Pacific Rim: SPOILER THREAD

[jollyreaper]

Yeah. The idea of building and abandoning shatterdomes in such a timeframe seems abrupt. The cutting of funds for the jäger program also seems implausible. As a quibble, would have preferred them have the jäger program running at full tilt and still losing and the bomb down the throat would have been a rogue plan by Pentacost because he realizes the elites are planning on building fortified cities in the interior and abandon the surface to the kaiju. Sacrifice 95% of humanity to save 5%, but Pentacost knows that even if he was happy with the morality of that plan, the kaiju would still destroy those cities.

It would have felt more bleak to me if it wasn't a funding cut but sheer attrition bringing the jäger program down to four effectives.

The movie is still very rewatchable and enjoyable. And that's more than I can say for pretty much anythjng that comes out these days. I am not ungrateful.

[Sharp-kun]

Also I think by homage to anime the director really meant homage to Evangelion.

Didn't really see it. The film is much more like Godannar than Evangelion.

- Two pilot national robots.
- Mankind was screwed when the kaiju appeared until giant robots saved the day.
- Main male pilot hasn't got over losing his previous copilot 5-6 years earlier and has to learn to work with a new female co-pilot who was saved years earlier by a giant robot
- Kaiju coming from deep in the ocean and often being fought as they make landfall with the mechs often being dropped from the air . Biggest comes out towards the end as they deliver the bomb to end it.

However I wouldn't say it was a homage to Godannar as I don't know if Del Toro has even seen it. I did sit through it thinking "this is Godannar the Movie" though.


Thats not to say you can't draw a comparison to Eva, but there's less Eva than there is other anime and many of the tropes are common to mecha anime in general (and prior to Eva). I think the reason Eva gets brought up so much is due to its big name, not due to the actual comparisons.

The ending was almost straight out of Gunbuster for me - our bomb has failed lets go in ourselves and use our reactor and hope we get out ok.

I'm curious to see any directors commentary once the blu-ray comes out as I want to know what was intentional and what wasn't.

[SylasGaunt]

I saw it, it was amusing on the big screen, but god do I take back even giving the remotest credit to the movie for trying to stick with its premise at all. Blatantly whatever toxic hazard the monsters represent is so trivial as to not even remotely matter, the fumes from a burning tank would be more dangerous, and the mechs are armed with a whole array of cutting and explosive weapons.

This is explained in the opening montage (but easy to miss) as well as in other material. Kaiju blood is acidic on its own, but the actual Kaiju Blue effect doesn't happen until the Kaiju starts to decay. That's when it starts off-gassing all the really toxic shit, and Hannibal's team have a way to delay the reaction so they can strip out what they can.

As for weapons..

Striker Eureka- Has concussion based missile weapons and blades that are heated to cauterize their wounds.
Gipsy Danger- Energy weapon capable of cauterizing wounds, non-heated sword that only gets used when the Kaiju is outside a city.
Cherno Alpha- All blunt force, flames, electricity.
Crimson Typhoon- Plasma caster for cauterizing, does have blades but we only see them used outside the city.

It would have felt more bleak to me if it wasn't a funding cut but sheer attrition bringing the jäger program down to four effectives.

It wasn't funding cuts that cut the Jaegers down to four. Remember Stacker took advantage of his last few months of funding to activate every jaeger he could get his hands on, if there'd been more working Jaegers to be had he would have snatched them up. It was the increasing frequency of kaiju attacks that did it (the year before the movie had 8 jaegers destroyed).

[jollyreaper]

I guess it might be reading too much into it but it felt like production of jagers was cut was well. It didn't seem like anything else was in the pipeline as would be the case if they were still producing more units.

It also wasn't entirely clear what marked the difference between a mission kill and a total write off. The jagers struck me a bit like pre-cold war warships in that classes had limited numbers and everyone tried something a little different. There didn't seem to be any mass production types since there was no clear winning formula. It seems like any clear lesson learned in one battle could be proven wrong in another. That might have led world governments towards purposefully working on divergent approaches so that there's always something different to hit a kaiju with.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The fact that they were resorting to building a damn wall rather than put more effort into the jaegers speaks for itself. The mindset to think you can just wall off your problem and ignore it reeks of some sort of denialism, since they clearly found the war with using the jaegers was being lost and conventional forces weren't any better. What started off as an easy win after the jaegers got started, eventually turned into a long slog where the kill ratio turned eventually over into the favour of the kaiju. But I imagine before that, they probably started diverting funds away to just fixing damage and then to any other programme that didn't seem like more of the same losing strategy.

