*Spoilers* My One Gripe With Pacific Rim and Other Films.

[Bat Vader]

I saw Pacific Rim on Saturday and I loved it. One of the best movies I have seen this year. I plan on seeing it again in another week or two. There is however one minor gripe that I had with it. They aren't major spoilers but spoilers none the less so if you have not seen the movie I would advise you not to click on it. I am also going to list my one gripe with The Return of The King as well. Both will be spoilired. Main thing I talk about in both is how I hate cannon fodder characters and extras.

Spoiler

About I am assuming halfway through the film two category 4 Kaiju attack and take down both the Russian and Chinese Jaegers fairly easily. My main problem with this is how easily they are taken down. I know that they were basically just cannon fodder to show how much stronger the Kaiju are and them being talked up as good pilots and machines was most likely hubris. At the same time though I find it annoying how these pilots who were said to be extremely skilled were taken down quite easily. I don't mind that they were killed; just that they were killed in such a cheap way. I would have found it much better if they had each killed like two or three category fours or so and then got taken down because of the strain. That is my only gripe with it

Spoiler

My one gripe in Return of The King is how easily the Ginodrian soldiers fall. I know they are heavily outnumbered but I would think that a small army like theirs would be better skilled and better trained. I would have liked to have seen like a squad of 10 Gondorian soldiers cutting down like 20 to 30 Orcs or some higher number.

I am curious what my fellow Escapist users think about my gripes and what theirs are for films.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Spoiler: Regarding Pacific Rim.

Well, they were the first ones of that size category so they were a lot stronger then other Kaiju up to this point, and I get the feeling they were over confident. That said, I wish we got more time with those characters but there's always the cannon fodder in any film, at least they got their moment to shine a bit before it though.

That's how I saw it anyways.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Regarding to the LotR thing, that film isn't an action film- it's a fantasy film. It's based on the story, not the action. Maybe having the evil dudes slaughtered would be funner for some to watch, but the way it was with the orcs decimating everyone else shows that they're some unstoppable force of evil. Any time there's some respite, like when the rangers line up like a firing range to take down some orcs in Osgiliath, it seems like an even bigger break from the norm and light in the dark because of it.
The Pacific Rim event just seems like bad writing.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Those guys looked so fucking cool. Much better than Raleigh and Mako, better than the Australian father-son combo that I've forgotten the name of.

A jaeger that is built like a tank and looks like the heaviest bruiser the jaeger program had, and a jaeger that had three fucking buzzsaw arms. Let's put some cool looking veteran couple in the bruiser, let's put a synergistic trio in one of the most unique jaegers in the movie. After giving the audience a glimpse of their jaegers in combat and the beginning of some backstory to the two jaegers, let's immediately kill them at the first threat.

Oh, but those were two of the biggest kaiju that ever surfaced, and they had to fight them together!

Then the new jaeger with two pilots in their first real fighting scenario together take both of them out without much damage.

Pacific Rim never wanted the movie to be about the military bravado of all the countries working together equally, it had to be about the American and his old traditional machine who would single handedly win the movie. If the movie had not even shown the other jaegers and their crews, I would've been better spirited about the movie thrusting some great potential for better characters and bitching fights out of frame.

I thought the movie would be about many robots fighting many monsters--turned out, it was about one robot fight many monsters.

 

[tippy2k2]

I do (partially) agree with the complaints about Pacific Rim. I was really looking forward to a giant fight at the end where the four remaining giant robots got into fisticuffs with a bunch of giant monsters.

However, I do disagree that it was a cheap way to do it. The film made it explicitly clear that what the two Kaiju did was something they had never seen before in their lives. They were adapting and figuring out the easiest way to kill us.

Spoiler: Death of giant robots!

Red robot got tag-teamed and was directly attacked at where the pilots were.
Giant hammer robot got acid to the face, something that the Kaiju had never done (and is an incredibly effective tactic for obvious reasons)
Speed robot got EMPed, again, something the creatures had never done before.

The main robot was able to fight the Kaiju one on one, so it didn't have to worry about the tag-teaming that Red Robot dealt with (and when he did get tag-teamed later, he got his ass handed to him). He was aware of the acid spit so he was able to avoid it and tore out the acid thingy to neutralize that problem. Lastly, the EMP didn't affect him.

But I do agree with the general gripe you are expressing; plot armor [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor]. Also, I apologize in advance now for it is with almost certainty that I just ruined someone's productivity today by linking to TV Tropes...

On Pacific Rim 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...

 

[K12]

I loved the film but what you said was one of my biggest gripes with it.

Pacific Rim does manages to mostly avoid the "America is the world" thing that other end-of-the-world Hollywood films do but this stops them from completely avoiding it.

My other major gripe was the near abandonment of the "two pilots with close connection" theme towards the end. The teams in the Jaegars in the last fight barely knew each other!

 

[Kae]

Yeah I get what you mean, I got a feeling of "THAT'S IT?!" when they died, besides the chinese 3 armed Jaeger looked freaking awesome, so it was rather disappointing when they died but the hit was direct, I was more disappointed with the russians, since their window breaks because of the acid and then they drown, I thought they could have escaped, you know use the escape pods or something, but the fil was still awesome though.

 

[Megalodon]

Yeah I get what you mean, I got a feeling of "THAT'S IT?!" when they died, besides the chinese 3 armed Jaeger looked freaking awesome, so it was rather disappointing when they died but the hit was direct, I was more disappointed with the russians, since their window breaks because of the acid and then they drown, I thought they could have escaped, you know use the escape pods or something, but the fil was still awesome though.

