Now for one of the big budget movies of the year, after one of the smaller budget scifi movies I watched & review 2 days ago. Pacific Rim is a much awaited 2013 American science fiction monster film directed by Guillermo del Toro, written by del Toro and Travis Beacham, and starringCharlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. The movie is based around the Japanese concepts of kaijus – giant monsters. In the film, Kaiju’s are alien creatures from another dimension that come to earth – not from the stars – but through an interdimenonsional portal under our oceans. The opening was created after the tectonic plates shifted above the portal, allowing the creatures to slip though a large gap.

To combat these large creatures that create havoc & destruction in their wake, the nations of the world joined forces in creating the Jaegers – colossal humanoid war robots/machines each manned by two pilots whose brains are linked to share the overwhelming mental load of piloting the sophisticated machines. The Jaegers are effective but the creatures are able to adapt and their numbers seem to increase. After their initial appearance in 2013 and now in 2020 during a mission off the coast of Alaska, Raleigh Beckett & his brother Yancy combat a large kaiju but in the attack Yancy is killed, traumatizing his younger brother. Raleigh is able to make it to the beach in the broken jaeger but he leaves the program and spends the next 5 years working in construction. By 2025, the Pacific Rim governments have discontinued the Jaeger project and resort to building massive coastal walls to protect humanity from the Kaijus. The four remaining Jaegers are redeployed to Hong Kong to defend the unfortified coast until the wall is completed. Stacker Pentecost (Elba), commander of the Jaeger forces, devises a plan to end the war by using a nuclear weapon to destroy the portal.

What follows up next is a few predictables, some expendables, a handful of cliches and big things going bang. Pentecost, the former boss, approaches Raleigh and convinces him to return and pilot Gipsy Danger, the Jaeger he and his brother Yancy once piloted. Arriving at Hong Kong and after trying out a few possible candidates for a co-pilot, Raleigh happens to befriend and select Mako Mori – an untested, inexperienced pilot, who happens to be the adopted daughter of Pentecost, rescued by the latter when she was just a child in the wake of the first wave of Kaiju attacks. Also in their first test together Mako freezes and – since their brains are linked – Raleigh is able to see just what happened when she lost her parents and how she barely escaped being crushed by a kaiju and saved by Pentecost. Her freezing up nearly destroys the center hence she is told to stand down and removed from the combat list. There are the annoyingy loud speaking cliched brainy scientists who don’t see eye to eye and who compete with each other but eventually in the end they come together and join forces which give the fighter the intelligence needed. There is the brat – Chuck Hansen, another pilot who works with his father, who taunts Mako & Raleigh and who comes to blows with them. But he heroically gives his life up in the battle.

Then there is Penetcost – the benevolent yet tough as nails, ultimate professional and mission leader, who is dying and will give his life up to save the rest of the team and has that one last tear jerking moment with his daughter before the final moments! Edris Elba even does his version of the President’s speech from Independence Day : “Today. Today… At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them. Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!” I almost expected him to say “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!” And we have Raleigh the down on his luck and broken hero out to prove something. So when the other jaegers are crushed and beaten Mako & Raleigh are called int action and are able to kill off the kaijus one by one, with a little help from Chuck & Penetcost – who suits up as Chucks dad gets injured. The scientists discover – by joining minds with the kaijus that they are not wild beasts, but biological weapons fighting at the behest of a race of alien conquerors. Then there is Hannibal Chau, a trafficking don who gets swallowed up by a baby kaiju but post credits cuts his way out of the newborn’s stomach.

Pentecost co-pilots the Jaeger carrying the weapon, but they are forced to detonate it early, sacrificing themselves in an effort to destroy the powerful Kaijus guarding the portal. Raleigh and Mako seize the final Kaiju with Gipsy Danger and use it to enter the portal. Running out of oxygen, Raleigh ejects Mako’s escape pod, initiates the nuclear reactor’s overload sequence, then ejects himself. Gipsy Danger‘s nuclear core detonates, laying waste to the alien conquerors and destroying the portal. Mako and Raleigh’s escape pods surface safely in the Pacific, and the duo embrace as rescue helicopters arrive. Although the portal is closed we will find a way to create a situation for the sequel(s). Hunnam & Pearlman reunite from Sons of Anarchy and Hunnam’s character is basically a softer Jackson Teller! I didn’t expect much from the characters or acting from the movie but visually – this movies rocks. 8.5 for the special effects and the production which is awesome. You’ll never care for any of the characters and won’t even remember their names by the end credits too! Still awesome enough of an action movie!

