Mine are Robot Jox, the 1998 Godzilla, Blade Runner, and the 1966 Japanese TV series Ultraman for various details of the scenario and design, all of it yoked to a storyline rather similar to Top Gun, though of course that film didn't invent the idea of the hotshot pilot with demons any more than Pacific Rim did. The most fun you can have in describing the plot is by picking the movies that del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham have pillaged that you want to reference. Besides, even if it is certainly his most uncharacteristic and money-poisoned film since at least Mimic (which I have never, anyway, seen), it has been directed by Guillermo del Toro, and there's no way of taking all of the interesting bits out of a Guillermo del Toro movie. And cool matters, particularly in this summer of 2013, where such a very large number of movies have not been cool. Whereas everything that is bad about it is bad on the levels of character psychology, narrative structure and logic, interest in the world beyond white adolescent North American males, or the general feeling that no serious consideration of the story needs to go further than cataloging the other properties that Pacific Rim is ripping off, or "paying homage to" if you like the movie.īut it is, nonetheless, inordinately cool. Everything that is good about Pacific Rim is good largely on the level of "that was cool".