Film Year: 2013
Genre: Action, Science Fiction
Director: Jared Cohn
Starring: Graham Greene, David Chokachi, Treach, Jackie Moore
MST Season: 12
The Movie
It is the near future where mankind has been at war with Kaiju, monsters who have been entering our dimension through a gateway in the middle of the ocean called the Breach. To combat the Kaiju mankind has built Jaegers, large humanoid machines built to fight monsters with our own monsters.......
Oh wait, this is the Asylum knockoff version. Um, giant monsters awaken in water. Mankind has giant humanoid robots because of course they do. Now they fight, and hopefully come under budget.
TONIGHT WE HAVE CHOSEN NOT TO RENEW THE ARMAGEDDON DUE TO LOW RATINGS!
That's not too close to the more famous line, right? We won't get sued? Good.
On this episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 we enter the Asylum. Asylum is a production company that specializes in very cheap movies released directly to home media. They are the group responsible for mini-cult hits like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Sharknado. But their bread and butter is by creating movies on the cheap and in a hurry to piggyback off of a blockbuster that is currently in theaters, which has been dubbed a "mockbuster" since Asylum started making such movies. Transformers begat Transmorphers. Snakes on a Plane begat Snakes on a Train. Paranormal Activity begat Paranormal Entity. War of the Worlds begat War of the Worlds because the novel is in public domain. Similarly, Sherlock Holmes begat Sherlock Holmes (except this one has a DINOSAUR!). As I'm writing this, they're advertising a mockbuster of Godzilla vs. Kong titled Ape vs. Monster. I think you get the idea.
This one is a mockbuster of one of my favorite movies of the 2010's, Pacific Rim, a film directed by Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro which was a loving homage to giant monster flicks and mech cartoons from Japan. The movie is absurdly fun, and one that I could put on during a rainy day and get a smile from. Asylum's mockbuster of Pacific Rim is, of course, titled Atlantic Rim. And it also involves giant monsters rising from the ocean and soldiers piloting giant robots fighting them in the middle of a city and at the bottom of the ocean. Except replacing Del Toro's trademark creativity with generic crap.
Atlantic Rim is typical of Asylum productions, limited time and resources made by filmmakers who are just interested in getting the shot and moving on to the next one. Actors are delivering stilted dialogue and are given no sense of direction to their craft except "Say the words, get a paycheck." (Though in a minor defense, Graham Greene at the very least seems like he's trying to earn that paycheck.) It wouldn't surprise me to find out that maybe some or all of Atlantic Rim's cut were first usable takes, with no desire to reshoot another take once the script has been read aloud, causing every character to look bored and disinterested in the film's own plot. Sets are used, redressed minimally, and reused as different locations haphazardly, making almost every set in the movie look exactly the same. CGI is cheap, cartoony, and crummy, lacking dimension and weight, and any sequence featuring action or thrills never really features either.
One thing that really bugs me about this movie though (among the many things that should be bugging me) is the half-baked scripting, which keeps introducing plot points that should have an effect on the movie's status quo but never do. In the third act, the film introduces a love triangle between the three robot pilots, which should create tension but doesn't. Instead it's brought up and dropped within the span of two minutes and never mentioned again for the rest of the movie. The third act also gives the pilots a neural transmitter link to their robots, which does very little to upgrade both their experience or the storytelling, because all this means now is that the actors have to wear a stupid looking crown on their heads for the rest of the movie. There is no thought or purpose put into any of this, and is just throwing concepts into the movie because it needs tropes to feel like an actual movie, I guess.
Probably the most interesting legacy about Atlantic Rim is that while Asylum always seemed to dance around copyright infringement enough to the point where any studio who decided to sue them probably wouldn't succeed, the existence of Atlantic Rim seemingly pissed Warner Brothers off enough that Asylum finally got sued for their mockbusters. I don't think the lawsuit led anywhere, but Asylum did retitle the film Attack from Beneath for future reissues, probably because they already squeezed their money out of the Pacific Rim hype and thought it wasn't worth the effort to keep the title. That, however, didn't stop them from making a sequel, Atlantic Rim: Resurrection, which was released to cash in off of the sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising. Say what you will about Asylum, but they have balls of steel.
The Episode
I can't tell you how many times during my fanhood of this series that I've heard variations of "They should bring Mystery Science Theater back and they should watch those shitty SyFy original movies or those Asylum ripoffs!" Then Atlantic Rim was announced, and the tune changed from that to "WHYYYYYY?"
