Pacific Rim Discussion *spoilers*

[njrk97]

Pacific Rim was pretty damn cool.

And the eject pods, I can see why the Chinese couldn't use them, their head was crushed...but the Russians could've used them.

from the wiki about Cheron Alpha

Cherno Alpha's Conn-Pod, also known as the Atmoscan, is located at the heart of the Jaeger; making it one of the most secure cockpit envrionments built for a Jaeger. However, it lacks an escape mechanism; Russian Rangers fight to win against the Kaiju or die trying.

Which makes sense if the control is in the chest it would be dam well hard to set up something that eject them upwards like they would need, also they got hit by acid and then dunked they would not have enough time to escape considering the reactor exploded straight afterwards. Don't get me wrong it sucks but is justifiable kinda.

 

[Thomas Hardy]

We don't know if the Plasma Cannon can work underwater. It also seems to be really delicate, it broke pretty early in the fight with Otachi (the winged kaiju). It might be a bit risky to use in the middle of the city... I mean they got reprimanded for using it in the first fight so maybe its like ordering an airstrike in that you do so when you absolutely have to. The sword I'm with you on. However, they probably chose not to use it before so they can introduce it in an awesome fucking scene. I mean that shot could be a poster and it would be awesome.

1) we don't know what the upper range limit on the plasma cannon is. It might only be good for a hundred meters or so.

2) God only knows what kind of damage that would do to a CITY if they missed the kaiju

3) You lose a hand to fire it. Permanently if the cannon gets damaged.

4) the command "empty the clip" fires about 7 shots before the cannon is overheated/disabled


Frankly, Gypsy reminds me a LOT of the Homeland Emergency Robot (HMR or "Hammer") from Symbionic Titan.

The RoE seems to be to disable the target with hand-to-hand attacks and then use the plasma cannon to deliver the coup de grace. (Or, as a last resort in case the engagement goes bad). It even seems like it has an "I'm taking you with me"-style overload function.

 

[F'Angus]

Pacific Rim was pretty damn cool.

And the eject pods, I can see why the Chinese couldn't use them, their head was crushed...but the Russians could've used them.

from the wiki about Cheron Alpha

Cherno Alpha's Conn-Pod, also known as the Atmoscan, is located at the heart of the Jaeger; making it one of the most secure cockpit envrionments built for a Jaeger. However, it lacks an escape mechanism; Russian Rangers fight to win against the Kaiju or die trying.

Which makes sense if the control is in the chest it would be dam well hard to set up something that eject them upwards like they would need, also they got hit by acid and then dunked they would not have enough time to escape considering the reactor exploded straight afterwards. Don't get me wrong it sucks but is justifiable kinda.

That totally makes sense . I guess if the Russians had an escape pod in Siberia there probably wouldn't be any point ejecting anyway because they'd just freeze to death. And thatbeing a tank they really don't expect to be harmed.

 

[pandorum]

I think the reason the film didn't focus on the other pilots was for dramatic efficiency, in that when you have a film with pretty simply drawn characters, you can't afford to throw too many of them at the audience... because then they become cannon fodder and the audience will start thinking about the nature of the conflict, and you don't want the audience doing that - asking 'why?'. The experience of watching the film has to be about the pilots interfacing with the machine, and not knowing if they can pull it off, that was the motif in every scene. You know the chinese pilots are cool and have their moves down, same with the russians. Those things are static, and don't add tension. That's precisely why you kill them off immediately, because it forces the audience to root for the main characters... whether they want to or not.

(Like in Titanic, you're hopes are high when you're going in thinking about what the story will be about, then words start coming out of the main character's mouths and you realize you're going to be stuck with them for 3 hours and your face kinda goes slack..)

My biggest beef with Pacific Rim was why the Australian son couldn't eject to safety before the nuke went off.. his father wanted the colonel to take care of him (THATS MY SON!), and the 2 leads eject to safety, from another dimension, in the middle of a firefight, so why couldnt the son eject?

