Anybody tuning into Netflix’s “Pacific Rim: The Black” will likely expect more of what Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham gave them in 2013’s “Pacific Rim” (and, to much lesser effect, what Steven S. DeKnight gave them in 2018’s sequel, “Pacific Rim: Uprising”): Two-person crews piloting big-ass mechs slugging it out with equally big-ass monsters. The series’ premiere episode, “From the Shadows,” has enough large-scope action to satisfy those expectations, but quickly pivots to a ground-level perspective. For some, the change in dynamic may sour their satisfaction. But it shouldn’t. There are only so many places “Pacific Rim: The Black” can go by sticking with formula alone.
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Diverging from that formula gives creators and showrunners Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle freedom to explore, expand, and build off of what del Toro made with Beacham nearly a decade ago (and what DeKnight put a light damper on just a few years back). Yes, of course, a “Pacific Rim” story should, nay, must feature Jaegers (the mechs) giving the business to kaiju (the monsters), and more often the other way around. A “Pacific Rim” spinoff without the exchange of punches between colossi would be like Oreos without the creme or the 4th of July without fireworks. Eternally entertaining as clashes of titans are, though, there’s something to be said for reframing “Pacific Rim” to focus on the aftermath. No one’s canceling the apocalypse here. By the time the show opens, the apocalypse has already happened.
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In “Pacific Rim: The Black,” kaiju run rampant all over Australia, the human resistance to their invasion having spectacularly failed. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPCD) is in the middle of evacuating the whole continent, directing all survivors to its major cities for immediate departure. Siblings Taylor (Calum Worthy) and Hayley Travis (Gideon Adlon) find themselves caught in the middle of the devastation, rescued from near-death-by-kaiju by their Jaeger pilot parents, who whisk them off to the desert, leave to find help, and 5 years later remain MIA. The good news, at least, is that Taylor and Hayley, along with the busload of kids saved by their folks, have cultivated a nice, sustainable little piece of land where they live safely away from prying kaiju eyes. The bad news is that watching many teenagers grow potatoes and brood for 20 minutes a clip would be incredibly boring, so none of it lasts.
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There must be kaiju, after all, and there must also be Jaegers; it’s “Pacific Rim.” But Johnson and Kyle don’t want the black being left out, so no sooner do Taylor and Hayley find a Jaeger of their very own and fend off a kaiju than the Jaeger runs out of batteries and forces them to travel through the ruins of society on foot. Going to war against the kaiju is well and good. Living with the consequences of losing that war is by now much more interesting, and frankly, somewhat more relatable given that we’re all stuck in our homes after being bested by a germ that’s completely upended the way we live over the last year. Loss is now a familiar feeling, and for that matter, so’s the awful sense that our government has abandoned us to fate after bungling their emergency response.
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Robots fighting behemoths is nice enough escapism, but “Pacific Rim: The Black” gives us something substantial to relate to and perhaps observe our current predicaments through instead. There are kaiju, certainly, and now they come in multiple sizes: Small, medium, large, and freakishly enormous even for creatures whose base height is around 800 feet. Taylor and Hayley have to contend with kaiju in each category, as well as the ugly monster that is known as human nature; because out in the black (colloquial post-catastrophe lingo referring to what’s left of the Land Down Under), everyone’s out for themselves. Maybe that’s a bit of a cliché; shows like “The Walking Dead” ask, seemingly every damn season, if their marquee monsters are more dangerous than people, and the answer is always “people.” But “Pacific Rim: The Black” at least has franchise precedent for humans acting awful even with the end of the world hanging over their heads, and also never lets the audience forget that kaiju are, in fact, the true threat.
The shift in medium bolsters that central theme. Under del Toro’s direction, “Pacific Rim” retained the bright, crackling energy of anime in live-action; the film is clearly a product of anime’s influence, in style as well as structure. (The effect “Neon Genesis Evangelion” has on del Toro’s concept is undeniable.) Contextualizing that world within a fully drawn anime aesthetic, which reads at once as spontaneous and precisely calibrated, gives “Pacific Rim: The Black” a personality all its own, distinct from its predecessors but with a clear relationship to both. Johnson and Kyle and their animators play around with scale even when Jaegers and kaiju don’t dominate the frame; the arid environments the characters dwell in, for instance, contrast looming mountains against the teenage protagonists, and each piece of wreckage passed by in urban settings dwarfs them. Visual reminders of their insignificance constantly surround them to a world that outsizes them in every respect.
At least they have each other. “Pacific Rim: The Black” lets Taylor and Hayley process their trauma over their circumstances in their own way, but more importantly, treats that trauma as a space where they can bond over loss and galvanize themselves in the pursuit of their new mission: To find their parents, dead or alive. They’re a compelling pair forced to stare down hazards and horrors no kid their age should, and though the series is considerably brighter than its cousins in a literal sense, it’s just as bleak. The del Toro film already got its sequel, but “Pacific Rim: The Black” is the companion piece to “Pacific Rim” that movie’s fans deserve. [B+]