It's incredible how many fans of a show where the premise is to show bad movies get upset when they watch a bad movie.
Ever since Atlantic Rim was announced for season twelve, I've been hearing oh so many complaints about it's inclusion and reasoning for why movies like it shouldn't be used. And honestly, most of them are complete nonsense. Let's go through the most common ones real quick:
1. "Atlantic Rim is too new for the show!"
There are a couple of reasons why this doesn't hold water. First and foremost, MST3K never described itself as a "We only make fun of OLD movies!" show, and to claim that's what it is is a complete misread of the show's intent. Secondly, this statement takes the classic series and makes it out to be fresher than it is. MST3K riffed several movies that were just as freshly released as this film. Atlantic Rim came out around five years before this episode aired, and taking that span of time and applying it to all the movies the show riffed, the following movies were riffed within five years of their release: Robot Holocaust, Alien from L.A., Outlaw, Time Chasers, Werewolf, Quest of the Delta Knights, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, and Future War.
Saying a film needs to be of a certain age in order to be featured is pressuring the show to be enforcing a rule that it never really had. Granted it's the first movie of the 21st century featured on the show, but the show was off the air for eighteen years. They likely would have plucked a few by now if they had never been cancelled.
2. "Asylum movies are too tongue-in-cheek!"
This is a complaint that I heard more before the episode's release than I do today, but I'll address it anyway because it was very common back then. This is incorrect, and it sounds like an assumption one would make after seeing five minutes of Rifftrax's Sharknado 2 live show on PlutoTV. The Sharknado series is an anomaly, not the rule. Sharknado grew in popularity based on its stupid premise, and the films became more comedic to play up the crowd that was watching them. Most Asylum films are not that humorous, and most of them are straight-faced. Atlantic Rim is one of the straight-faced ones.
3. "Asylum movies are intentionally bad!"
This is sort of the backpeddled response after the previous one proved to be false. While it's a bit closer to the truth, it's a bit off-the-mark. Implying something is "intentionally bad" is to say that they're going out of their way to be terrible on purpose, which is way more effort than Asylum puts into their films. Asylum movies aren't "intentionally bad," they just don't care if they're good. Asylum is a film company that comes up with titles, orders a script to be written in a hurry, and then shot swiftly to be completed in time for a release date, likely to piggyback off of a larger film that is being released. They are apathetic to what the final product is, they just want a product so they can make money.
In all honesty, Asylum's business model isn't all that different than Roger Corman's. They both dealt in utilizing resources to make cheap movies and release them quickly, whether they're good or not, often to ride with a trend that they believe will make them money. Corman himself wasn't even above titling his movies to be similar to a trendy recent movie. Gunslinger, for example, is obviously titled so to remind people of the Gregory Peck film The Gunfighter, and It Conquered the World was on the tails of It Came from Outer Space. If one wants to side with Corman and claim he made a more enjoyable product, made movies that at least had a little bit of heart (sometimes), and had a better eye for talent (people like Joe Dante and Ron Howard started directing under Corman), no real argument here (though Corman did make some doozies in his day). But we need to call a spade a spade.
4. "I prefer bad movies that have heart. Asylum movies have no heart!"
Now this is a point I agree with, but this is a pet peeve and not a legitimate criticism of the episode itself. That's just asking MST to cater to your own personal comfort zone, and I don't feel they should always do so. I hate Moon Zero Two and Catalina Caper, personally, both as films and as episodes. But I have no desire to punt them away from the series. The thing about MST is that each episode caters a different experience that different people will respond to. Many fans hate Hamlet, but I think it's a worthy experience of an episode. If it were suddenly deleted from MST's lineup just because fans thought it was a bad film choice, that denies people who respond positively to it an experience that they themselves enjoy. You don't have to like Atlantic Rim as a movie, just know that it's use is to craft an experience that maybe isn't for you.
The real reason this movie shouldn't have been riffed that nobody brings up: This episode's existence means they paid Asylum for it's use, which means Asylum can use that money to fund more movies like this.
That's the reason you should be pissed!
