Pacific Rim (movie)

Synopsis

To fight the kaiju , extraterrestrial creatures emerging from an interdimensional breach near the geological fault at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in August 2013, a new kind of weapon was designed: giant robots , called the Jaeger (“hunters”). In German), simultaneously controlled by two pilots whose minds are connected by a neural bridge.

If the first models allowed the victory, the monsters come back stronger and in 2020, the Jaeger undergo a wave of setbacks. On the eve of the defeat, when the Jaeger program has just been abandoned, in 2025, the forces defending humanity have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes: Raleigh Becket, a former pilot still traumatized by the death of his brother during a clash against a kaiju and Mako Mori, a rookie who has never been to the field, having lost his family who was killed by a kaiju.

Detailed Summary

In 2013, gigantic monsters called Kaijus emerge from an interdimensional portal called “The Breach” at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean around Guam. In the first three years, the Kaijus wreak havoc on coastal towns along the Ring of Fire, such as San Francisco , San Jose del Cabo , Sydney , Manila and Hong Kong . Humanity responds by building massive robotic machines called Jaegers , to fight against the foreign threat. Each Jaeger is piloted by two or more people, who are connected by a neural bridge in a process called “drift” to share the mental stress of driving the machine.

In 2020, Gipsy Danger , piloted by brothers Raleigh and Yancy Beckett, battles a category 3 Kaiju known as Knifehead. They both engage in combat; Gipsy seems to have won first but the Kaiju is still alive. The latter critically damages Gipsy and throws Yancy out of the cockpit, killing him. Raleigh manages to pilot Gipsy alone, activates the remaining plasma gun and kills Knifehead. Traumatized by Yancy’s death, Raleigh left the Jaeger program . In 2025, world governments decide to end funding for the continued construction of Jaegers, in favor of building massive coastal walls, while Kaiju attacks are steadily increasing and the Jaegers destroyed faster than they are renewed. The remaining Jaegers are relocated to Hong Kong under Marshall Stacker Pentecost.

Pentecost finds Raleigh a worker on a wall construction site to persuade him to join the program. They learn by information that Kaijû Category 4 trapping the coastal wall of Sydney in Australia, which should avoid the destruction that Jaeger Striker Eureka . While traveling to the Hong Kong base, the Shatterdome , Raleigh is introduced to Mako Mori, director of the Jaegers Restoration Program and adoptive daughter of Pentecost. The Marshall then unveils his project: destroy the Breach using a thermonuclear weapon. Four Jaegers remain in operation: Gipsy Danger refurbished; Cherno Alpha (Russia), Crimson Typhoon (China) and Striker Eureka (Australia), driven by father (Herc) and son (Chuck) Hansen and who will carry the bomb.

To find a new co-pilot, Raleigh participates in the tests, and eventually faces Mako, discovering that she is “drift-compatible,” but Pentecost has reservations. During their first examination, Raleigh is distracted by the memory of Yancy’s death; Mako, in turn, is lost in memory of the attack of a Kaiju in Tokyo that made her an orphan. Adrenaline provokes a defense reaction from the Jaeger , and Gipsy’s plasma gun threatens to activate. Mako is promptly relieved of flying duties and Raleigh confronts Pentecost and tells him he is too protective.

Pentecost consults experts in Kaiju Newton Geiszler and Herman Gottlieb. Hermann says the Breach will stabilize and the Kaijus’ attacks will increase in number, while Newton suggests “drifting” with Kaiju’s brain to learn more about them. Newton continues his plan despite Herman protests and discovers that the Kaiju are biological weapons cultivated by extraterrestrial settlers who plan to eliminate humanity. With the permission of Pentecost, Newton searches for the Hannibal Chau trafficker to get a Kaiju brain in better condition and connect to it. However, he quickly discovers that since “drifting” is a two-way bond, the collective intelligence of the Kaijuhas recently had access to his mind. Shortly after, two new Kaijus , Leatherback and Otachi, emerge simultaneously to find Newton.

All Jaegers except Gipsy Danger are sent to intervene. Otachi destroys the Chinese Jaeger , while Leatherback takes over Cherno Alpha and paralyzes Striker Eureka with an electromagnetic pulse. Pentecost, reluctantly, allows Mako and Raleigh to pilot Gipsy Danger . The Jaeger confronts and kills Leatherbak and Otachi successively. Examining Otachi’s body, Newton and Hannibal discover she is pregnant. The fetus Kaiju then leaves the belly of Otachi and eats Hannibal, but the Kaijudies quickly, strangled by his own umbilical cord. Newton and Hermann connect to the fetal brain and discover that the Breach can only open in the presence of a Kaiju’s DNA .

