Pacific Rim Discussion *spoilers*

[Keiichi Morisato]

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?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

We do jump ahead 5 years into the future after the bro's death (I think), so the mourning period is understandbly and believably over by then. Also, wouldn't killing kaiju be a form of revenge? I don't remember the dude blaming himself or the robots for his bro's death. Anyway, moping is OK in small quantities, but too much is obnoxious (at least in an action movie).

 

[tippy2k2]

In the guys defense, his brother was literally inside his brain at the time of death. Becket's brother not only died; Becket EXPERIENCED the death.

Now I'm not a psychologist but that's probably not very healthy for your mental state.
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On the movie itself: Not nearly enough giant robots punching monsters in the face.

From all the reviews and whatnot, it sounded kind of like the movie Crank [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479884/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1] where the only time someone is not getting beat up or shot is when the main character is banging someone.

That's kind of what I expected here (with giant robots of course and probably less banging since it was PG-13). It was a good movie but I think it's getting way more praise than it really should be getting...

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

We do jump ahead 5 years into the future after the bro's death (I think), so the mourning period is understandbly and believably over by then. Also, wouldn't killing kaiju be a form of revenge? I don't remember the dude blaming himself or the robots for his bro's death. Anyway, moping is OK in small quantities, but too much is obnoxious (at least in an action movie).

I know, I was just trying to riff evangelion, and various other mech anime with similar situations.

 

[Bobic]

My problem with it was that there was only really one decent action scene. The sequence in Hong Kong with the 2 Kaiju. You may be about to quote me and point out the others but, the one in the intro with the boat didn't really last that long and was just setting the scene. And then there's the finale fight, which involved like 2 punches. They build up this super awesome Category 5 monster, and the fight lasts about 30 seconds. It's transformers 2 all over again (though nowhere near as awful). My friend has a theory, and I agree it's a strong possibility, that they ran out of time or money, so just couldn't do it justice. My two word review of the film would simply be 'wasted potential'.

(Also, I was super pissed that they killed off the awesome Russian tank of a machine and the super snazzy three armed chinese bot within 30 seconds of them getting into a fight. WASTED POTENTIAL)

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

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.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

On the movie itself: Not nearly enough giant robots punching monsters in the face.

True that, there're exactly three big action sequences in the movie - one at the very beginning and two near the end. First is cool because it's the first one around, naturally. Second is awesome. Third not so much - I hated underwater stuff. Ugh. Everything else is Mako and Raleigh exchanging looks. I liked the movie! It's just not the brainless hulk smash everybody's claiming it is.

I know, I was just trying to riff evangelion, and various other mech anime with similar situations.

I'm watching Evangelion right now. I'm only at episode 10/26 so I can't be much of a critic here, but so far it's pretty average. I like some of the creepy stuff they throw in but other than that it's standard-issue goofy panty-shot fun with mechs punching monsters in their big red eyes. And don't tell me it's all about mopiness! There's a big ass fight every episode, and Shinji may be a weakling pushover when it comes to femmes but he gets the job done regarding angels in 20 minutes or less. So, so far so good. I know it gets fucked up near the end but I can't just ignore the first half of the show.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I'm watching Evangelion right now. I'm only at episode 10/26 so I can't be much of a critic here, but so far it's pretty average. I like some of the creepy stuff they throw in but other than that it's standard-issue goofy panty-shot fun with mechs punching monsters in their big red eyes. And don't tell me it's all about mopiness! There's a big ass fight every episode, and Shinji may be a weakling pushover when it comes to femmes but he gets the job done regarding angels in 20 minutes or less. So, so far so good. I know it gets fucked up near the end but I can't just ignore the first half of the show.

The Rebuild series of Evangelion movies is better then the TV show in showcasing the weird god-like "science is magic and magic is science" stuff Evangelion is built upon.

there is also SIGNIFICANTLY less of Shinji being a whiny loser.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm watching Evangelion right now. I'm only at episode 10/26 so I can't be much of a critic here, but so far it's pretty average. I like some of the creepy stuff they throw in but other than that it's standard-issue goofy panty-shot fun with mechs punching monsters in their big red eyes. And don't tell me it's all about mopiness! There's a big ass fight every episode, and Shinji may be a weakling pushover when it comes to femmes but he gets the job done regarding angels in 20 minutes or less. So, so far so good. I know it gets fucked up near the end but I can't just ignore the first half of the show.

