Pacific Rim - trailer Analysis

Pacific Rim - Sci-fi, Fantasy

The recently released, Sci-fi Fantasy film Pacific Rim's trailer demonstrates the films Genre through a variety of ways. The main way in which the genre is shown is through its use of impressive visuals which connote ideas to the audience. Within the first 20 seconds of the trailer, the audience is aware that Earth is under attack from an Alien invasion: we see a huge creature attacking a populated city (Which surprisingly doesn't look as futuristic as I was expecting), this demonstrates to the audiences that the aliens intentions are to cause destruction and annihilate the human race and this film is about humanities battle against extinction. The audience is told that the main theme from the film are Aliens versus Humans, but this is expanded on further in the trailer. Humanity in threat of other beings is conventional of the Sci-fi genre.

Throughout the start of the trailer, very few Sci-fi elements are shown - the audience isn't aware of any advanced weaponry, other planets or space ships - All that we had seen is humanity getting hopelessly destroyed by Aliens. We see a modern standard military jet crashing into the Alien, this shows us that this film is set in the not-too-distant future, this too is not standard of the Sci-fi genre. Usually films are set a long time ago in a galaxy far far away or about 300 years into the future.

Around 45 seconds in the phrase "In order to fight monsters, we decided to create monsters of our own" is said by the trailer voice over and from this point the film comes across as a more generic Sci-fi film. We see the construction of a giant robot with two humans controlling them, this is the advanced technology and weaponry the Sci-fi genre is accustomed to. The theme changes to Humans and Robots versus Aliens, this too if a change from the standard Humans versus Robots/Aliens themes that seem to recur in the Sci-fi genre.

Another thing which is surprising of the Sci-fi genre is the lack of action, we don't actually see a Robot versus Alien battle until halfway through the advert. Then the trailer just turns into a montage, cramming most of the fight sequences into 2 second clips. Along with other adverts from this genre, we see Humans versus Aliens and in the fights the winner is unseen - there are clips of both Humans getting beaten up in fights and Aliens getting beaten up. What I found rather curious as well is the lack of actual weaponry. We see only the advanced mechanical suits physically fighting the Aliens, on the majority of other Sci-fi films we usually see lasers, plasma canons or some other form of advanced futuristic weaponry.