Random thing I found out after seeing it yesterday, that Russian Jager's cockpit was in the torso, not the head like the thers, and hence it didn't have escape pods. Because apparently Russians don't like survival.

 

[Kae]

Yeah I get what you mean, I got a feeling of "THAT'S IT?!" when they died, besides the chinese 3 armed Jaeger looked freaking awesome, so it was rather disappointing when they died but the hit was direct, I was more disappointed with the russians, since their window breaks because of the acid and then they drown, I thought they could have escaped, you know use the escape pods or something, but the fil was still awesome though.

Random thing I found out after seeing it yesterday, that Russian Jager's cockpit was in the torso, not the head like the thers, and hence it didn't have escape pods. Because apparently Russians don't like survival.

Well I guess in Russia you are not worthy of survival if you can't swim who knows how many miles to shore.

 

[Negatempest]

Yeah I get what you mean, I got a feeling of "THAT'S IT?!" when they died, besides the chinese 3 armed Jaeger looked freaking awesome, so it was rather disappointing when they died but the hit was direct, I was more disappointed with the russians, since their window breaks because of the acid and then they drown, I thought they could have escaped, you know use the escape pods or something, but the fil was still awesome though.

Random thing I found out after seeing it yesterday, that Russian Jager's cockpit was in the torso, not the head like the thers, and hence it didn't have escape pods. Because apparently Russians don't like survival.

Spoiler: A response

They didn't drown. Gorilla creature destroyed the cockpit they were in while they were underwater. Never had time to escape.

 

[Megalodon]

Yeah I get what you mean, I got a feeling of "THAT'S IT?!" when they died, besides the chinese 3 armed Jaeger looked freaking awesome, so it was rather disappointing when they died but the hit was direct, I was more disappointed with the russians, since their window breaks because of the acid and then they drown, I thought they could have escaped, you know use the escape pods or something, but the fil was still awesome though.

Random thing I found out after seeing it yesterday, that Russian Jager's cockpit was in the torso, not the head like the thers, and hence it didn't have escape pods. Because apparently Russians don't like survival.

Spoiler: A response

They didn't drown. Gorilla creature destroyed the cockpit they were in while they were underwater. Never had time to escape.

Eh, their cockpit definetely flooded before they died, so drown/crushed, does it really matter? Point was that their Jager didn't have escpae pods even if had the time.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Well remember they had filmed a 5th Jaeger team, a Latin American team, but they had to push the schedule of the release forward so they were cut from the film, their scenes unfinished. My guess is they were supposed to die alongside the Russians and Japanese teams. Sad.

My only gripe with the movie was that GLaDOS was never referred to as such! That would have been hysterical! A nice little wink at the audience.

 

[Abomination]

Pacific Rim never wanted the movie to be about the military bravado of all the countries working together equally

That's what I wanted to see and it's what the trailers and marketing hinted at.

We still got some awesome fights but I wanted to see other robots rather than the 'Murican one doing all the heavy lifting.

I think the part of the movie I liked the most was when the Russian bruiser was able to grab one of the monsters in a choke-hold and deliver some brute force to it.

 

[Zeldias]

The thing that I didn't understand, first of all, was why they would create giant robots and leave them largely unarmed. I mean, they were fistfighting giant robots, and I enjoyed it, but seriously, most of the fights managed to make Gundam as a series make more sense; at least they had beam sabers and rifles and stuff. Were the fights supposed to be fair? It was ridiculous.

That and the fact that no one ever ejected until the very end of the movie.

It was a fun movie but damn it was dumb. And I expected it to be more international and multi-ethnic than it actually was. It was really disappointing to see Crimson Typhoon go down like nothing with it was the most interesting machine out there given that three people piloted it.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

My only gripe with the movie was that GLaDOS was never referred to as such! That would have been hysterical! A nice little wink at the audience.

... wait. The voice of the computer was the same voice as GLaDOS? I thought she sounded familiar!

OT: Yeah, I was a little sad about how fast the other two teams got killed. I figured it was coming when they held back the main characters, but I'd have enjoyed seeing a little more of them first. Then again, as noted, the film was already pretty long. I imagine some stuff had to be cut.

 

[Fractral]

I just wished that we could have seen more Jaegers, since they all had names and backstories and were all so unique and cool looking. It makes me hope that there will be more in the same series. If not a sequel (preferably not a sequel) then at least an animated short or something.

 

[Shinsei-J]

Eh, I don't really mind that gripe of yours.
Don't know why. It's a valid point but they just struck me as "die to raise the stakes" anyway, which I loved because it was executed perfectly in my opinion.

My one gripe is the flying scene.

Spoiler

Use that sword earlier!
It's obiously the best weapon against these thing.
As for beating that flying kaiju,
"falling out of the sky grapple"
it's all you needed and this movie would have won everything every.

Oh yeah' what those Australian guys did... So Australian.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I agree with you about Pacific Rim.

Spoiler

It was pretty disappointing to see two really cool looking and reportedly badass robots and crews get offed the first time we see them in combat. Would have been nice to see them in combat properly at least once before they were taken down.

 

[cookyy2k]

My only gripe with the movie was that GLaDOS was never referred to as such! That would have been hysterical! A nice little wink at the audience.

I'm so glad they didn't do this for 2 reasons. 1st it would have been really out of place and would have instantly ripped me out of the experience and 2nd I'm so sick to death of those games being referenced, they're great games but the references got old so fast.