Boy Movies #15

The Guillermo del Toro issue, feat. Nicole Zhu

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Above all, this newsletter has been an excuse to have long talks about movies with my friends. I delight in gathering the smartest, funniest, most thoughtful people I know and using their wit to increase my social standing on Substack.com. Someone I’ve been wanting to have as a guest since the beginning is Nicole Zhu, noted Avatar enthusiast and a fantastic writer, whose own newsletter I’ve spoken about before but is worth mentioning again because it’s always a reliable source of inspiration for me. I specifically wanted to have her on to talk about Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s big-brained 2013 action sci-fi film about people who pilot giant robots using the power of love and weaponize them in an ongoing alien war (hell yeah), because it’s both an interesting example of a boy movie and a favorite of Nicole’s. “This is one of my comfort movies,” she told me during our chat. “I probably watch it once a year.”

Pacific Rim is a girl movie inside of a boy movie — a girl movie doing boy movie drag. It stars Charlie Hunnam (a rare blonde hunk) as washed-up pilot Raleigh Beckett, who is pulled out of self-imposed exile to help save the world and ends up bonding with wannabe pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). Charlie Day is also there. Like many of del Toro’s films, it juggles a lot of themes, but it does so pretty elegantly. Nicole recently had me and Sarah over to watch the, like, 18K magnum HD version or something, and I was blown away by how stunning the visuals were and how clean all the action looked, even after all these years. If you so desire, you can consider this an Oscars-adjacent issue, as del Toro’s Pinocchio is nominated for Best Animated Feature. I’ve not seen it but I recently learned that John Turturro plays a supporting role, which are the words every woman wants to hear.

Below is mine and Nicole’s discussion about how Pacific Rim straddles the boy movie-girl movie binary, why Idris Elba isn’t a bigger movie star, and the many parallels between this film and a certain legacy sequel about sad men who fly planes. I also asked her to go on the record explaining the concept of “boy actresses.”

Haven't you heard, Mr. Beckett? The world is coming to an end

Allison
Do you remember seeing this movie for the first time? What stuck out to you about it?

Nicole
I saw this the summer it came out, which was the summer of 2013. I’d just finished my freshman year of college and I saw it at the movie theater in my college town. I think I was with a friend from high school. The reason I wanted to watch it was… I've been on Tumblr since like 2010, 2011 — I've never left. You and me both.

Allison
Yup, same. We never left.

Nicole
We’re ancient, but who cares? Tumblr loved this movie. I was seeing gifsets of it, lots of yearning, and I was like, “Robots? Okay.” I wasn’t really a Guillermo del Toro fan before this, but Tumblr is really good at convincing you to watch media. You think that you know it just seeing what other people reblog. So I watched it, and it was excellent. The first fifteen minutes, I remember being really blown away. It’s so unique. It is an original script, an original story, and it does a good job of using those first fifteen minutes to set the stage. Lot of world building. I thought it felt realistic, even though it’s about alien monsters and giant robots fighting them. I immediately got on board with the whole concept. You also immediately see Charlie Hunnam’s abs.

Allison
Unintentionally, every movie that I've had a guest on for — Drive, Inside Llewyn Davis, and now Pacific Rim — have been Tumblr movies.

Nicole
It’s a cultural force, what can we say?

Allison
It is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. But I was in the same position as you, I saw people posting about it on Tumblr, and I was like, “I guess I gotta see this movie.” I think I'd seen Pan's Labyrinth when I was pretty young, but I hadn't seen any other del Toro movies at the time. I was just like, “So… you power a big robot with love?”

Nicole
“With your crush?” It is the power of love. Guillermo del Toro is a girl director, but this is a boy movie.

Allison
You very astutely said that when we were rewatching. Can you expand on that a little bit? You also said you weren't familiar with him before this, have you since become a bigger fan? 

Nicole
I have. I will say, I have not seen Hellboy or Pan's Labyrinth, which are arguably two of his biggest ones, but I have seen The Shape of Water, like, three times. Girl movie. Girl and fish movie. I watched a little bit of The Cabinet of Curiosities, and I did see Nightmare Alley, which I feel like five people saw. There were no monsters! Boring. He traditionally makes a lot of boy movies — with him, it’s action, it’s fantasy, sci-fi, monsters, robots. Obviously, sci-fi and fantasy have traditionally, unfortunately, been genres dominated by men. I think that is changing, but it takes time. But he loves monsters.

Allison
The monster design here is so good.