Also I don't know why Idris Elba yelled his inspirational speech about cancelling doomsday , etc.. you yell when there's like hundreds of troops and you don't have a bullhorn and you want to make sure you're heard, but the facility only seemed like it had a few dozen people, and they were all right there. Elba is good at subtlety, but they had him barking in this film, I didn't think it played to his strengths.

Mostly though, I was happy that Pacific Rim succeeded as well as it did. I hope it gets a sequel, because I totally want to see them make a yaeger that combines into a giant one, ala Voltron/Gathchaman..

Hate to nit pick but was British not Australian the bulldog and accent should of told you we dont all speak like Londoners.

 

[Robot Number V]

Honestly, I couldn't give less of a fuck what the primary protagonist of this movie does. He was just a big, generic, blonde, musclebound blur as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, you know what should've happened at the end of the movie? He should've been knocked out instead of Mako. (That was her name, right? Mako? Anyway, I'm sticking with it) None of the characters in the movie are exactly deep or complex, but she was closer to that distinction then he was. So I thought it was pretty shitty that she gets literally ejected from the movie's climax. He's been teaching her to punch monsters the whole movie, wouldn't it be a lot more interesting for her to have to do it alone as her final test?

And you know what? Blonde Asshole should've died. Only because I'm so sick of the whole "Look, we're totally gonna kill the main charac-Nope, they're alive again" thing that movies seem to love doing lately. Wouldn't it be great if the main character actually DID die for once? I mean, wouldn't it be nice for a movie to actually SURPRISE you every now and then?

Don't me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Those were just my biggest problems with it.

 

[IndianaJonny]

I just saw Pacific Rim today, and I was amazed. I really like the action, visuals, and the overall design of the Mechs and the Kaiju. Even though the story was extremely predictable, I thought that it did it's purpose well enough to set up the action set pieces, which is why you go to see the movie in the first place. I mean do you really want some guy being all whinny that his brother died, and how he doesn't want to pilot a Jeager again but is forced to? Or do you just want him to nut up and kill kaiju in a giant robot?

And that, brother, is as close to a perfectly succinct review of the film as I've seen yet.

And you gotta love it when dumping the coolant has no appreciable effect on the performance of your Jaeger.

 

[Nimzabaat]

My problem with the logic behind the fights, not saying they weren't cool, but seriously "Why don't you just shoot it"

This was one of my first problems with the movie. I really enjoyed it but damn has humanity become so much dumber in the future. We know the instant a Kaiju appears but don't have defenses in that area? Mines? Big-ass guns that start shelling them immediately? Nope, build a robot to punch them in the face. It's like Pacific Rim shares a timeline with Idiocracy. I'm pretty sure if the Kaiju had balls, the Jaegers would have been designed to specifically kick them in the balls.

My biggest problem with PR though was the Drift. Two minds melded together because one can't handle the "Neural Load" of controlling a Jaeger. "Neural Load"? They've got frikkin joysticks and foot pedals! If they are controlling the Jaeger with their minds, why do they have to move their arms and legs? Are humans in the future too stupid to walk and swing their arms at the same time because of the "Neural Load? Why do they have to talk to each other when they should be "thinking the same thing". Why can one of them have an idea that isn't instantly both of them having the idea? Granted, it would be a little boring to watch the interior if the pilots were actually linked in the way described in the movie.

One of my buddies thought that maybe it would require a human to balance a robot that large, but the pilots get knocked around inside the Jaeger and it seems to stabilize faster than they can. There's also a point when the pilots disconnect but the Jaeger doesn't fall over, so that argument is busted. Not to mention the ultra-lame "bro" move to start the Jaeger. That looked like something straight out of Power Rangers.

/rant

Okay, the Drift would have been a better idea in a different movie. It just really didn't work for me in this one. And it didn't work for me when I first saw it in the trailer so it was a hard sell to start with. Others here have mentioned "wasted potential", that applies to the Drift as well, in my opinion.

Otherwise I liked it, I do agree with everyone that the other Jaegers should not have been written out as quickly as they were. (and there should have been a German Jaeger damnit. Oh and a Canadian Jaeger built with a really long Canadarm to hold the Kaiju away while they try to convince it to settle down and maybe feed it beer).