The Rebuild series of Evangelion movies is better then the TV show.

That may be but I like watching stuff in the order that it came out. If I'm a raving lunatic for Evangelion by the time I finish the show, I'll go watch it AGAIN in movie version.

 

[BOOM headshot65]

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.

Ah, but there is some logic to why that happens, other than the "It shows how badass Gipsy is for killing the killers of the very best jaegers."

First, remember that when that scientist drifted with the Kaiju brain, it worked both ways. Thus, the Kaiju might have learned how to fight these jaegers and what their weaknesses are. They ganged up on the Chinese bot and destroyed it (it seemed its fighting style was tuned for 1v1 fights), they sent the acid thrower against the most heavily armored and then when the acid ate a hole in it, they drowned it, and finally, they used an EMP on the top of the line, highly digialized and electronic jaeger. It CANT be a coicidence that they sent out monsters that seemed perfect for fighting these 3 jaegers. But Gipsy had been down for repairs for years, thus the Kaiju may have believed that it was still out of commission. Hey, as far as the scientist knew, it was, so thats what the Kaiju thought.

Second, remember what Mako said about Gipsys pilot. Hes unpredicable to the point of recklessness. The Chinese fought in a set style. The Russians fought in a set style. The Austrailians fought in a set style. Gipsy never had any set style other than using the plasma cannon to finish off the Kaiju. Other than that, he fought as pragmatically as possible, no matter how insane it seemed. He would use anything and everything as a weapon (shipping containers, tanker, builldings, etc.), and he took out the Kaijus attack when he learned what they were. The Kaiju may have learned the fighting styles from the scientist when he merged, but they cant learn one for Gipsy. He doesnt have, he makes it up as he goes.

 

[Karoshi]

(Also, I was super pissed that they killed off the awesome Russian tank of a machine and the super snazzy three armed chinese bot within 30 seconds of them getting into a fight. WASTED POTENTIAL)

Absolutely. I think even the dog had more screentime.

I loved the design of the kaju and the alien home world, but the action scenes themselves weren't all that good, imo. Overall I enjoyed the movie, but it could have been so much more.

 

[Mitsozuka]

A WHOLE LOT OF TRUTH SNIPPED FOR SPACE

YES, this. Gipsy Danger's pilot had no set style, even demonstrated by the recruiting tryouts. He went from freaking Kendo, to Karate, Jiujitsu, Wushu Staff Styles, and more that I'm sure I'm not educated enough to have picked out.

Trying to learn Becket's fighting style would have been like the Agents in Matrix 2 and 3 having to become fucking Super-Nazis to even stand a chance against the emotionally-damaged Black-clothed Savior of THE WHOLE COCKING WORLD. (Lol parallels.)

Silly points aside though, having gone into this movie with a sense of jaded cynicism, and a twinge of hope for "OMG BEST THING EVER" I actually got more out of the latter opinion than the former, which was freakin' sweet. I went in, expecting to see a couple really good dustups, a whole lot of tiny things being stepped on by enormously huge CG effects, some laughs, some cries, and a couple really standout moments, but what I got was that, plus a main character I actually gave two shits about. Three maybe! (lol more jokes)

Sitting in the fourth row at the 2D showing, I kind of felt like I was a little too damn close to the big ugly things that wanted to eat humanity, but that served only to keep my arse glued to the chair for the whole running time.

All in all, a beautiful, adrenaline-filled, highly Stylized send-up, Homage, and Love Letter to every giant robot, giant monster, and otherwise awesome Cartoon from the past 20 years. Like Megas XLR had a highly-CGed Love Child with Neon Genesis Evangelion, and breast-fed it with PURE LIQUID BADASS.

Also Ron Perlman. <3

 

[randomrob1968]

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..

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'm also of the opinion that it was a lot of wasted potential and only a couple of good combat scenes and monster fisting!

A thought occurred to me that I'd like to see an anime of this... with backstory on most of the main cast, 'cos it'd be interesting to know more on the development of the Jaeger Project and Pentecost's background.

