Pacific Rim – A Flashback to my Childhood Saturday Afternoons!

When I was a kid, Saturday mornings were for cartoons. Johnny Quest, Marine Boy, Scooby Doo – I sat most of the morning and ate them up. But Saturday afternoons were a different thing. Saturday afternoons were for Dr. Shock’s Creature Feature! Doctor Shock was a TV horror host in Philadelphia from 1970 until 1979.  He appeared on several shows over the years: Scream In, Horror Theater, and Mad Theater.  All of these shows aired on WPHL-TV, Channel 17.  He was known as the mad magician of fright, and would frequently perform magic tricks during his show. Again, I was glued to the television for movies like Godzilla, The Fly, and anything with Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price or Christopher Lee. I also grew up watching syndicated reruns of Star Trek, the Night Stalker and anything that looked even remotely like science fiction. All of these childhood memories made me very interested in what I might find in a recent movie called Pacific Rim.

Pacific Rim is a genre piece of filmmaking that came out in theaters last summer and recently on DVD and Blu-Ray. It falls into, and maybe even defines, the category of giant monster vs giant robot films; think Voltron vs Godzilla. Bottom line on this pic – make a big bowl of popcorn, sit back and enjoy. It’s a classic popcorn summer type of movie and a lot of fun. If you’ve watched any anime (Japanese animation, mostly aimed at an adult audience) at all, then this film will feel very familiar. It has all the stereotypical characters that Japanese products like Robotech, Bubblegum Crisis and Macross Saga have. It’s not long on character development or storyline. What it has in spades is lots and lots of giant robots and giant monsters fighting. If you have an HDTV, pick this up on Blu-Ray and watch it with the lights low. There are lots of little details to enjoy in the cityscape fights.

Anyway, I did say that I was going to look at spiritual connections in the movies I reviewed, and there are a couple here even though you might not think so at first glance. One of the first ones I noticed had to do with something that one of the main characters said in monologue. Raleigh Becket pilots one of the giant robots called Jaegers. Early in the film he says this: “There are things you can't fight - acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, you can finally fight the hurricane. You can win.” Why is it that whenever there is some kind of natural disaster it’s referred to as an “Act of God?” But, if something good or generous or kind happens and becomes newsworthy it’s attributed to the goodness or the kindness or the generosity of people? Here’s a theological truth – God is good. God is the source of all goodness and mercy and kindness and happiness in the world. Bad things like natural disasters happen. God doesn’t make them happen. They’re not acts of God, they’re acts of nature. As children of God we’re called to lean into the wind, to be the goodness that comes to the world after the natural disasters.

There’s also an interesting element to the control of the giant robots. In the film they explain that the control of these Jaegers is such that it requires two pilots working in unison to control them. The pilots are connected together psychically in a state of consciousness called “the drift.” When two pilots “drift” together they each control one side of the Jaeger but rely on each other to fight the monsters and survive. The point is that it was mostly impossible to control a Jaeger by oneself. This is a nice reflection of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ in the church and as a Christian. Together with one another God makes us of one mind and one Spirit so that we can function as one body in the world. We are the hands and the feet of Jesus Christ for this day and age and for the community in which we live. Pacific Rim calls it a drift; Christianity calls it being the Body of Christ. Maybe it’s articulated best by the commander of the Jaeger pilots before the final battle when he says this: “Today. Today... At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them. Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!”

So there’s a couple of things to look for when you take an evening and enjoy Pacific Rim. It’s worth a rental from Netflix or Red Box. And put a little extra butter on that popcorn!