Was Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, a US-Mexico co-production set in Hong Kong, really a show of Hollywood power?

Guillermo Del Toro’s film is something of an homage to Godzilla films, but it still managed to court disapproval in China, where it took US$114 million in 2013

The Mexican director argued that Pacific Rim was purely entertainment, with a message about people working together no matter their nationality or race

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A still from a scene in Hong Kong in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim”. The film, inspired by Godzilla movies, was criticised by some in China for its geopolitical undertones, but the director argued that it was simply popcorn entertainment. Photo: Warner Bros

Published: 6:15pm, 3 Mar 2023

When Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim was released in 2013, it was praised as a spectacular – if cheesy – Hollywood homage to the Japanese kaiju films that began with 1954’s Godzilla.

Although the film’s Hong Kong setting hinted at a deeper truth – that the Asian cinema market was becoming more important than its American equivalent – Chinese authorities suggested there was something more sinister going on beneath its surface, like its giant interdimensional monsters emerging from the South China Sea to wreak havoc.

But could a film so apparently guileless that it contains the line, “Fortune favours the brave, dude!” really be a piece of covert geopolitical propaganda?

The theory goes like this: to secure its international standing, a country can wield soft power, hard power, or a combination of the two.

Hard power is the use of military and economic might to influence other nations. Soft power is more insidious, relying on the reach of a country’s cultural or commercial output – the international dominance of Hollywood movies being a good example.