 

[randomrob1968]

Hate to nit pick but was British not Australian the bulldog and accent should of told you we dont all speak like Londoners.

Herc and Chuck Hansen pilot the Striker Eureka, which is the Australian jaeger team...

not arguing that the accent wasn't totally wrong, tho

 

[Dosvidonya]

And you know what? Blonde Asshole should've died. Only because I'm so sick of the whole "Look, we're totally gonna kill the main charac-Nope, they're alive again" thing that movies seem to love doing lately. Wouldn't it be great if the main character actually DID die for once? I mean, wouldn't it be nice for a movie to actually SURPRISE you every now and then

Except that we are never lead to believe that he died in the first place. The tech guys literally said that it was probably just the sensors in the pod that were malfunctioning. Also what was so bad about Raleigh? He doesn't do anything that could be considered asshole-ish, he wasn't offensive or stupid or anything to warrant a negative reaction. I mean sure he was an obvious archetype but so was everyone in the movie, even Mako.

As for your idea before that, I actually think that would have been a neater way to do it.

This was one of my first problems with the movie. I really enjoyed it but damn has humanity become so much dumber in the future. We know the instant a Kaiju appears but don't have defenses in that area? Mines? Big-ass guns that start shelling them immediately? Nope, build a robot to punch them in the face. It's like Pacific Rim shares a timeline with Idiocracy. I'm pretty sure if the Kaiju had balls, the Jaegers would have been designed to specifically kick them in the balls.

My biggest problem with PR though was the Drift. Two minds melded together because one can't handle the "Neural Load" of controlling a Jaeger. "Neural Load"? They've got frikkin joysticks and foot pedals! If they are controlling the Jaeger with their minds, why do they have to move their arms and legs? Are humans in the future too stupid to walk and swing their arms at the same time because of the "Neural Load? Why do they have to talk to each other when they should be "thinking the same thing". Why can one of them have an idea that isn't instantly both of them having the idea? Granted, it would be a little boring to watch the interior if the pilots were actually linked in the way described in the movie.

If you are talking about conventional arms then they established in the beginning that they didn't work fast enough before the Kaiju did serious amounts of damage. If you mean like Jaeger sized guns, could you imagine how much of a resource strain they would be having to constantly produce ammo for it. And if it gets disabled then there is no other defense, contrary to popular belief a stationary gun is not that hard to defeat, that's why modern armies tend to focus on mobility.

As for the Drift, I thought that worked perfectly and for the large part made sense. I can't imagine joysticks or pedals would give someone the same degree of reaction and mobility as the Drift. As for the need to move your arms and legs, to actually do those your brain has to send electrical signals to the muscles in your arms and legs to get them to move. Same applies to the Jaegers, so if your not moving your actual arms, then it is because your brain is not sending the proper signals thus it wouldn't send the signals to the Jaegers either. Finally the Drift doesn't make two people one person it just syncs their minds so they can share the load/strain put on by piloting the Jaeger. They can see each others memories and thoughts but Humans are still hardwired for verbal communication, and communicating essentially by telepathy, would be an incredibly foreign thing for us, so yeah the talking made sense too. The only time that I got skeptical was when they introduced the sword, and even then it didn't bother me that much.

 

[Little Woodsman]

The only thing I had a problem with was the fact that they all decided for the 'new' Jaegers to not have an independent power supply.

And man, that bit them in the ass.

It's there in part to be a reference/homage to a particular Giant Robo t anime.

 

[Robot Number V]

And you know what? Blonde Asshole should've died. Only because I'm so sick of the whole "Look, we're totally gonna kill the main charac-Nope, they're alive again" thing that movies seem to love doing lately. Wouldn't it be great if the main character actually DID die for once? I mean, wouldn't it be nice for a movie to actually SURPRISE you every now and then

Except that we are never lead to believe that he died in the first place. The tech guys literally said that it was probably just the sensors in the pod that were malfunctioning. Also what was so bad about Raleigh? He doesn't do anything that could be considered asshole-ish, he wasn't offensive or stupid or anything to warrant a negative reaction. I mean sure he was an obvious archetype but so was everyone in the movie, even Mako.