All of these are really just excuses circling around the idea that they just didn't like the movie and they're mad at the show for making them watch the movie they knew they wouldn't like. It's weird to me that in MST's long history more fans aren't more prepared or tolerant of this kind of situation. That being said, if the movie just drags you too much and you want to call time on this one, cool. No hard feelings. I myself will never conclude that there is any particular movie that should never be on the show, because if MST thinks it can make a positive experience out of a lousy movie, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and see what experience they have in store for me. Nobody really talks about how Atlantic Rim works as an episode, people normally fall back on just how much they hate the movie, and if they're ever asked about the riff, it's generic "Not even MST could save it" commentary, most of the time. It's often frustrating, because Atlantic Rim is a funny episode that always gets kicked over petty nonsense.
The experience created by this episode is geared toward 90's kids. Jonah and the Bots latch onto the simplistic nature of the movie, because it's almost like a generic Saturday morning cartoon. And this riff is very infused with a 90's cartoon experience. They connect the premise to Power Rangers early on with an ingenious quip of "Go Go Dour Rangers!" There is a quality Beavis and Butthead reference, where one of the characters screams "FIRE FIRE FIRE!" resulting in Crow doing a dead-on Beavis laugh before saying the trademark catchphrase "Fire! Fire!" There is a point at the end where there is an explosion in space, causing Servo to growl "BEAST WARS!," which is absolutely perfect if you're a Transformers fan. And, of course, there are more Transformers riffs where that came from, including a reference to Asylum's own Transformers mockbuster Transmorphers.
"Less than meets the eye!"
The riff continues to be a delight even when they aren't playing with 90's pop culture. The characters in the movie are pretty ridiculous, and they have fun latching onto their dimwitted personality traits and exaggerating them, like they normally do. However, one thing Atlantic Rim has going for it is that the personality traits are so absurd that what the crew projects onto them almost falls perfectly in line with the film. I love the moment when the lead character finds out his best friend kissed his girlfriend, then saying they were drunk when it happened, causing Crow to respond "Whoa whoa, hold on...you guys got drunk without me?" And the absurdity of the logic in Asylum pictures comes under fire often as well, especially during the rescue of a little girl from a burning building, for which one of the characters decides he needs to be armed for at some point, then change his mind and holster his weapon, causing Jonah to note "Oh great idea. Put the gun away while you're looking for a missing child!" There is even a moment with a curious looking extra playing a pilot, causing Servo to look carefully at then ask "Joel Hodgson?" They also take note of how sets are reused, to be seemingly a brand new area but looking exactly the same. Especially a bar set, which the last time we saw it was wrecked and "on fire" (in a fake, computery sort of way), which is later cleaned up and back open for business by the end of the movie.
"And the movie ends as it began...as a garbage fire."
The host segments continue Kinga's Gauntlet, but nothing really continues from the previous episode, except for Kinga's gloating. There is no real progression to note except they're watching their second movie, although the movie does have an opening teaser which will come into play later in the season but has little relevance to this episode. Although, the host segments here are pretty solid. The "Get In Your Mech" song toes a very strange line, where it's trying to be both terrible and fun at the same time, as it's awkwardly sang with random lyrics that don't go together. But the rhythm is catchy, and I like how Jonah and the Bots are totally into the beat by the end. Later on, the crew gets into a "bro-off" and start telling braggart stories that constantly use the words "Bro" and "BOOMBOOM!" similar to the main character in the movie. The Invention Exchange features a fun to look at Inflatable Air Dancer Organ and the hysterical and disgusting Supposi-Stories.
But a lot of this episode is going to ride on the shoulders of whether or not you can stomach the movie, because Asylum movies...I'd say they're not everybody's cup of tea, but the reality is that they're a cup enjoyed by very few (though SOMEBODY must be buying these movies). But this notion that Atlantic Rim shouldn't be on the show? Complete, as the movie would put it, "Bull butter!" My ass, it doesn't. And those who go along for the ride will find that there are a lot of strong quips targeted at a cheap, fake looking movie with little effort put into it. To be honest, the experience of Atlantic Rim isn't all that different than Future War. The one thing I'd probably give Future War over it is that the dinosaur puppets are more charming than the crappy CGI in this movie, but I came out of it laughing all the same.
Good
BOOMBOOM!
The DVD and Blu-Ray
Atlantic Rim was released on Shout Factory's Season 12 DVD and Blu-ray sets, and my copy is a special Pledge Drive Edition sent out to people who donated to a pledge drive just before the twelfth season aired. The Atlantic Rim disc features no special features, but it shares disc space with the preceding episode, Mac and Me.
