The extinction of mankind has loomed again and again over Hollywood blockbusters the past couple of years, though never anywhere near as entertainingly as in “Pacific Rim.’’
With Mexican genre master Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth’’) at the helm, there’s no shortage of brains, brawn, eye candy, wit and even some poetry in this epic battle between massive lizard-like monsters and 25-story-high robots operated by humans.
Yes, it’s very loud. Several cities are flattened, from San Francisco (with special effects vastly superior to those in “Star Trek Into Darkness’’) to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney. This ultimate geekfest will remind you of at least two dozen earlier movies.
And I loved, loved every second.
Although the monstrous creatures known as Kaiju may resemble distant cousins of Godzilla, they’re spawned not by radiation but by conquest-bent intelligent life from another dimension that, over a period of years, sends forth ever-evolving Kaiju via a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) pair up to the save the world in “Pacific Rim.”
In what amounts to an arms race, humans have rolled out ever more sophisticated robots called Jaegers to stop the Kaiju. Each is operated by a pair of rock-star-style warriors who are telepathically linked.
The team in the spectacular 18-minute prologue battle royal with a Kaiju are brothers Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Beckett (Diego Klattenhoff).
Only Raleigh survives, and after the Jaeger program is officially scrapped as ineffective, the bereft young man works as a day laborer in Anchorage on an alternative strategy to save coastal cities from the monsters, using giant reinforced walls.
Five years later, the Jaeger program has gone underground, with its leader, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), rebuilding fallen robots to spring into action after the wall strategy predictably fails.
Stacker tracks down Raleigh and offers him the chance to co-pilot his old robot, Gipsy Danger. The young man agrees to do so if the elder will go along with his choice for co-pilot, Japanese beauty Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), who has a not-so-secret connection with Stacker.
Del Toro populates his huge, steampunk-style sets with one of the best sci-fi ensembles since Michael Bay’s “Armageddon,’’ even if none of them has a fraction of the star power of Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
Brit actor Hunnam, who bears more than a slight resemblance to Steve McQueen, is an appealingly wounded hero, and Kikuchi is very good as the enigmatic heroine.
They have terrific chemistry, both romantic and in a martial-arts demonstration that helps persuade the reluctant Stacker. (Elba, best known in this country for his TV work in series like “The Wire,’’ provides appropriate gravitas.)
Clifton Collins Jr. is a delight as Stacker’s bow-tied assistant, and Max Martini and Rob Kazinsky add flavor as a macho father-and-son team of Jaeger pilots from Australia.
The real scene-stealers — aside from a very funny extended cameo by del Toro’s “Hellboy’’ star Ron Perlman — are an odd couple of wacky scientists played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman who endlessly bicker about how to stop the Kaiju.
For all the humor and clever twists in the script that Travis Beacham wrote with del Toro, a film like this rises or falls on its action sequences, and there are some real doozies here as the Jaegers square off, again and again, against Kaiju who can hurl electricity and deadly acid against them.
Director del Toro keeps the fights clean and coherent, which (as we saw with “The Lone Ranger”) is not easy when working on such a gargantuan scale. The whole thing builds to one of the most stunningly eye-popping and exciting climaxes in years.
“Pacific Rim’’ is the very rare movie I’d actually recommend seeing in 3-D, because it so effectively immerses the viewer in the action. The Kaiju are computer-generated wonders, and the Jaegers make the Transformers look like … well, children’s toys.
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