A love letter to Pacific Rim

There are few things in this world which I can point to that are pure and authentic down to every pixel, atom and idea.

True authenticity leans in hard to its core elements and narrative. Particularly in media, we’re drowned in multi-threaded stories pushing multiple agendas and frankly, irrelevant plot points. The immersion is broken when ideas are in competition and there is no single source of truth.

Pacific Rim is the greatest movie of all time because it sticks true to the few ideas that build a complex world. It doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is and for that, it’s a timeless masterpiece.

The things that are extraordinary are so because they do ordinary things extraordinarily well:

• world building/storytelling

• cinematics/special effects

• respect for the audience

These three things have made Pacific Rim one of the most loved and devoted fan bases for over a decade, despite no sequels ever being released (except the anime).

The characters are real because they embody what you’d imagine these people to be from the audience’s perspective. They grieve, fight and are imperfect, without the baggage of our modern landscape screaming for attention. Because for this brief respite of 2 hours and 23 minutes, the world-ending calamity is the one they’re sacrificing themselves to. There are characters you hate, love and feel indifferent about and all pull you into the central narrative and combined mission.

We as humans yearn for purpose, are united in shared struggle and when these enemies of humanity are 300-metre, ten-thousand-tonne kaijus, we as humanity unite to fight to the bitter end.

The tragedy and sacrifice of the many brave people, add fuel to the fire in the world in which they exist. A single binary vision of success or failure, shared struggle and ultimate pure awesomeness of cinematic, gobsmacking perfection is why Pacific Rim stands as the titan it is.