Pacific Rim: SPOILER THREAD

[Guardsman Bass]

We just discussed a lot of that in this thread, as Jub pointed out.

The reason why they don't pound them with ordinance (or nukes) is because they don't want to splatter the coastal waters with Kaiju blood and guts, which are ammonia-heavy and thus highly toxic to sea life (as well as posing a health risk for humans in concentration). That's the whole reason they were using the giant robots to beat them to death, as opposed to blasting them with conventional ordinance and/or nukes like they did with the first four Kaiju who showed up. The movie even shows a hint of that in the opening prologue sequence with glimpses of areas contaminated by "Kaiju Blue".

If they didn't care about either chemical, biological, or radioactive contamination, then they'd just keep blasting them with nukes (most effective would be if you could make nuclear depth charges to trigger around the portal once the Kaiju pop through).

[AniThyng]

Chill. Anyway, there's nothing stopping lights from being analog lol. And I think only the latest Jaeger was actually all digital and affected by the emp. I think they were aiming to try to be analogous to the difference between a hydraulic airplane with dials and a fly by wire plane with glass cockpit. Just full with it. I'm sure nuclear reactors in of themselves are not digital. Just the control systems.

[Guardsman Bass]

Yeah, I don't get the analog thing either, but it's not something to think about too much (same goes for the "solid iron hull").

[Scrib]

nvm

[Sea Skimmer]

We just discussed a lot of that in this thread, as Jub pointed out.

The reason why they don't pound them with ordinance (or nukes) is because they don't want to splatter the coastal waters with Kaiju blood and guts, which are ammonia-heavy and thus highly toxic to sea life (as well as posing a health risk for humans in concentration). That's the whole reason they were using the giant robots to beat them to death, as opposed to blasting them with conventional ordinance and/or nukes like they did with the first four Kaiju who showed up. The movie even shows a hint of that in the opening prologue sequence with glimpses of areas contaminated by "Kaiju Blue".

Course the problem with that entire idea is ammonia is itself highly flammable and fairly clean burning when it does ignite, this being a major reason why it was used in certain rocket engines as fuel. The end result of dropping incendiary bombs on them might not even be worse worse then a POL depot blowing up. Really its a stupid weak excuse, when the creators could have just as easily proclaimed they released chemicals or bioagents thousands of times more toxic and actually difficult to clean up instead. Like I dunno, anthrax suspended in mustard gas. Not like this is a new idea, in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the inspiration for Godzilla and thus most if not all Kaiju films, and likely this idea, the lizard monsters to be killed with a radioactive projectile because it was bleeding out diseases. That makes some real sense, ammonia does not. I can ignore the lack of rubber baton warhead Tomahawks more easily.

[Cykeisme]

Yeah, they're super robots. They're each unique, they exist in a vacuum rather than being part of a wider combined force organisation, they're much bigger than "real" robots tend to be, they rely on durability in a fight rather than having to avoid being hit in the first place because they're in the same scale of durability as everything else. They might not have been built by a mad old professor and piloted by his 14 year old grandson, but everything else about them is super robot all over.

That pretty much clears it up, awesome
Seems like perhaps the special conditions ("drift compatibility") needed to make good pilots, and the selection process for the pilots, starts to veer into common super robot territory too.
Quite possibly the only non-super robot part, is how it's acknowledged that building and maintaining Jaegers needs money, and the lack of further government support becomes a major plot point.

That said, I could see why they were trying to get away from the Jaeger program, even if the "Wall of Life" wasn't going to work (the novelization has the top leadership throw out that no city with a Wall had been attacked before as a justification before Sidney's attack).

Is the novelization any good?

Does it state what the extent of the wall is? Does it say if they build walls around individual coastal cities, or did they actually wall off a third of the Earth or something?

Really its a stupid weak excuse, when the creators could have just as easily proclaimed they released chemicals or bioagents thousands of times more toxic and actually difficult to clean up instead. Like I dunno, anthrax suspended in mustard gas.

For some reason I chortled when I read "anthrax suspended in mustard gas"..
That's what I was thinking, incendiaries (or better still, a nuke) would superheat msot of the Kaiju remains and break down all the compounds in its body into their component elements. They really could have come up with stronger justifications about why nukes and air support aren't used.
Giant robots punching them to death is satisfying, but it is somehow more satisfying if the movie makes it clear, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it's the best way to kill them

[Guardsman Bass]

The novelization was a good read, although there are some small differences with the movie. Dialogue, a kiss at the end that was thankfully not in the movie, and so forth along with occasional interludes that consist of "in-universe" newspaper articles and content (like a press release from the UN committee in charge of Jaeger funding describing why they were phasing out the program). Probably the coolest stuff is that you're inside Newton's head when he drifts with the Kaiju, so you get a ton of detail about the Other Side of the Portal as well as what's driving the Kaiju.