This movie almost slipped underneath the radar among the big budget and big name stars releases of 2013. Europa Report is a a 2013 science fiction film starring Anamaria Marinca, Karolina Wydra, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Sharlto Copley, Embeth Davidtz and Christian Camargo, directed by Sebastián Cordero. It is a found footage film but – before you roll your eyes – it’s good quality cameras and uses a space shuttle cameras for their found footage stuff and also what appears to be a documentary of the mission’s headquarters back on earth.

The story is told in the form of a documentary or news report and is told by Dr. Unger, CEO of Europa Ventures of the mission of Europa One, which is a privately funded mission. The 6 astronauts are to travel to Europa, one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, to try to find potential sources of life. The 6 are captain Willam Xu and pilot Rosa Dasque who launch the ship with chief science officer Daniel Luxembourg, marine biology science officer Katya Petrovna, chief engineer Andrei Blok & junior engineer James Corrigan. During the mission the 6 members interact with each other and the cameras to record their journey and messages to family & friends. After a year of traveling in space a solar flare hits the ship knocking out communication with mission control on Earth. Andrei & James try and fix the system while on space walk. However an accident punctures Andrei’s glove and his oxygen levels drop. James grabs the tether and drags Andrei back to the airlock but they notice that James has hydrazine splashed on his suit from the accident. It is decided that the suit cannot be decontaminated and if James enters the ship, the air will become irreversibly toxic. With time & oxygen running out for the senior engineer, James pushes him into the ship against Andrei’s protests. This maneuver pushes causes James to float away, away from the spaceship and he records his goodbyes to his crew as he disappears from view and dies.

The ship finally reaches Europa and lands but a thermal vent throws the ship off course from the original target zone. They begin the drilling through the ice which is much thicker than the area where they intended to land and several quakes occur while they are drilling.  Andrei, who is sleep-deprived and eliciting concern in the rest of the crew appears to witness a light outside the ship but is unable to record it or otherwise convince the crew. A probe is sent under the ice surface and into the ocean below but is soon damaged by a heavy dose of radiation from the depths. Katya dons a spacesuit and goes out onto the surface to get more samples from their target zone. The samples, which Daniel examines remotely contains several single cell organisms. Katya sees a light in the distance and moves in that direction, away from the direct line of sight. As Katya approaches the light glowing through the ice, the ground below her breaks and the crew watches her on remote cameras in horror as she plunges downwards through the water. Daniel suspects that the light from Katya’s suit attracted a larger, more complex creature and the crew agree to leave so that they could bring their exciting findings back to Earth. However just as they launch they experience a malfunction and the ship crashes back to the surface ironically landing at the originally intended spot. William is killed as he unbuckled his seat to activate the shielding and he falls hard breaking is neck on impact.

The ship now damaged is leaking oxygen and losing heat. To try and make repairs Andrei & Daniel don suits and open the airlock only for a radiation surge to hit them and Daniel disappears from sight while he is stepping out. Unable to patch the fuel line, Andrei suggests that a repair of the communication array is possible, if he cannibalizes parts from the ship’s life support system. This means sure death for the two of them but Rosa agrees and records a short video of herself giving a current situation summary. As Andrei finishes his work, Rosa notices light sources behind him that surround the ship. Rosa successfully re-establishes communication with Earth and all the collected images and data that have been saved over the blackout months (as well as real time data) are sent, just as the ground cracks and the ship begins to sink. Knowing she will die, Rosa opens the airlock to let the water in, in hopes of revealing the source of the light. The water rises beneath her and fills up making it’s way to the cockpit and the last part of the video sent is of the source of the strange light, a large bioluminescent animal that looks like a comb jelly (ctenophore) common in our oceans on Earth. The movie ends with Dr. Unger and several experts commenting on the ground-breaking implications of the discovery of non-alien life on Europa and honoring the sacrifices of the expedition members.

Original and sincere it is a good effort by the makers to tell a good scifi story. They also deserve respect for meticulously researching the real science behind its fictional story. There is some limitation because of the found footage style of shooting and you are left with sincerely hoping that this movie was a larger big budget venture with proper style filming. Still a good movie to enjoy for the science fiction enthusiast. I’m giving it an 8 outta 10!