First posted February 2021.

Of all Guillermo del Toro’s films, Pacific Rim probably seems on its face to be the least connected to fairytales. A science fiction love letter to mecha and kaiju movies, there is precious little visually to connect it to folklore, unlike the enchanted forest of Pan’s Labyrinth or the lush Bluebeard vibes of Crimson Peak. But it is, as always, del Toro’s devotion to the art of fairytale storytelling that shines through in the places you least expect it.

In his director’s commentary, del Toro explains that the characters in Pacific Rim are not really meant to be fully-rounded human beings. At first that may sound like bad storytelling, but it is in fact one of the cornerstones of fairytales and folklore, and one of the reasons the art form is so enduring. Fairytales seldom have named characters and even more seldom are those characters complex or strongly-developed. With few notable exceptions, folkloric tales rely not on character-driven plots, but examination of ideas. The characters in a fairytale aren’t people — they’re ideas.

The stock characters utilised in fairytales stand for different morals, virtues, and vices: the princess is innocence, kindness, and patience, while the knight is courage, chivalry, and protection. Fairytales don’t waste time telling you these characters are those things; they expect you to recognise the character trope, immediately understand all that stands for, and take that understanding into the rest of the story. What then occurs is a lesson in those virtues, or a cross-examination of the conflict and inter-support between ideas.

This is perhaps best explained with the character of Stacker Pentecost. He is the archetype of the leader: the king, the general, the knight, the officer, etc. He does not volunteer information about himself willingly, choosing instead to project an image of a stoic and calm leader who has everything under control at all times and requires obedience from his subordinates. He is strict and firm, but loyal and quietly courageous. At one point he almost leans on the fourth wall, telling Raleigh that he is not a friend or a family member, but “a fixed point” — someone for everyone else in the Shatterdome to depend upon and return to. While we learn some information about Stacker’s past, it’s not really relevant to the ideals for which he stands in the story. He doesn’t need to be a person. He’s a fixed point.

Other characters orbit around that fixed point: most particularly, Raleigh, our world-weary veteran, and Mako, our warrior princess. Raleigh stands for experience, creativity, thinking outside the box, and support, while Mako is a survivor, book-smart, controlled, precise, and elegant. She was once the princess rescued by Stacker’s knight in shining armour, but now she must learn that the vengeance she seeks cannot be won by herself alone. Both Raleigh and Mako are survivors of great personal loss, and both need to understand the worst parts of each other and learn to trust each other in order to save the world. Stacker is the fixed point between them; he cannot fight this battle for them, but he can stand watch over them as they learn how to fight it together and guide their process.

“Cinderella” isn’t a story about Cinderella. It’s a story about being kind, even and especially when it’s hard and you don’t want to be. “Beauty and the Beast” isn’t about Beauty or the Beast. It’s about looking beyond appearances and valuing people for who, not what, they are. Pacific Rim isn’t about any of the pilots, the Jaegers, or the Kaiju. It’s about love — love between friends, family, romantic partners, colleagues. It’s about trusting your loved ones to know your flaws and still have your back.

It would have been easy to have the superior technology save the world, or the scientists’ knowledge. But it is humanity that wins — “the world saves the world,” as del Toro put it. Newt and Hermann have completely opposite views on science, but it is their trust in each other and willingness to work together that gives the team the knowledge to correctly adjust the plan. It is Raleigh overcoming his grief and understanding how to support Mako through hers that brings their Jaeger back to life. It is knowing that we are flawed, knowing that we all have terrible burdens that we are working through, and knowing that none of us can do this alone. We cannot win without loving others, trusting them to know us and support us.

Consider, if you will, “The Town Musicians of Bremen.” Individual animals, old, worn-out, and past their ‘usefulness’ to their owners, leave to make something of a life for themselves elsewhere. Each of them on their own is little to be reckoned with, but when they work together, they manage to scare off a troupe of robbers and make a lovely, supportive home for themselves. We also see the value of working together in variants of — you guessed it — Cinderella, in which the heroine’s kindness to birds and animals is repaid when those birds and animals return to help her complete her impossible chores, such as sorting lentils from the ashes.

Stories such as these have such enduring global appeal because they are so unspecific in character. Not everyone’s Cinderella is named Cinderella, but you immediately know Ye Xian and Vasilisa are kind, patient, and good, simply because of what trope they fill in their stories. Once you recognise all the characters in the story, you immediately know with what ideas and values this story is concerned. The maiden knitting nettle cloaks for her brothers does so out of love, devotion, loyalty, and perseverance. The man who loses the crane wife betrayed trust and went back on his word. You know what these stories are about, even if you don’t know it already, just because you’re well-versed in fairytales and know the characters.

Pacific Rim is, in fact, a fairytale at heart. Though the set-dressing is not what we think of when we think ‘fairytale,’ the set-dressing is never what makes a fairytale. The very basic building blocks of a fairytale are what this story is built upon: the use of character tropes to explore the interplay between seemingly opposing ideas, the bridging of gaps between different kinds of people, and the uniting forces of faith and love.