Either they didn't grasp that eventually this would lead to humanity's extinction, or they did and just felt economics was more important for the time being, or something equally stupid on the bureaucrats' behalf.

[SylasGaunt]

I guess it might be reading too much into it but it felt like production of jagers was cut was well. It didn't seem like anything else was in the pipeline as would be the case if they were still producing more units.

Well when they started supporting the wall fully that put the kibosh on further construction. But the year the wall started going up there were still quite a few actives and the year before Striker had come off the line. However the Mk. Vs were going to be really damn expensive (and it's no wonder given the way Striker manhandles every single Kaiju it goes up against with the exception of Slattern). The fact that the kaiju initially seemed to avoid cities with the coastal walls probably didn't help the argument in the jaeger program's favor any.

It also wasn't entirely clear what marked the difference between a mission kill and a total write off. The jagers struck me a bit like pre-cold war warships in that classes had limited numbers and everyone tried something a little different. There didn't seem to be any mass production types since there was no clear winning formula. It seems like any clear lesson learned in one battle could be proven wrong in another. That might have led world governments towards purposefully working on divergent approaches so that there's always something different to hit a kaiju with.

You're right there. Basically the jaeger designs varied immensely because the fact that every kaiju that came through was different meant that you never knew what would work best on them. This actually probably helped a lot given that we were essentially in an armsrace with the Precursors (though we didn't know it until the end) since it meant they had to deal with the exact same problem of not knowing what the damn robots would have ready for them when they went through.

Of course then they responded with generally bigger and badder kaiju until the year before the film at which point they apparently said 'fuck it' and just sent 14 of the damn things through in a single year.

[jollyreaper]

From a storytelling perspective starting small and getting bigger makes sense, you couldn't have a story if humans didn't have time to build jagers. But from the perspective of the aliens, this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. This wasn't their first rodeo, they should have a sense of what generally works for taking over planets. Why did they send through kaiju in dribs and drabs and ramp up in such a neatly paced fashion?

It could be interesting if we make that deliberate pacing intentional. A scenario I always liked was the convenient alien invasion. Sure, bug-eyed monsters from space attack but they're fortunately within the means of our modern-day weapons systems to defeat. First wave defeated. We are then better-equipped to deal with the second wave which has more advanced technology and pushes us harder. But that advanced technology allows us to make our forces even better. Then there's a fourth wave, a fifth wave. The aliens keep getting more advanced and we are forced to adapt, incorporating their tech. The boys in the lab have a theory that we've never met the real aliens behind the invasions, the invaders are constructs, that the invasions themselves are not meant to destroy us but serve as a selection pressure, deliberately shaping humanity towards some as-yet unimagined purpose.

With creatures that are masters of genetic manipulation, it makes me wonder just what it is they could do to ruin a planet that yet also still allows them to remain on it for a hundred million years, no rush.

[bilateralrope]

I remember the scientists saying that the reason the aliens didn't invade during the time of the dinosaurs was that they couldn't get through the portal. So the portal could be limiting how fast they send kaiju through.

When they sent the first through they weren't expecting resistance. Once they lost the element of surprise, then it's a choice between holding back and letting humans build up defenses and study the portal, or keep attacking so that the portal remains open.

[SylasGaunt]

From a storytelling perspective starting small and getting bigger makes sense, you couldn't have a story if humans didn't have time to build jagers. But from the perspective of the aliens, this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. This wasn't their first rodeo, they should have a sense of what generally works for taking over planets. Why did they send through kaiju in dribs and drabs and ramp up in such a neatly paced fashion?

I suppose it depends on who they've fought before. Of course some of it also depends on the limitations of the portal as well. Maybe the longer it stays established the more it can be used? But that's just conjecture. It also depends on how long it takes to manufacture a Kaiju. Going by the attack graphs it tended to be between 3-5 kaiju a year for most of the war. Then there's barely a peep in 2023 with only 2 kaiju appearing before the big bumrush of 2024 where they sent 14.

