2. Michael Bay has really gone overboard this time. Wait, Guillermo del Toro, I'm in.
About six years ago, I began to ask myself a question: What separates good sci-fi from bad sci-fi? There's sci-fi set far in the future and sci-fi in the distant past. Some sci-fi is centered around advanced technology. Some sci-fi features magic. There is sci-fi drama, action, comedy, romance and horror. Despite all of this variety in styles, the line between good and bad sci-fi is often razor thin. After much internal deliberation, I realized there was only one rule for making good sci-fi:
Good sci-fi obeys it's own rules.
The rules can be whatever the author wants. People can fly, teleporters exist, time traveling phone booths, whatever. But, once a rule is in place, the author has to stick to it. Good sci-fi is very loyal to it's own rules. Bad sci-fi plays it fast and loose. That answer satisfied me for several years, then things got complicated...
After years of resistance, I began watching Lost. (I started from the beginning and caught up before season six aired.) I found Lost to be a compelling drama for the first season, but as season two began the show began to be taken over by increasingly terrible sci-fi elements. Why did I like the drama and hate the sci-fi? I couldn't think of any rule Lost had broken. Then, it hit me. I couldn't think of any rule Lost had established. In fact, it had gone out of its way not to create a single rule or offer any explanation. Lost had dodged the first rule of sci-fi. By the end of season three, it was clear Lost could only be understood through dream logic and we were headed for a very disappointing end. (I also pondered why the "it was all a dream" ending is so frustrating. It comes down to this. Viewers like to believe that they are only getting part of the story, that the characters lives began before the curtain rose and will continue after the curtain falls. The "it was all a dream" end says "fuck you, it was only a movie. That guy isn't even real.") This is when I created the Lost Amendment:
Good sci-fi must establish rules and mysteries cannot be maintained indefinitely.
The third rule was inspired by an interview with the creators of Stargate SG-1 wherein they discuss making a mistake in an episode in season one. They had a situation where they needed to hide a body (Haven't we all?) and they couldn't find a solution. So, they gave one of their weapons the ability to make things disintegrate. They, then, spent the next decade writing around the fact that one of the most common objects in their universe could make shit disappear. In retrospect, they could have built a door on the set and shoved the body in a closet. This is the Stargate Proviso:
Establish new rules only when absolutely necessary. (Or don't use a ray gun when a closet will do.)
The fourth and final rule is closely related to the third and comes from Robert Justman, one of the original Star Trek producers. He said [paraphrased] about the series "we learned to only ask the audience to believe one incredible thing was true per episode. We got in trouble when we asked to audience to believe too many things at once." This is the Star Trek Addendum:
Create as few rules as possible.
And that brings us back to Pacific Rim. By the end of the trailer, Pacific Rim has already asked you to believe there are giant rampaging alien monsters under the Pacific Ocean, we can and do build giant robot monsters to fight them, and two peoples minds can and must be linked together to drive these giant robots. Pacific Rim asks too much, too fast. It is a violation of the Star Trek Addendum. The linking of the minds is also an apparent violation of the Stargate Proviso as it seems unnecessary in the trailer; however, it is critical to the plot and fully explored in the movie, so I will let the film off the hook for this point. But, the Star Trek Addendum violations cannot be ignored. In addition to the three incredible things in the trailer, Pacific Rim wants you to believe dinosaurs were the first wave of Kaiju*, we can build Jaegers with present day tech, Kaiju have a hive mind*, Kaiju get here through an inter-dimensional portal from another universe, despite vast morphological variability all Kaiju have identical DNA*, and there is such a thing as international cooperation.
[*Also a violation of the Stargate Proviso.]
Spock's Brain! That's a lot to ask in under two and a half hours! But here's the weird part, it works. Because Guillermo del Toro is awesome. I've been a fan del Toro since I saw him transform a weak plot into a better than average film in Hellboy II: The Golden Army and while Pacific Rim wasn't as good as that film, the trailer suggested something that could have been terrible made into something pretty good.
To play us out, let's bring in the Blue Oyster Cult. Now with 30% less cowbell!
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