have multiple layers to achieve depth, and at least two of those layers contain objects that move in different directions to make the shot more dynamic. Additionally, the camera usually moves yet another way. If used correctly, this kind of technique can look awesome, as seen in the amazing tracking shot in
The Avengers. Bay, however, does a few mistakes: Firstly, the different movements happen way too fast and often he edits his scenes with quick cuts. This makes the picture very agitated and restless. Secondly, he uses this style almost exclusively instead of highlighting certain events. As a result, it either becomes less special or even exhausting for the audience's eyes. On top of all that, Bay throws tons of explosions and flying debris in the mix, creating images that are extremly overcrowded, and especially when you are working with robots, it gets hard to tell where top or bottom is. If you want to find out more about Michael Bays convoluted style of directing I recommend
Tony Zhou's youtube video on the matter.
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| Action Scene from Pacific Rim |
Now,
Pacific Rim on the other hand has a much more calm and epileptic-friendly way of creating awe-inspiring pictures. Instead of cramming a large number of things in the frame to demonstrate their variation in size, del Toro makes his creatures look big by using three certain techniques: The first one (and to be fair, Bay does this too) is using very low camera angles. By making the audience look far up at his creatures, they immediately appear to be humongous. Moreover, this effect is also achieved by showing only parts of their bodies in the frame, implying that they are simply to huge to be filmed in a full body shot, and leaving their actual size to the imagination of the viewer. Lastly, del Toro chooses the perfect settings for these fights. For example, knowing that the battle you are witnessing takes place in an ocean, but simultaneously seeing that the water is only knee-deep for these robots is, in all its simplicity, extremely powerful.
4. The Pieces of the Puzzle
Now, we've checked "action" and "plot" off the list, and I admit that these might be the most crucial elements to determine the quality of this kind of film. Nonetheless, I am convinced there are a lot of other little things that can define a movie. So, I'll use this abstract to mention some of those:
The aliens in Pacific Rim are called "Kaijūs", which is japanese for giant monster, but the kaijū-film is even its own genre with Godzilla as its most famous representative. Guillermo del Toro pays great homage to that. For instance, his Kaijūs' acid spit is clearly inspired by Godzilla's famous atomic breath. The only thing Michael Bay pays tribute to is either himself (by shamelessly re-using footage of his older films) or commercial brands. But he doesn't only stuff his movies with a ridiculous amount of product placement. On average, the fourth Transformers film has an American flag on screen every three and a half minutes, and of course our friends from the U.S. Army are never far either. Pacific Rim is free of such an over-patriotism. In fact, its storyline has the whole world teaming up, with the biggest players next to the U.S. being Japan, Russia and Australia. Further, the commanding officer is British, and the scientists are German. Admittedly, the movie does stereotype these nations to an extent (think of the Russian's stone-cold faces), but at least it doesn't go full-on racist like Bay, who makes the only two
dumb illiterate robots speak with a mexican accent.
If we talk about racism, we have to address sexism as well. It is
very easy to see that Bay chooses his "actresses" based on
looks rather than talent. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing
attractive women as much as the next guy, but I see no reason why
female characters can't be beautiful
and relevant to the story at the
same time. Just recently,
Edge of Tomorrow had exactly that in Emily
Blunt's Rita Vrataski, the most beautiful of bad-asses. But
Pacific Rim has some tough chicks of its own, with the fearless russian
and, of course, the highly skilled Mako Mori. They might be the only two female
roles in the film, but in this particular movie feud I will count
the absence of a negative (like Bay constantly writing strippers into
his scripts) as a positve.
5. Listen to Others
If I really haven't convinced you yet, maybe some solid statistics
are due: The website
Rotten Tomatoes collects online reviews from writers who are certified members of various writing guilds or film critic associations. On this site,
Pacific Rim scored a 72% rating, while the
Transformers films are at an average of 32.5% (the highest score being 57% for the first one, and the lowest score for the second part with an 18%).
6. Conclusion
At this point, you
might have noticed that I am not too fond of the
Transformers movies and the director behind them. It's true that I could easily go on
talking about the qualities of the actors or the time and effort put
into sequels, but in the end I only want you to take away this:
In times like these, where it seems like a new blockbuster is produced every day, we shouldn't forget what good and what bad film making is. Aside from our personal preference of a specific topic, we must judge a movie by looking at what it is trying to be, and wether it used skill or cheap tricks to achieve that. As we are showered with countless films, it is tempting to categorize very broadly, but often that doesn't do a movie justice. Because even seemingly mindless films about giant ass-kicking robots can be very different in quality!
I hope you guys enjoyed this article and had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. For those who want to know more fun or interesting stuff about the two films, I've put together a
TRANSFORMERS vs. PACIFIC RIM playlist on youtube. Let me know if you want me to do more articles like this and what your own thoughts about those movies are. So feel free to comment below!
Sincerely,
Your Cinemartian!
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| "I am first and foremost a movie geek." - del Toro | |
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| "I am, like, a true American!" - Bay |
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