The other thing is that the early kaiju were optimized for wrecking up cities and resisting conventional attack. When the first Jaeger deployed it kicked the everloving shit out of the kaiju it was sent up against and took barely any damage in turn. Then for a while we get more of the same with Cat 1 and 2 kaiju getting slapped around by ever more powerfully built Jaegers, and often getting double or triple teamed at that.

What I find myself wondering is if we're the only front they're dealing with or if they're sending kaiju to multiple planets at once.

With creatures that are masters of genetic manipulation, it makes me wonder just what it is they could do to ruin a planet that yet also still allows them to remain on it for a hundred million years, no rush.

Well there's always the possibility they didn't stay on a planet for 100 millions years and they've moved since the time of the dinosaurs.

I remember the scientists saying that the reason the aliens didn't invade during the time of the dinosaurs was that they couldn't get through the portal. So the portal could be limiting how fast they send kaiju through.

Actually he says the reason they didn't come through was that the atmospheric conditions weren't right so they decided to check back later.

[Darth Yoshi]

Didn't Hermann say something about the portal getting a little bigger every time something is sent through? That would also explain why they stuck with Cat 2 and 3 for a while after the Jaegars were first introduced. It simply wasn't possible to send anything bigger through yet.

[Highlord Laan]

The fact that they were resorting to building a damn wall rather than put more effort into the jaegers speaks for itself. The mindset to think you can just wall off your problem and ignore it reeks of some sort of denialism, since they clearly found the war with using the jaegers was being lost and conventional forces weren't any better. What started off as an easy win after the jaegers got started, eventually turned into a long slog where the kill ratio turned eventually over into the favour of the kaiju. But I imagine before that, they probably started diverting funds away to just fixing damage and then to any other programme that didn't seem like more of the same losing strategy.

Either they didn't grasp that eventually this would lead to humanity's extinction, or they did and just felt economics was more important for the time being, or something equally stupid on the bureaucrats' behalf.

I chalk it up to this. The wall makes more jobs, makes more money, grants more contracts to more people, makes more friends among corporate power brokers, and lets some worthless shitbag in an office say he's helping, which gets him re-elected if it's all spun right and has the right buzzwords attached. I imagine the US reps using such words as "freedom" and "free market" repeated every six sentences to lull people into a mush-brained patriotic furor in backing the wall as a good, properly freedom-loving idea.

The timeframe is set in the current era, after all. Barely sentient scum driven entirely by money and power games sacrificing whole cities worth of lives to stay in office is par for the course.

[jollyreaper]

I think the plausibility issue is the war on terror is bs and the United States is not actually threatened. The monster invasion is more akin to total war and obliteration like WWII. The threat is even more immediate than global warming.

It is easy to understand someone going along with hype to sell the government military tech it doesn't need since what happens in Iraq doesn't hurt us back home. We can understand a lawyer working for BP who assumes the consequences of his actions will come decades later. With the kaiju, it would seem harder for politicians and cronies to bs themselves. it would be likeselling bad weapons to fellow Germans in 1945.

[Borgholio]

It would have been nice to get some more detailed background on the wall. It might have made more sense of the wall was heavily armed with missile launchers and plasma turrets on the ramparts. I can't see how people can think that the wall would stop even a small-ish kaiju if it were just an ordinary construct of reinforced concrete.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm presuming the Sydney one wasn't fully operational, given there were no weapons on it and it was penetrated in, what, under an hour? Only Striker Eureka being around saved the city.

[Borgholio]

I thought it WAS operational...which was why Eureka was being decommissioned.

[Highlord Laan]

I thought it WAS operational...which was why Eureka was being decommissioned.

Yup. The Australia wall was fully complete and operational. And still was breached in under a hour. Three (stupidly) decommissioned Jagers were scrambled, but only Stryker survived.

[2000AD]

There was an article that I was linked to on Facebook, but I can't find it now. The author of the blog was discussing how he and his girlfriend differed in their views of the movie. The Girlfriend is somewhere on the Autism-Spectrum, so she has trouble with word-play, but she is very very good at picking up on body-language and visual cues.

.....

