Geek Speak Comic

GEEK SPEAK: THE GAME

The first time we played this game is lost in the winding, trackless, uncharted recesses of my memory. How it works is this: I will grab the bottom edge of my shirt and walk into a room where my wife is on the computer, reading, or doing something on her phone. I’ll cock an eyebrow and wait patiently for her to notice me, like a cat stalking that spot on the floor, you know the one, the spot only cats can see. When she sees me I wait a moment then I lift up my shirt and I give her my best big, goofy smile.

She will then cock an eyebrow at me as if to say, “Is that how it is, then? I accept your challenge.” Then my wife will lift her shirt and we’ll stand there grinning at each other for a moment. Just before it starts to feel awkward the shirts get dropped back into place and we go back to what we were doing as though it never happened.

I have no idea how this got started. It doesn’t matter really. This game always works. It’s always fun.

 

PACIFIC RIM: WEEKS LATER AND I’M STILL SMILING

Mildly Sensational and I have a hard time getting out to see movies, which is a well established fact of parenthood. Any set of parents will testify that getting out of the house for time together for a movie and dinner is really damn difficult after you have a kid, much less kids. Now that we are expecting our second we’re put in kind of a funny place in that we have to arrange for someone to watch our daughter so that we can go out. This is to get her accustomed to being watched by other people so it’s less of a shock when someone other than her parents is watching her overnight.

The first time we arranged for someone to sit our daughter so we could go to a movie and out to dinner we went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. That was in June around the same time as Father’s day. Last month we arranged for our friends Gibbergeist and his wife to stay with Veronica and we took in Pacific Rim.

It’s over a month later and I still smile when I think about it. Let’s just say this up front, this movie is not American Beauty, nor is it any other Best Picture recipient you can name. This movie is one thing: giant sea monsters versus giant robots, and it is owns that shamelessly, even proudly!

Honesty time, I freaking loved this movie. It has its flaws, and it has a couple of moments that were truly unnecessary, but the overall film was a fantastic and enjoyable surge of cinematic adrenaline.

The thrust of the story is a war that is being fought with enormous extra-dimensional monsters who attack us from a rift deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. The giant monsters are called Kaiju, which is a Japanese word for “monster.” To battle the Kaiju humanity pools its resources and develop Jagers, which is German for “hunters.” The Jagers make use of a neural link between the machine and the pilot. The neural load is too much for a single pilot, so all Jagers have two whose minds are electronically linked. Through the link they move and fight as one person, and their movements drive those of the Jager.

When the movie starts humanity is at a turning point in the war. After initial victories they’ve started to lose, and it’s up to a small group of remaining Jagers from all over the world and their pilots to make humanities final stand, end the war, or die trying.

It’s a simple plot, but the actors embrace it with gusto. The cast is an impressive grouping of international film and television stars including Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Idris Elba (Thor and Luther), Rinko Kikuchi, and Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy and Hellboy…oh, and he’s the voice of the narrator at the beginning of all of the Fallout video games).

 

Charlie Hunnam does a solid job carrying the film, but does seem at times to be out of his depth in scenes with Idris Elba. That’s understandable. Idris Elba is an amazing actor, and he makes would could be a boring archetypal role something engaging and worthwhile. He delivers the movie’s “Cripsian’s Day Speech” (from Henry V) and he does so gloriously. Every one who’s seen the trailers has seen a piece of this speech, “…today we are cancelling the apocalypse.” There’s more to it than that…see the movie…it’s worth it.

Rinko Kikuchi is charming as an eager rookie Jager pilot. She also serves as the movie’s nominal love interest, but there’s not much romance to be had in the film. In a way that’s kind of refreshing. The filmmakers didn’t bolt on some bullshit love story in a craven maneuver calculated to rope in female viewers. Rinko’s character is unapologeticly tough, resourceful, and intelligent. She does play second fiddle to Charlie Hunnam which is a little unsatisfying as I would have liked to see this character given some more room to develop.

The supporting cast is filled out with charming character actors who at times steal the movie, even from the great Idris Elba.

There are some flaws with the movie. There are several plot holes that allow our heroes to escape an otherwise certain doom. Some scenes feel a little like filler between giant monster and robot battles. There are moments where performances come across a little flat. Again the cast does a solid job, so there aren’t a lot of flat moments.

My biggest complaints are in some unnecessary touches that completely removed me from the film. The biggest of which was the appearance of Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau. When his character is introduced it’s on the eve of a major battle with Kaiju in the streets of…I think Shanghai. Hannibal Chau is built up as this major Chinese underworld figure dealing in black market merchandise. When the character is introduced Ron Perlman gets this major reveal with a fancy camera angle intended to accentuate how physically large he really is. The moment falls laughably flat. It should work. All of the elements are there, and yet, somehow, when we meet Hannibal Chau for the first time and it’s Ron Perlman it just…fizzles.

Perlman for his part delivers a fine performance, but seems uncomfortable in the role from time to time. Given how the character was built up and placed in a very specific setting I would have loved to see the role go to one of that region’s major stars. It would have been great to have Hannibal Chau turn around and it’s Sammo Hung, or Sonny Chiba, or (best of all) Chow Yun Fat.

The action of the movie is intense and it is underscored by a muscular soundtrack. Since seeing the movie the theme from Pacific Rim (covered here by LittleVMills) has become one of my favorite things to pull up in Spotify when I want to buckle down and focus on some menial task, like tracking my hours. From the first moment a Jager engages with a Kaiju the soundtrack thunders, and hammers, and plugs into your nervous system to keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s great. I love it.

On the whole Pacific Rim is a great action movie playing the part of a war movie where the combatants are monsters and robots. Not only would I watch this movie again, I’d pay the extortionist ticket prices to see it in the theater at least one, if not two or three, times.