As Herc was injured during the previous fight, Pentecost decides to fly Striker Eureka himself with Chuck. Accompanied by Gipsy Danger , they approach the Breche, defended by two Kaijûs category 4. A third Kaiju (Slattern) emerges, Category 5, the largest ever met. The Jaegers kill a Kaiju and injure others, but Striker Eureka is immobilized by the larger Kaiju. Pentecost and Chuck decide to blow up the bomb; however, the Breach remains open and the largest Kaiju is still alive: Gipsy kills him and crosses the Breach with his corpse, passing into the Kaijus dimension. Raleigh then overloads the reactor of his Jaeger and ejects with Mako using rescue capsules. The reactor explodes, destroying the facility posted near the dimensional fault, killing several foreign creatures and closing the Breach. Herc, acting command, orders that the war clock stop, indicating the victory of humanity. The Raleigh and Mako rescue pods emerge on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and the two human pilots then meet to wait for the rescue helicopters.

In a scene at the beginning of the end credits, Hannibal comes out of the infant Kaiju’s belly and finds his lost shoe.

Technical sheet

• Original title and french: Pacific Rim
• Quebec title: Pacific shores
• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Scenario: Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro , from a story by Travis Beacham
• Artistic direction: Elinor Rose Galbraith , Richard L. Johnson , Andrew Li and Sandi Tanaka
• Sets: Andrew Neskoromny and Carol Spier
• Costumes: Kate Hawley
• Photography: Guillermo Navarro
• Editing: Peter Amundson
• Sound: Tim Walston
• Music: Ramin Djawadi
• Production: Jon Jashni , Mary Parent and Thomas Tull
• Production Companies: Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures
• Distribution Company: Warner Bros. Pictures
• Budget: $ 200,000,000 ¹
• Country of origin: United States
• Original language: English
• Size: color – 1.85: 1 – 35 mm
• Genre: science fiction
• Duration: 132 minutes
• Release dates ² :
  • United States : July 12 , 2013
  • Belgium , France : July 17 , 2013
• French subtitles (in France): Rachel Guillarme

Distribution

• Charlie Hunnam (VF: Thibaut Belfodil ; VQ: Daniel Roy ) : Raleigh Becket
• Rinko Kikuchi (VF: Genevieve Doang , VQ: Catherine Bonneau ) : Mako Mori
• Idris Elba (VF: John Paul Pitolin, VQ: Patrick Chouinard) : Marshall Stacker Pentecost
• Charlie Day (VF: Benedict DuPac , VQ: Hugolin Chevrette ) : Doctor “Newt” Geizler
• Ron Perlman (VF: Sylvain Lemarié , VQ: Yves Corbeil ) : Hannibal Chow
• Max Martini (VF: Jean-Michel Party , VQ: Benoit Rousseau ) : Hercules “Herc” Hansen
• Burn Gorman (VF: Jeremy Prevost , VQ: Gilbert Lachance ) : Dr. Hermann Gottlieb
• Clifton Collins Jr. (VF: Sébastien Desjours , VQ: Alexandre Fortin ) : Tendo Choi
• Robert Kazinsky (VF: Axel Kiener , VQ: Nicolas Charbonneaux-Collombet ) : Chuck Hansen
• Diego Klattenhoff (VF: Raphaël Cohen, VQ: Pierre-Étienne Rouillard) : Yancy Becket
• Heather Doerksen (VF: Liana Fulga) : Sasha Kaidanovsky
• Robert Maillet : Aleksis Kaidanovsky
• Mana Ashida : Mako Mori child
• Ellen McLain (VF: Josiane Pinson ) : The Voice of Artificial Intelligence Gipsy Danger
• Brad William Henke (VF: Stéphane Bazin) : The Foreman
• Julian Barnes (VF: Hervé Furic ) : the British representative to the United Nations
• David Fox (VF: Patrick Raynal ) : the old man on the beach
• Joe Pingue (VF: Stéphane Bazin) : Captain Merritt
• Robin Thomas  ( VF: François Dunoyer ) : the US representative at the United Nations
• Mishu Vellani (VF: Laura Zichy) : a representative
• Tyler Stevenson (VF: Oscar Pauwels) : Yancy, young

Source and caption : French version (VF) on Voxofilm ³ and Quebec version (VQ) on Doublage Québec ⁴

Production

Development

Screenwriter Travis Beacham had the idea of starting the film during a walk on a beach in Santa Monica : “on a foggy morning, the dike I saw in the distance, in the fog, suddenly made me think to a gigantic monster coming out of the water to confront a giant robot who was waiting for him on the shore ” ¹ . A big fan of the kaijū film , Guillermo del Toro arrives on the project after abandoning his film adapted from the new Lovecraft Hallucinated Mountains . He then participates in the writing of the screenplay of Travis Beacham ¹ .