As for your idea before that, I actually think that would have been a neater way to do it.

OK, maybe "asshole" wasn't the right word. It's just that...he's so generic. I know everybody in the movie is a trope but his seems to be by FAR the most commonly used in Hollywood. I've seen Big Blonde Wisecracking Hero With a Dark Past way more times then I've seen...Whatever Mako was. And he just wouldn't shut the hell up! Whenever they're in the mech together, she just stands there and kicks ass quietly, while he wont' stop stating the obvious. "Mako! Let's do this! Get ready to punch them! Yeah, we punched it! Let's try hard to win!" ....I might be exaggerating, but he just annoyed the hell out of me while bringing almost nothing new or interesting to the table.

Also, at the end of the movie, those escape pods totally should've just bounced right off the portal, since we JUST established that the thing reads monster DNA to determine what to let through.

 

[VonKlaw]

*snip*

I suspect (although I fully admit that the movie didn't explain it very well, if at all) that the "DNA Reader" probably works like the Auger shield from Resistance 2/3 in that it only reads stuff trying to come towards it, which run the risk of being hostile, rather than stuff going out, which is normally being deliberately send.

It's silly I know, though it is the sorta stupid poorly thought out crap an arrogant alien species that relies on giant cloned monster to invade places would do.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I've written about this in other threads, but The Escapist refuses to let me search through my post history to copy-paste it.

Biggest disappointment, by miles, is that the movie was only about Becket and Mako. One robot vs. tons of monsters. The movie promised us tons of robots vs. tons of monsters, and we get this one motley duo that fights everything.

The Chinese triplets, with their badass three-armed yaeger? Killed instantly.
The Russian couple, with their classic bruiser yaeger and six years of constant fighting? Killed instantly.
The Australian father-son veterans, thought to be the best of the yaeger program? Never fight for longer than eight seconds on screen in each fight, then nukes themselves. Killed instantly.

And you can't sell that off as "these were advanced yaegers and it was meant to show how dangerous the kaiju are to the earth", because not two seconds after the best of the yaeger program gets instantly destroyed, you have the yaeger crew in its first real experience together completely destroy the opposition.

And how great the Chinese and Russian crew could've been! It's just such a bad decision.

Yes you can.

The Chinese Yaeger gets into a fight with two Cat 4s at once and pays for it - though it does really hurt one.

Cherno Alpha is a beast, I don't know what you're talking about. IT ELBOW DROPS A KAIJU IN THE FACE. Its whooping ass in the fight its in until the Kaiju reveal they've been weaponized and even then keeps up until the the two Cat 4s double team it.

Strike Eureaka is kicking ass too, until the EMP Kaiju hits it - and then they get out and SHOOT IT IN THE FACE with HANDGUNS.

Gipsy Danger only wins because A: They're the main heroes and B: The Cat 4s split up. the fight with the Cat 5 is drawn out because its made pretty obvious it was going to mess both Gipsy Danger and Strike Eureka up pretty bad - it survives a nuke 100x the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima from point blank after all - and then Gipsy barely manages to kill it.

 

[Dosvidonya]

OK, maybe "asshole" wasn't the right word. It's just that...he's so generic. I know everybody in the movie is a trope but his seems to be by FAR the most commonly used in Hollywood. I've seen Big Blonde Wisecracking Hero With a Dark Past way more times then I've seen...Whatever Mako was. And he just wouldn't shut the hell up! Whenever they're in the mech together, she just stands there and kicks ass quietly, while he wont' stop stating the obvious. "Mako! Let's do this! Get ready to punch them! Yeah, we punched it! Let's try hard to win!" ....I might be exaggerating, but he just annoyed the hell out of me while bringing almost nothing new or interesting to the table.

Also, at the end of the movie, those escape pods totally should've just bounced right off the portal, since we JUST established that the thing reads monster DNA to determine what to let through.