Nicole
They get their own names, they all get a different design. I’ve seen some interviews where he’s talked about his origin story, which makes so much sense, which is that he read Frankenstein. He’s like, “Frankenstein is my Bible.” So in terms of Pacific Rim, it’s robots versus aliens, but you must power the robots with love. It’s all about humanity coming together and collaborating and persevering and surviving. Those are more like girl concepts, I guess.

Allison
It’s also a grief movie. I don't think girls have a monopoly over grief, but I do think it is inherently girl to be consumed by your grief. Raleigh is so paralyzed by the fact that he watched his brother die, and when he starts powering the Jaeger with Mako, she has her own things she can’t get over. She lost her parents and she had to watch her home get destroyed, and later she has to watch her adopted dad send himself to death. Those elements feel so girl movie, but then it's just such a spectacle. The intricacies of the monsters! And there are so many men in it, mostly all macho men. It’s very cool to look at, but it also has a deep emotional core.

Nicole
I agree. See, “Girls are more attuned to emotion, therefore…”

Allison
I know. Not to be so cut and dry about it.

Nicole
Girls have more emotional literacy, let's say. I think Guillermo del Toro has great emotional literacy, and that's why his movies are as good as they are.

Allison
He has such big ideas. As you said, sci-fi is a very male-dominated genre, and women directors don’t often get to take big swings like this. That’s not necessarily his fault, but I guess the way he’s treated gives him boy director points. Frankenstein is such a funny detail. Famously written by a woman, but it's—

Nicole
About a man and his creation!

Allison
Right? Men do love Frankenstein. It’s a boy story. It’s very indicative of the type of creator that del Toro is.

Nicole
I actually read Frankenstein for the first time last year. First of all, after reading it, I was like, “Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster!” I get that pet peeve now. The monster does at some point get to narrate, and you get to know what his life is like. He says, “I didn't ask to be born, but I have to live in this society and no one accepts me and everyone's scared of me.” He learns to speak English from hiding in a hovel near this family and listening to them talk. He goes to his creator, because he's like, “You made me and you brought me into a miserable existence. You made me the way I am.” That’s very poignant.

Guillermo del Toro is very obsessed with the idea that we create monsters. We're all flawed, monsters are not “scary” the way we think they are, because there's always some human element to it. That’s what I really like about Pacific Rim, Frankenstein, The Shape of Water — there are all these fantastical sci-fi elements, but it is ultimately about humanity.

Allison
When Newt goes inside the Kaiju’s head, he literally sees its entire life. That feels very much like it was informed by Frankenstein.

Nicole
He’s tied to the monster.

Allison
Yeah, they’re not mindless, brainless things that sprung up out of nowhere and want to kill, kill, kill. Well, they do.

Nicole
They have a strategy! They’re a predatory race, and they tried to conquer Earth in the dinosaur age, but it didn't work. And because of global warming — because this is also a climate change movie — they were like, “Oh, great. Now the conditions are excellent for world domination.”

Allison
That's the whole thing with his perspective in The Shape of Water. He’s saying that the fish man isn’t a monster. The themes are more heavy-handed, but it’s also about race and sexuality.

Nicole
Yeah, being marginalized. It's about how society treats marginalized people, or employs them only for their own use, because it's also set against the Cold War. They wanted to weaponize him.

Allison
Emotionally, this is a more subtle movie than The Shape of Water. It doesn't smack you over the head with it.

Nicole
There's so much else happening that all the subliminal messaging is very subtle. There’s not a lot of time for close-ups or facial reactions and things like that, it just keeps things moving. They set up the characters’ arcs in a very direct way.

You’re the one who showed me Top Gun: Maverick, so I feel I have to bring that up. They’re very similar, because the opening scenes are almost one to one. They’re both about a cocky guy who is a pilot and suffers a great loss. They’re knocked down to earth.

Allison
They immediately get humbled. I mean, Maverick is Boy Movies canon at this point. Both Maverick and Raleigh are pulled out of these lives that they’ve made, for better or for worse, to go back to where they came from.

Nicole
They both have a “one last job” kind of vibe. 

Allison
And the idea that you have to return to where your trauma began, essentially, almost tips both into girl movie territory.

Nicole
It’s also the idea that their job is their identity, right? Defining yourself by what you can do and wanting to get back to that feeling, even if it comes with a lot of trauma and heartache. It’s apparent in both of these movies.

Allison
Speaking of Raleigh, it’s fascinating to see a boy movie that lets the woman sexualize the man. You watch something like the beach football scene in Maverick, and you think, “Is this… for straight men?” And all the dads are like, “Hell yeah it is,” and they’re not seeing the sex appeal at all. People like us will walk into a boy movie and have to find our own path to it, but Pacific Rim hands it to you. Mako literally stares at him through a door.

