Pacific Rim: The Black is a bleaker take on the franchise, and all the better for it

Pacific Rim is the kind of movie that works almost too hard to lend thematic heft to what is an otherwise simple premise: giant robots fighting giant monsters. That’s a base-level, macro-lizard-brain pleasure, and Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham’s ode to anime, kaiju, mecha, and tokusatsu taps into that with all the bombast and chaos they could muster. Its drifting conceit—in which two co-pilots of the mechs (called Jaegers) mentally and emotionally link up to best control the massive machine—comes across too nebulous and under-explored to make its dramatic side hold water. Or perhaps it’s just a concept that doesn’t quite cohere for American audiences; the first movie underperformed in the U.S. but was a massive success overseas. Pacific Rim earned a more bombastic sequel that didn’t do as well. The latest iteration of the story is at once more expansive than the films and bleaker, though the anime influences still hold.
Pacific Rim: The Black is a far cry from its source, ratings-wise. The overwrought fun of the first film was a PG-13 wrecking wonderland; The Black is a violent, dark, hard R. Within the first five minutes of the pilot, Jaeger pilots are directly killed by a kaiju monster; after 10, an entire city population has been wiped out. And it gets only more dour from there. Pacific Rim: The Black is a much more depressing, bleaker take on the franchise, and arguably is better for it. Here, Australia is the setting for these oversized battles, but unlike the films, the battle between humanity and monsters is effectively over. A last-ditch effort involves the parents of Taylor (Calum Worthy) and Hayley Travis (Gideon Adlon) co-piloting a Jaeger to fight off the last batch of beasties as they also guide a bus filled with passengers (adults and children) to safety. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps, the military group in charge of the Jaegers, then implements what appears to be some kind of final attack called “The Black” (the exact nature of what this is unclear, but the comment “We’re on our own” is telling). The Jaeger and the people on the bus are the only humans left. In desperation, the elder Travises mech-march off into the desolate unknown to find help, leaving Taylor, Hayley and the rest in a hidden oasis community. That was five years ago.