Casting

Tom Cruise was to take the role of Stacker Pentecost, which is finally attributed to Idris Elba ¹ .

Guillermo del Toro finds here Ron Perlman , after Cronos , Blade II , Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Legions cursed ¹ .

Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman are the headliners of the American series Sons of Anarchy , released since 2008 .

Ellen McLain ( GLaDOS in Portal de Valve game ) gives her voice to the mainframe.

Shooting

The main shoot starts on November 14 , 2011⁵ , with the Red EPIC ⁶ camera. It takes place at Pinewood Toronto Studios and Toronto in Canada ⁷ .

The filming lasts 103 days, while the director used to shoot his films in 115 days. The filming took place 7 days a week with a very active second team. Guillermo del Toro worked up to 18 hours a day ¹ .

Music

The soundtrack is composed by Ramin Djawadi , chosen by the studio for his work on the movie Iron Man and the series Iron Throne ¹ .

Output

3D

Against the opinion of Guillermo del Toro , the Warner Bros. plans to convert the film to 3D after shooting ^8 , 1 .

Box office

Country or region	Box Office	Box office shutdown date	Number of weeks
United States	$ 101,802,906 9 , 10	October 17 , 2013	14
la France	1 019 101 entries 10	September 10 , 2013	8
World	$ 411,002,906 9	December 31 , 2013	–

Inspiration

Guillermo del Toro was largely inspired for Pacific Rim of Japanese modern folklore. The kaijus are a reference to Japanese mythological monsters, which constitute the center of the genre of kaiju movies. Among them is Godzilla , who is the most famous example. We can note a possible nod to the latter in the film, the cries pushed by Leatherback very similar to the famous cry of Godzilla. The jaegers themselves, are inspired by Asian mecha animated from the 1970s to the late 1990s , such as Goldorak , Evangelion , Escaflowne or Patlabor. The film’s inspiration is also reflected in its atmosphere, and its colorful and luminous sets, as well as the large number of film locations, most of which are located in East Asia, on the Pacific side.

Jaegers

The jaeger (from the German Jäger , “hunter”) are giant robots , controlled jointly by neuronal connection by two pilots. They were created to counter the kaiju , which were impossible to beat using conventional weapons, because of their changing strategy. They are at least twenty-five stories tall. Guillermo del Toro was inspired by technologies already existing or under study to create its robots, to make them more realistic ^{11 [ref. insufficient]} . The jaegers of the film are:

• Striker Eureka : Australia – drivers: Herc Hansen and Chuck Hansen (Stacker Pentecost replaces Herc Hansen because of his broken arm by Leatherback ) – status: destroyed during the nuclear bomb explosion. Stacker and Chuck will die in the explosion of their jaeger.

Release date : November 2, 2019– Mark 5 – 76 meters and 1,850 tons . Killer of 11 kaijus (including 1 by his explosion).

• Crimson Typhoon : China – pilots: Cheung Wei, Jin Wei and Hu Wei – status: destroyed by Otachi . The Wei triplets will die in the destruction of the cockpit of their jaeger.

Release date : August 22 , 2018– mark 4 – 76 meters and 1,722 tons . Killer of 7 kaijus.

• Cherno Alpha : Russia – drivers: Aleksis Kaidanovsky and Sasha Kaidanovsky – status: destroyed by Otachi and Leatherback . Aleksis and Sasha will perish drowned.

Release date : July 4 , 2015– mark 1 – 85 meters and 2 412 tonnes . Killer of 6 kaijus.

• Gipsy Danger : United States – pilots: Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori (Yancy Becket – deceased) – status: decommissioned, repaired and destroyed by the explosion of its nuclear reactor. Yancy died in a cockpit breach when Knifehead was first put out of service . Raleigh and Mako were able to eject in time.

Release date : July 10 , 2017– mark 3 – 79 meters and 1 980 tonnes . Killer of 10 kaijus.Destruction of the breach and kaijus pilots

• Coyote Tango : Japan – drivers: Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier – status: destroyed. Tamsin died in action, forcing Stacker to fly solo against Onibaba .

Release date : December 30 , 2015– mark 1 – 85 meters and 2,312 tonnes . Killer of 2 kaijus.

Kaiju

The kaijus are a breed of giant amphibious creatures that have been genetically created by an inter-dimensional extraterrestrial race from a world called the pre-universe. These aliens are called precursors. In 2013, precursors opened an inter-dimensional portal off the coast of China, near Guam, on the floor of the Pacific Ocean Challenger Deep, nicknamed the Breach. Their blood, called kaiju blue, is a very toxic phosphor for the Earth and humans. Most kaijus have an outer bioluminescent glow on the body and an inner bioluminescent glow in the mouth. The kaijus of the film are:

• Slattern : the kaiju with hammerhead, with a body resembling that of an amphibian with 3 tails. He has a blue glow in his mouth and on his body. His name means “slut” (to be dirty, badly clean). He is the strongest of kaijus, intelligent, agile, toxic and taller. A kaiju 5 ^th category (CAT V) appeared January 12, 2025 next to the breach. Killed by Gipsy Danger using his reactor exploding his chest.

