Movie Fights: Ant-Man vs. Pacific Rim

[My review of Pacific Rim] [My review of Ant-Man]

Good morning, everyone! Or, well, good whatever-time-of-day-it-is-where-you-are. Today I'm debuting the first in what will hopefully be an extended category of blog posts, sorta similar to my History Recaps. Movie Fights is a series where I put my classical education to work in the real world and write out a comparison of two movies. Today I'll be talking about a pair of action movies. One features a guy who uses a super-suit to shrink down to an inch tall, and the other is about giant robots slugging it out with giant alien monsters.

As you can see, I'm taking my classical education very seriously.

On the surface, Ant-Man and Pacific Rim don't seem that similar. One is a superhero movie, and the other is more of a general sci-fi action movie. Of course, they're both popcorn summer flicks that you wouldn't think to put a lot of thought into the first time you saw them. To be fair, I have only seen Ant-Man once, but if you've read my review you know I put a lot of thought into it. I've seen Pacific Rim like... four times? So I've had time to analyze it.

So today I'm going to compare the two. Specifically, I'm planning to look at how these two films handled their female characters and characters of color.

Let's start with Ant-Man.

Ant-Man tells the tale of Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd), a down-on-his-luck thief with a cause who, now that he’s out of jail, is having trouble finding employment. Luckily he’s able to crash with some friends, but he doesn’t quite have the money to pay child support, which means he’s mostly cut off from his young daughter.

That’s the initial setup of the movie. It’s Scott Lang’s story, first and foremost. He’s the main character. He’s a good main character, and Paul Rudd plays the part very well, but he’s nothing new. Nothing groundbreaking. Hollywood loves their white male protagonists, and Marvel especially loves their white male protagonists. Playing opposite Rudd is Evangeline Lilly as Hope Pym, the high-powered corporate executive estranged-from-her-father daughter of Hank Pym.

I like what Evangeline Lilly did with this role. Like most of the actors in this film, she exceeded my expectations and breathed life into a character that wasn’t all that original. My problem is with the way this character was written, because while Hope Pym has a lot of cool character traits, she’s not really a complete character. In the end, she only really exists to prop up the stories of Scott and Hank. Scott and Hank both have their own story arcs; Scott’s is most prominent, seeing as he’s the main character, but Hank has a progression too, and weirdly enough, both Scott’s and Hank’s arcs are very closely tied to Hope’s character. Yet Hope is the only main character, aside from the villain, who doesn’t have her own story arc. Yes, she does reconcile with her father towards the end of the movie, but overall it feels like that’s more for Hank’s benefit than for Hope’s character growth.

I’d like to contrast this with the way Pacific Rim treated its protagonists. At first glance, the main character of Pacific Rim is Raleigh Becket, played by Charlie Hunnam. For the most part, Raleigh seems like your average white male action movie protagonist. He’s a somewhat world-weary veteran Jaeger pilot, who, due to the traumatic loss of his brother in a battle, is not eager to get back to piloting. But he has to, in order to save the world, so he comes back to the world of Jaeger piloting. That’s where he meets Mako Mori, a hopeful pilot.

On the surface, Mako Mori seems to have a similar narrative purpose to Hope Pym. She’s a very integral part of Raleigh’s story, and for about the first half of the movie you assume that that’s it, that it’s Raleigh’s story, not Mako’s.

But as the story progresses, we learn more and more about Mako and her adoptive father, who happens to be a former Jaeger pilot and Raleigh’s commanding officer. We learn Mako’s backstory, we learn what drives her and why she’s so eager to become a real pilot, and by the end of the movie, it’s Mako Mori who has achieved her goals and become a full-fledged character in her own right. It’s Mako Mori who has a concrete story arc and really blossoms by the end of it.

(Raleigh appears to have his own arc—overcoming his hang-ups and trauma about getting back in a Jaeger—but that doesn’t really develop. Actually, once he meets Mako and forms a relationship with her, he seems to settle into his old career with a new ferocity. It’s an interesting dynamic.)

Ant-Man seems to be attempting to tell a father-daughter story with Hank and Hope, but because Pacific Rim allows to Mako Mori to be her own character, and really develops the bad and the good of her relationship with her father, it tells a much better story. That’s the crux of the matter, I think: Pacific Rim allows its heroine to be her own person, her own character, with a backstory and motivations outside of her relationship with Raleigh Becket. Oh, Raleigh and Mako are close, and I love how their relationship develops, but Mako is never forced to sacrifice any part of her character to advance Raleigh’s story. She’s her own person, and she’s treated as such.

Ant-Man… well, as I said, the actors did a lot with what they were given, but the writing isn’t anything to crow about. And Hope Pym? She’s written as a side character meant to be a part of Scott’s story. She’s not given her own arc or her own impetus. On one level, that’s fine. Every story needs supporting characters. Not every character in a story can have their own arc. On another level, though, the treatment of Hope Pym is disappointing, because it’s almost always a female character that receives this type of sidelining in action movies. (The Lego Movie did this too. I love it to pieces, but The Lego Movie did this exact thing with Wyldstyle.)

Women are less likely to be the hero in a contemporarily written story than men are. Women of color are a lot less likely to be the hero, or even be included in the story in the first place. In my opinion, this is (one of the reasons) why Pacific Rim is better-written and more well-rounded movie than Ant-Man is. Pacific Rim gives us Mako Mori, a Japanese woman who is allowed to be the hero of her own story, a Japanese woman who is allowed to be a fully fleshed-out character just like her co-lead. I liked Ant-Man, but it didn’t do this. It stuck to the old formula of using a female character to support and prop up a male hero, just the way many Marvel films so far have. For this reason, I firmly believe that of these two movies, Pacific Rim is the better story.