Think I found it:
http://stormingtheivorytower.blogspot.c ... c-rim.html

Tev covered the main points in her post but there's a few more things mentioned as well.

[Kane Starkiller]

Saw it and was not impressed.
If you are building a movie based on a premise that only giant robots can defeat giant monsters then you better make those robots awesome. The Jaegers unfortunately were lame. Ever since the first battle Jaeger hand-to-hand is completely ineffectual against the monsters while monsters easily rip of limbs, bite off chunks of metal and pierce robots with their horns.

Robots are only effective when using ranged weaponry like plasma canon or chest mounted missiles. It's almost as if the movie intentionally draws attention to how ridiculous the premise of forgoing bomber launched cruise missiles for robots is. Make me believe this robot is a better alternative than a bomber at least for the two hours I'm in the theater. Don't remind me they should've stuck with missiles.

Since this was a giant robot vs monster movie and I decided to suspend disbelief on that count I'm not going to rip the movie for the ridiculous "Great Wall" idea or not attempting to encircle the oceanic rupture with a fleet ready to smack down the monster as soon as it sticks its neck out.

[atg]

In the novel the rationale for the wall is that any place with a 'wall' was not getting attacked by Kaiju - they would go elsewhere.

The inference being that the politicians then came up with the bright idea of building a wall around the whole pacific and then I guess the Kaiju are meant to just swim around in their own private pacific pool I guess.

And then Mutavor said hi to Sydney.

[SylasGaunt]

Saw it and was not impressed.
If you are building a movie based on a premise that only giant robots can defeat giant monsters then you better make those robots awesome. The Jaegers unfortunately were lame. Ever since the first battle Jaeger hand-to-hand is completely ineffectual against the monsters while monsters easily rip of limbs, bite off chunks of metal and pierce robots with their horns.

Many times it's harder to kill things with blunt force trauma than blades and the like. The upside is that it spreads much less kaiju blood around which you then have to scramble to clean up before it starts off-gassing and poisons the area.

And GDT made the Jaegers vulnerable because he wanted to make it clear right from the start that the kaiju are threats. If you look back at the film none of the kaiju are mooks who get mowed down by the bushel, each is an individualized and highly dangerous biological weapon. This is also further built up by the fact that by the time the movie starts the Kaiju are starting to adapt to kill jaegers, first with tactical shifts (like Knifehead and Otachi going for the pilots), and then eventually with biological weapons (Leatherback's EMP). The movie skipped the easy years when the Jaegers would thrash the kaiju.

Robots are only effective when using ranged weaponry like plasma canon or chest mounted missiles. It's almost as if the movie intentionally draws attention to how ridiculous the premise of forgoing bomber launched cruise missiles for robots is. Make me believe this robot is a better alternative than a bomber at least for the two hours I'm in the theater. Don't remind me they should've stuck with missiles.

The only Jaeger using missiles is the latest and most advanced one.. you know, the only one able to slap them around and make it looks easy. Both the K-stunner missiles Striker uses and the Plasma cannons on Gipsy and Crimson Typhoon are the result of needing to find weapons that help the Jaegers kill kaiju better. Plasma cannons (which seem to be short ranged affairs anyway) help cauterize the wounds, and K-stunners deliver a big concussive blast that's less likely to spread kaiju guts everywhere. We've also never seen a plasma cannon mounted on anything smaller than a jaeger so there's the size/power requirements as well.

Also they make it clear at the start of the film that they initially did roll with conventional attacks on the kaiju which resulted in 3 destroyed cities, and a 35 mile stretch of the US covered in toxic kaiju bits.

Also conventional platforms can't grapple with the beasty and hold it in place.

[Cykeisme]

Basically one the K-Stunner warheads were developed, we should have been seeing them deployed from all sorts of mobile land and air platforms, as well as fixed emplacements.

I mean, even if there were Jaegers, we should have been seeing them get fire support from aircraft, ships and tracked vehicles..

[Mr. G]

The inference being that the politicians then came up with the bright idea of building a wall around the whole pacific and then I guess the Kaiju are meant to just swim around in their own private pacific pool I guess.

Not to mention the absurd cost of such a wall of tens of thousands of kilometers and hundreds of meters wide and tall would certainly exceed the combined economic resources of the entire planet.