Fair enough. Not every character is going to work for everyone, so I feel you on that. As for the end, the portal was meant to deflect non-Kaiju from coming in. I can't really see a reason why they, the aliens, would bother to apply the same thing for outbound travel. I mean why would they, they never had to worry about that sort of thing before it was too late. Also I have to imagine that when they do finally go through the portal to colonize a world, they use machines to do it so requiring Kaiju dna would have probably backfired on them if they wanted to go out through the portal.

 

[cojo965]

I do wish the final battle had been a bit longer, what with the Category 5 being a Never Before Seen Epic Monster, but come on, they had a nuke, they were going to detonate it in something's face, even the Kaiju can't take a nuclear bomb to the head. If the fight had dragged out, you'd get people wondering why Striker Eureka died with smart bombs. It was also pretty proven that there was no real way the Jaegers were going to survive a lengthy drawn-out fight with the Cat 5, because they got themselves blown to hell during the first 10 seconds of the battle. It's 4 4 and 5 against two robots. No. That's not a fight, it's a slaughter, and one side just has to get the jump on the other.

Not to mention one of those Cat 4s was the fastest recorded Kaiju on record, Raiju. That one alone could have danced circles around the last two in its element. Just remember the damage it dealt in a single bindside attack on Gypsy. That is also the reason it was killed in the way it was, inertia is a cruel mistress. (Tv Tropes for the win)

 

[pandorum]

Hate to nit pick but was British not Australian the bulldog and accent should of told you we dont all speak like Londoners.

Herc and Chuck Hansen pilot the Striker Eureka, which is the Australian jaeger team...

not arguing that the accent wasn't totally wrong, tho

Huh cast two Brits to play Australian characters, give then British insignia inside the tank, and on the jackets they wear. LoL.

 

[shogunblade]

I've written about this in other threads, but The Escapist refuses to let me search through my post history to copy-paste it.

Biggest disappointment, by miles, is that the movie was only about Becket and Mako. One robot vs. tons of monsters. The movie promised us tons of robots vs. tons of monsters, and we get this one motley duo that fights everything.

The Chinese triplets, with their badass three-armed yaeger? Killed instantly.
The Russian couple, with their classic bruiser yaeger and six years of constant fighting? Killed instantly.
The Australian father-son veterans, thought to be the best of the yaeger program? Never fight for longer than eight seconds on screen in each fight, then nukes themselves. Killed instantly.

And you can't sell that off as "these were advanced yaegers and it was meant to show how dangerous the kaiju are to the earth", because not two seconds after the best of the yaeger program gets instantly destroyed, you have the yaeger crew in its first real experience together completely destroy the opposition.

And how great the Chinese and Russian crew could've been! It's just such a bad decision.

I disagree entirely, though. The movie was supposed to feel like an old cartoon. Yes, I wanted the Zangief/Nastasha Romanenko Jaegars to have a fight and the Australians have a fight. It feels like an anime, and how often does an Anime side with secondary characters, in all honesty (Note: I don't watch that much Anime, so I can be wrong).

I loved the movie. It felt like it was paced as well as Iron Man, and to be honest, if Mech V. Kaiju is paced as well as the first (and in my opinion, the best Iron Man), then it sacrificed all the monstrous and indecipherable fighting that Transformers ended up becoming.

Del Toro thought carefully about it, you can tell. Too many Mechs would equal "I don't care" attitudes. It introduced who it had to to make the movie work, and it works brilliantly. It's not the greatest movie I've ever seen, but it was fun, and fun is what I want at a movie theater. It was wonderful.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Amazed to see all the love for Pacific Rim here. This site has been pretty hard on spotty movies in the past.

This was perhaps my most anticipated film of the year. I was geeking out like a 12 year old kid at all the monsters and robots I was going to see.

With the exception of a few admittedly slick fight scenes, it was a bad movie. Teetering on being a godawful movie. And not in the "so bad it's good, glorious cheese" way. In a tedious, paint by numbers, shitty acting, shitty scripting, dubious directing way. The characters range from flimsy to insulting, the dialogue is groan inducing...even the music was bad. Outside of the film's visual flair and interesting creature/robot design there was virtually NOTHING to praise here.