Nicole
You literally see him shirtless, what, two or three times? She never is. She's very toned, badass, also very hot, but not sexualized in the Megan Fox Transformers way. That matters a lot. What I like about them, aside from incorporating the female gaze in the shooting of the movie, is the way that it really is about equal partnership. They never kiss! I think it’s almost better that they don't, because they transcend words. That’s the point of the Drift, which I find to be a beautiful concept. Imagine if you could just see someone else's memories and experiences and feel what they feel.

Allison
When he goes inside her memory from childhood. To be in someone's mind, but not in a predatory way. You share consciousness.

Nicole
It’s about intimacy and empathy. That’s why it’s a girl movie at heart, because it’s so rooted in connection. It's not about the guy getting the girl. They’re both kind of lost. It’s the rookie and the old timer and how they come together to forge something new. But they have a lot of tension. Tom Cruise, to me, is extremely sexless, even when he is literally having sex in Maverick, whereas in this one, it's all yearning looks. They spar for the training session and it’s very hot, and him defending her against a shitty pilot, and her comforting him about his brother's death. You’re getting to the emotional core of it. It's so much better.

Allison
The fact that it’s happening around them having to save the entire world, truly a life or death scenario. They're the only two people who can do it. He's a special boy.

Nicole
She’s a special girl, though.

Allison
They're a special boy/special girl couple. But it doesn't feel like del Toro’s trying to say she's not like other girls. She’s well-rounded, even if she's the only woman in the movie.

Nicole
It’s true. Even if she, I think, is partially the reason why we have the trend that I personally dislike of Asian women in action movies who are marked as edgy because they have dyed a piece of their hair. I find that very annoying, even though this probably kicked off that trend. But she has lines, she has her own story arc. Obviously, Pacific Rim does not pass the Bechdel Test, but around the time that this movie came out someone invented something called the Mako Mori test. Basically, the movie has to have a woman and she has to have a storyline that is not related to a man. Mako gets her own arc, but she's also not closed off to love.

Allison
She’s not a cold woman. That’s one of the worst tropes.

Nicole
It’s kind of dehumanizing. There are a lot of ways they say “I love you” without actually saying it. When he says, “I always lived in the past. I never thought about the future, until now.”

Allison
Love is real!

Nicole
Love is real. It lives in the giant sword!

Allison
And in their dated-ass robot! There’s something there about aging, which is part of Raleigh’s thing and Stacker’s thing, and another way it relates to Maverick. That’s a boy movie trope, men getting older and having to confront their own mortality.

Nicole
“Does the world have a place for me anymore?”

Allison
Right, and Raleigh comes back into it. He’s piloting this very old robot, but once all the digital Jaegers go down, they bring in the analog robot to save the day. Stacker’s whole story is that he's getting older, and it’s wearing on him physically. He’s literally dying because he has dedicated his life to this job.

Nicole
It’s not just, for example, that their robot is hella old. It’s old, and it allows them to change the plan and use the old robot as a nuclear bomb. With good writing, particularly screenwriting, everything needs to do double, triple duty. If you're going to include an element, it has to do multiple things, or come back and feel purposeful. That’s what I really admire about this. It’s airtight.

We’ve discussed, too, that this is one of Idris Elba’s best roles.

when your squad small but y’all crazy

Allison
He is so good here. Stacker and Raleigh are simultaneously both the Maverick type character, but Idris really shines, and he has his iconic line: “Today we are canceling the apocalypse.”

Nicole
“Number one, don't touch me. Number two, don't touch me.”

Allison
Idris is such an interesting case. This is the first Idris movie to be covered on Boy Movies, which feels crazy because he’s such a boy actor. I'm curious about what you think of him here and about your thoughts on a topic we’ve discussed before which is… what happened? Why didn’t he ever take off as a movie star?

Nicole
I do think this is one of his better roles. What makes him great in it is that — well, it allows him to be British, which we should all embrace, even though his Baltimore accent is very good. He's also allowed to have gravitas. He is charismatic. He’s a leader, which I think the movie really needs both plot-wise and for the tone. He demonstrates a lot of vulnerability. He’s both their ally and their opponent at different times, right? He's complicated. He's Mako’s dad, so he wants to see her succeed and wants to protect her, and Raleigh has that moment where he's like, “You're trying to protect her, but you're actually holding her back.” He has that arc too, where it’s about his relationship with his daughter and what his role is in trying to save the world. He gets a lot of good speeches. He gets to be adversarial at times, he gets to be tender. You get to see a lot of range from him here.

Allison
It shows off everything that he can do.