(Postscript: Ask me about my other, more minor, compare/contrasts of these two movies. I was going to talk about other stuff, but this issue is near and dear to my heart, so it took the forefront. Oh well.)

Pacific Rim

*Warning: Unmarked spoilers may follow. Viewer discretion is advised.*

So I just finished watching Pacific Rim, for the third time. Having had time to both take in the story and analyze some of the finer details, I felt it was high time I did a review.

For anyone who hasn't seen Pacific Rim, the basic premise is this: A portal to an alien world (the Breach) opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and huge monsters called Kaiju begin coming through and attacking populated areas bordering the Pacific. To avoid extinction, the countries of the world--or at least the countries bordering the Pacific--band together and build enormous, super-strong robots called Jaegers to fight the Kaiju. This strategy works, until it doesn't, as bigger and bigger Kaiju start coming through the Breach, picking off the Jaegers one by one, until only a few are left. Then the Jaeger program loses its funding, and it's up to the few remaining pilot teams to close the Breach before the Kaiju kill everything.

(Here's the trailer if you're interested.)

I know, I know. It sounds dumb. To be honest, it is a little bit dumb, not to mention really unrealistic. But despite that, I really liked it, and today I'm gonna tell you why.

Strap in, guys, 'cause this might take a while.

***

Good/Favorite Parts:

• HOLY HECK, PEOPLE OF COLOR AS ACTION MOVIE HEROES. 
• No, seriously, when was the last time you saw a Japanese woman as the main character of a big-budget action flick like this?
• And the no-nonsense military leader who holds the heroes together? Is played by Idris Elba. Yes. 
• At first, the movie's hero appears to be Raleigh Becket, the (ostensibly) American white guy, who loses his brother/partner in the movie's prologue. (I say he's ostensibly American because the actor, Charlie Hunnam, isn't, and his native accent pokes through in his dialogue a couple of times. Anyway.) Raleigh is the viewpoint character, but I don't think he's the hero, because his story arc in the movie, if he has one, is pretty undefined, in comparison to Mako Mori's. So I personally like to think that Raleigh is the POV character, but Mako is the hero. It's a split that I think makes a lot of sense, considering that it mirrors the importance of drift compatibility to the storyline. But enough of my rambling. On we go!
• All of the characters with any reasonable amount of screentime manage to be complex and layered. The one that impresses me most is Chuck Hansen, of the Striker Eureka Jaeger team. He starts out as your stereotypical bully character who's out to antagonize to main character--and he is, as Marshall Stacker Pentecost puts it, "An egotistical jerk with daddy issues." But he's nevertheless one of the good guys, and as time goes on, he and Raleigh earn each other's respect. And in the end, he sacrifices his life so that Raleigh and Mako can save the world. Like I said. Depth. 
• Did I mention the father-daughter story between Mako Mori and Stacker Pentecost? Because there's that, too. 
• And there's a father-son story between the Hansens, which doesn't get a lot of screentime, but the scene it does get is really emotionally charged. 
• And the animation in this movie! It's amazing! The CGI looks extremely realistic and everything is beautifully rendered. To say nothing of the designs for the various Kaiju and Jaegers. 
• Speaking of Jaegers, the attention to detail in this movie is also impressive. Every Jaeger has a distinct fighting style, which matches up with their various designs. 
• And I really appreciate how in this movie, the monsters really do target pretty much every country bordering the Pacfic, not just California and Japan. In addition to those two places, we hear about attacks on Alaska, the Philippines, Russia, Australia, and Hong Kong (much of the movie actually takes place in Hong Kong). 
• The acting is great, too, even if a couple of the actors seem to be having a bit of trouble with their accents. 
• And the music! I almost forgot about the music. But it's... thrilling. There's a perfect combination of well-written melodies and interesting instrumental combinations. 
• To sum up: the fight scenes are fun to watch and beautifully animated, and the acting and story are great. There's a ton to like here. 

Bad/Least Favorite Parts:

• Um... well... uh... hm. Let me think. I'm sure I'll come up with something I disliked eventually...
• Right! Unrealisticness! Did I mention how unrealistic this movie is? Like, even on the off chance that a portal did open at the bottom of the Pacfic, and on the even smaller chance that that portal spewed forth a bunch of monsters... why not just bomb the monsters from the sky as soon as they came through? It's the bottom of the Pacific, it's not like you're going to have a lot of casualties. Or, for maximum efficiancy, set up some motion sensors down there, hook them up to a rapid-fire detonation clock, and just set off the bombs as soon as anything comes through the portal.
  So, yeah. No realism here.
• As much as I LOVED the cast and characters? More diversity is ALWAYS appreciated. There are a bunch of countries in Central and South America that border the Pacific, and none of those were mentioned (we certainly didn't see any Jaegers or pilot teams from that area). The Phillippines were given a passing mention, but no more. So yeah--Pacific Rim was amazing as far as having a diverse cast goes, but it could've been better. It usually can. 
• It sure would've been nice if the movie had mentioned, at some point, what happened to Hawaii. I'm just saying. 

Conclusion:

Long story short, Pacific Rim is a really good movie, and I really recommend it. Do you like amazingly cool action scenes? Then you'll love Pacific Rim! Do you like emotional character-driven stories? Then you'll probably like Pacfic Rim! (...And you can probably skip one or two of the action scenes. Though I don't recommend it.)

In short, I'm giving this one 4.75 stars out of five:

***

And that wraps up my official review of Pacific Rim! Although, as a fair warning, this probably won't be the last time I talk about it. I really liked this movie. 

Next time: Something vaguely Halloween themed, maybe? See you then!