However...

Also Ron Perlman. <3

film was worth it just for his performance!

 

[Weaver]

My problem is that all the characters were completely one note or pointless. I realize that was so we could have more robots punching eachother, but then why the hell did we spend so much time introducing every one of these pointless side characters?

The first 45 minutes of the movie weren't very engaging.

 

[pretzil]

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

Stand there and wait for it to get to you and start ripping you apart, don't ever shoot it dead with a plasma cannon from a distance...

Same with that stupid Japanese girl, I wont mention that the Jaeger now has a really sharp and effective giant sword, I'll let him have his fun using a cargo ship really ineffectively instead.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Guillhermo del Toro is notorious for using up as much of the budget as possible in all of his movies(basically, they just ran out of money); I was also a bit dissapointed that we didn't get to see more actual fighting, and that the other mechs were killed off so quickly, but what little I did see was fucking amazing.

I was hoping that we could get an extended edition of the movie, but with how expensive the CGI was, we most likely won't.

Let's hope that we get a sequel and that it kicks ass!

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

A WHOLE LOT OF TRUTH SNIPPED FOR SPACE

All in all, a beautiful, adrenaline-filled, highly Stylized send-up, Homage, and Love Letter to every giant robot, giant monster, and otherwise awesome Cartoon from the past 20 years. Like Megas XLR had a highly-CGed Love Child with Neon Genesis Evangelion, and breast-fed it with PURE LIQUID BADASS.

Also Ron Perlman. <3

Yeah, del Toro is one of the nerds and it can't be a coincidence that it felt like a more american take of Eva, all and all, a wonderful movie and, as Kojima said, the ultimate otaku movie

 

[Dosvidonya]

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

Stand there and wait for it to get to you and start ripping you apart, don't ever shoot it dead with a plasma cannon from a distance...

Same with that stupid Japanese girl, I wont mention that the Jaeger now has a really sharp and effective giant sword, I'll let him have his fun using a cargo ship really ineffectively instead.

Can you imagine how much of a resource strain it would be to constantly resupply a giant gun. To me it made sense that the Jaegers didn't use firearms most of the time. The plasma cannons also seemed to have quite a charge time to them and seemed really easy to damage. As for Mako being weirdly silent about the sword, you got me there but it made for one hell of a scene! Sometimes that's just more important. Also I would hardly call the boat ineffective.

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?

When Becket ejected he crossed universes thus putting, literally, a worlds of distance between him and the blast. Conversely, had Chuck ejected he would just be above the battle and would still be hit by the bomb. If you recall the blast literally blasted/vaporized the water aside, almost Red Sea style, so his chances of survival were pretty nil. I'm actually curious as to whether a nuke detonated underwater would actually have that effect though, that would be neat... though I wouldn't want to actually test that.

As for everyone else wanting more content: Del Toro did say he had to cut down on a lot of scenes and that he actually had a lot more actions set pieces planned, they just didn't have room for them. It is entirely possible that we'll get an extended edition, a la LOTR Ext Edts, when the dvds start coming out. Or whole other movies starring the other mechs. Both would be really neat.

 

[Eddie the head]

My problem is that all the characters were completely one note or pointless. I realize that was so we could have more robots punching eachother, but then why the hell did we spend so much time introducing every one of these pointless side characters?

The first 45 minutes of the movie weren't very engaging.

I don't have a car right now and the movie theater is across town so I had to walk. I forgot all characters names by the time I was a quarter of the way home. I remember the black guy wanted to be Nick Fury and and had a few cool lines. The two research guys had good chemistry, but I don't know there names.

When Becket ejected he crossed universes thus putting, literally, a worlds of distance between him and the blast. Conversely, had Chuck ejected he would just be above the battle and would still be hit by the bomb. If you recall the blast literally blasted/vaporized the water aside, almost Red Sea style, so his chances of survival were pretty nil. I'm actually curious as to whether a nuke detonated underwater would actually have that effect though, that would be neat... though I wouldn't want to actually test that.

If I recall the US navy did some tests on what would happen if you set off a nuke under water. And if I remember correctly it doesn't do shit. The water mostly absorbs the kinetic and thermal energy faster then the air. Making it really ineffective.