• Leatherback : the kaiju resembling a gorilla and a turtle with shielded plates on its back, making a kind of carapace. He also has on his head a ridge that hides behind stems giving off a blue-green glow. He has a blue glow coming out of his mouth and a green glow on his body. It also has the ability to generate an electromagnetic pulse from its shell. His name means “leather back”. A kaiju 4 ^th category (CAT IV) appeared January 8, 2025 in Hong Kong. Killed by Gipsy Danger using his plasma gun by shooting him several times in the left side of the torso and cutting his left arm (plus 3 or 4 times in the belly to be sure he is dead).

• Otachi : The kaiju looks particularly like a dragon. He is the only one able to fly. She has a blue glow that comes out of her mouth and on her body, she also has the ability to spit acid, stored in a bag under her lower jaw that can open in two with at the end of the tail a greenhouse looking like a grapple. She also has a strange blue tongue that she may be using to detect heat as a snake. In the film, Otachi is pregnant. A kaiju 4 ^th category (CAT IV) appeared January 8, 2025 in Hong Kong. Killed by Gipsy Danger using her sword by cutting her in half.

• The kaiju : kaiju baby out of Otachi’s belly cut in half. He is strangled by his umbilical cord.

• Scunner : the kaiju with two broad tusks, with a bull character. He has 4 arms, and a green glow on his body. He may be the twin brother of Knifehead and Trespasser. A kaiju 4 ^th category (CAT IV) appeared January 12, 2025 next to the breach. Killed by the explosion of Striker Eureka .

• Raiju : the crocodile-headed kaiju (this is an envelope protecting his head, forming a second jaw that opens in three) and the body of Pangolin. He has a blue glow coming out of his mouth and a yellow glow on his body. A kaiju 4 ^th category (CAT IV) appeared January 12, 2025 next to the breach. Killed by Gipsy Danger using his sword by cutting him in half.

• Knifehead : the kaiju with a knife’s head. He also has 4 arms, a blue glow coming out of his mouth and a yellow glow on his body. He may be the twin brother of Trespasser and Scunner. A kaiju 3 ^E category (CAT III) appeared February 29, 2020 at the edge of Anchorage, Alaska. Killed by Gipsy Danger using his plasma gun, but in his fight against him, he killed Yancy Becket , which led Raleigh to pilot Gipsy alone to kill him.

• Trespasser (Axehead) : The ax-headed kaiju with 4 arms and a yellow-orange glow coming out of his mouth and a yellow glow on his body. He may be the twin brother of Knifehead and Scunner. His name means “intruder”. He is the first Kaiju appeared (presumably a Category I (CAT I)) on August 10, 2013 in San Francisco. He is killed by the US Army with the help of a nuclear bomb.

• Mutavore ( Bladehead ): the kaiju with a blade-shaped head. He has his mouth above his eyes. He has a yellow glow on his body. It destroys the anti-kaiju wall in less than an hour. A Kaiju of 4 ^th category (CAT IV) occurred January 2, 2025 in Sydney. Killed by Striker Eureka using his missiles by shooting him repeatedly.

• Onibaba : the Kaiju that looks like a crab. He has a yellow glow on his body. Her name literally means in Japanese “the old demon” and translates into “witch”. He nearly killed Mako Mori when she was a child, but the arrival of Coyote Tango will stop him. A kaiju 2 ^e category (CAT II) appeared May 15, 2016 in Tokyo. Killed by Coyote Tango with his two cannons on his shoulders.

Next

In late 2012 , well before the release in the summer of 2013 , it is revealed that screenwriter Travis Beacham working on writing a sequel ¹² . This time, Guillermo Del Toro only acts as a producer and scriptwriter for Pacific Rim Uprising ¹³ .

Adaptations to other media

There is a novelization of the film written by Alex Irvine , published by Titan Books  (in) and output in July 2013, untranslated French ¹⁴ .

The film was also adapted to video games ¹⁵ .

Distinctions

Awards

• Las Vegas Movie Critics Society Awards 2013 : Best Horror Movie or Science Fiction
• Annie Awards 2014 : Best animated effects in a film in real shots for Michael Balog, Ryan Hopkins, Patrick Conran and Florian Witzel

Appointments

• British Academy Film Awards 2014 : Best Visual Effects for Hal Hickel, John Knoll, Lindy De Quattro and Nigel Sumner
• Critics’ Choice Movie Awards 2014 : Best Visual Effects

Notes and references