Nicole
He gives a good pep talk. And he gets to yell. It’s good.

Allison
Very Al Pacino Any Given Sunday football speech.

Nicole
It's confounding, because he has done really great things — The Wire, this, Beasts of No Nation. I don't know, it’s probably a mix of not getting the right recognition, and maybe the roles.

Allison
I think he speaks to another solid aspect of this movie, which is the casting. I know we talked about Charlie Hunnam’s terrible American accent while we watched, but I do think he's good in this.

Nicole
He’s a great puppy dog. He and Rinko have great chemistry, and he’s the male lead, but he is very often deferential to her. He checks in with her about the first Drift goes badly, they exile themselves from the cafeteria together. He's very vulnerable, he's very honest. He's very forthright and isn't pompous.

Allison
He's devoid of the ego that you would expect from a character like this, the lead in an action sci fi movie. He lacks the arrogance that is usually the obstacle that men in his position have to overcome.

Nicole
He actually starts to think with humility, and he redeems himself by sacrificing himself to destroy the Breach. It’s never about his ego, which is where he’s different from Maverick. What drew him to the Jaeger program again was when Stacker goes to find him in Alaska, and he's like, “Would you rather die here or in a Jaeger? The world is ending.” He thinks about service.

Allison
He’s a thoughtful character. He’s a malewife, too.

Nicole
Oh, 100%.

Allison
It’s sort of, dare I say, subversive to have a character like that leading a boy movie.

Nicole
It allows Mako’s storyline to shine and have its own space and breathing room. The time we spend in her memories, her flashback, her wanting to be a candidate, and the trials — that takes up a good chunk of the movie, compared to the opening scene with Raleigh and his brother. He's an example of the cost of this program, even though it can keep society safe. There's that moment where Newt’s like, “I’m a Kaiju fanboy,” and Raleigh’s like, “Well, my brother died from one of those.”

Allison
He’s seen the absolute worst thing that could come out of this program, and he continues on anyway. 

Nicole 
And he continues to want to see people like Mako succeed. He’s a mentor figure. It’s interesting to see a man take a backseat in what is ostensibly his movie for the sake of the rest of the movie to come together. Which we should do more of!

Allison
It’s rare. You get the bare essentials of him at the beginning, and then he chooses to exile himself after this personal tragedy. The rest of the movie, because so much of it is from his perspective, you get to see him realize that, “Whoa, this girl is amazing at this, and she’s being held back, and I am in a position in my career where I am a veteran of this program and can go up against the authority figure and say, ‘Why aren't you letting her succeed?’” 

Nicole
He uses his male privilege. He’s cocky, but he pushes for the right reasons. It’s ultimately in service of someone else.

Allison
It doesn't necessarily feel like Raleigh is trying to be a mouthpiece for her, but he is throwing his weight around in the right way. 

Nicole
She even notes that the reason she’s not talking back to Stacker is not because she doesn’t want to, but because she respects him. I love that acknowledgement of slight cultural differences, different ways of relating to people that he might not have the context for, but he still can try to help her in the way that he knows how.

Allison
Okay, this is slightly unrelated, but I wanted to bring it up. You once mentioned the concept of boy actresses to me, which I was floored by. Can you expand on it a little bit? I've been waiting to get you on just to talk about this concept.

Nicole
You and I have been building up to this moment. We were talking about who's an equidistant boy-girl actor.

Allison
We named Hugh Jackman as a male example.

Nicole
Because he unabashedly loves musicals. That man just wants to sing and dance, but then get really buff for Wolverine. We also said Charlize Theron.

Allison
To be a woman who has won an Oscar for playing Aileen Wuornos, but to also be in the Fast movies…

Nicole
But it was tough to think of boy actresses that are not sexualized.

Allison
Yes, we brought up Megan Fox.

Nicole
Yeah, and that feels unfair, because it’s more at the mercy of the industry and what they need to do to be successful, and the narrow roles that are available for women, period. So I tried to figure out who was a boy actress, someone who has a lot of grit, someone who is in more traditional boy movies. One that I came up with was Sigourney Weaver. Another one I thought of was Emily Blunt, specifically in Edge of Tomorrow.

Allison
She’s done boy movies like Edge of Tomorrow and A Quiet Place, but she’s also done The Devil Wears Prada.

Nicole
And played Mary Poppins.

Allison
Iconic girl role. Men don’t even know what Mary Poppins is.

• Announcement for anyone who made it to the end: Next week’s issue kicks off a month-long extravaganza that I’ve been working on for a while. I’m being coy but will spill every detail to anyone who privately asks me about it. Get ready!