The Wall was pretty ambitious as described in the novelization. They weren't just walling off the coastlines of the continents - they were actually trying to do undersea walls to make sure the Kaiju couldn't get out of the Pacific. It mentions (as I said) that no area walled off had been attacked up to that point, and that they were losing Jaegers to the new Kaiju faster than they could replace. Something had to give, although it doesn't say whether they were going to literally just abandon the Pacific to the Kaiju, or simply blow them apart and accept the environmental damage from it.

I thought the ammonia-based blood was from the movie, but I might be wrong. The novelization doesn't mention that - it just says that their remains and blood (including "outgassing" from their corpses) is extremely toxic and corrosive. It might just be that, and not ammonia-based. The Jaeger force also seemed more worried about a dead Kaiju contaminating a city area with Kaiju Blue than contaminating the ocean - their main fear of ocean contamination was from repeatedly using nukes to take them down.

I didn't think of the idea of a rubber-head missiles, but that's something cool. Build them big enough and fast enough, and hitting a Kaiju with one would be like a Jaeger punching them in the face (or worse). You could also probably buy thousands of them for the cost of a single Jaeger (one character in the novelization says something like, "Don't they cost $60 billion each?", although it's just some random guy working with Raleigh on the Wall).

[Sea Skimmer]

Generic is toxic would work a lot better. Some stuff really does exist like methylmercury that we could simply be functionally incapable of dealing with if it spilled on a large scale. Ammonia is one of the dumber choices possible, since it would just evaporate over time worst comes to worse. I hope that isn't true, I'm waiting to see this until when its nearly out of theaters, as going to a packed theater in the city sucks.

A rubber warheaded missile is already over complicated as it is, just trying to keep up the silly a little. In all reality I cannot see why you wouldn't just employ unfused versions of conventional guided bombs and other weapons as bludgeons.

An undersea wall is just comically stupid, what the hell are they supposed to be making a wall out of that monsters which can cut through heavy steel girders and fight a giant robot hand to hand wouldn't be able to destroy or climb over in the first place? You'd think the fact that the monsters are apparently getting past the deep ocean trenches would already imply they can climb really damn well even if they can't just swim?

[Cykeisme]

Yeah, the idea that anyone (even politicians) would think the wall would have worked is ridiculous.
Besides simply being too weak to stop Kaiju from simply breaking through the wall, Otachi also showed us that some Kaiju can fly, physics be damned; even if the wall was more resilient, it was always a doomed idea anyway.

Re: 20 Jaegers around the rift.

What if the Kaiju (which are shown to be pretty fast underwater) manage to simply evade the Jaegers, especially considering that Jaegers seem to require some boot-up time?. The problem with having all Jaegers at the breach itself is that if the Kaiju manage to evade them, then they can most likely get to the cities first and lay waste to them before the Jaegers can be heli-transported.

That's a good argument, but perhaps they can have 10 Jaegars as a mobile coastal reserve, while 20 defend the Breach?

In my head, when I said the Jaegers are stationed "at" the Breach, I meant right at the edge.. so a monster sticks its head out, it starts getting pummelled before its shoulders even emerge.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The biology is ammonia based, but that doesn't mean all toxicity is derived from it. Kaiju Blue is stated to make even breathing a problem and kills practically everything, with a persistent corrosive gel like property. If it were just ammonia (which is basic, not acidic, in aqueous), it wouldn't even look like what we see, which is a gunk like crude oil.

[Vendetta]

In my head, when I said the Jaegers are stationed "at" the Breach, I meant right at the edge.. so a monster sticks its head out, it starts getting pummelled before its shoulders even emerge.

Depends how long the Jaegers can loiter on station. It's established that the kaiju attacks were only predictable to a certain extent, and only Crazy Math Guy kept up with the change in attack frequency, everyone else was flatfooted. If you don't know when the attack is coming to closer than, say, the nearest day, and you have a limited loiter time, then you can't effectively deploy for intercept at the breach.

It's also not really established where the breach exactly is other than "somewhere in the Pacific", but since the Jaegers are deployed costally it's probably too far out for an intercept deployment close to. By the time you know the Breach has opened the Kaiju is on its way somewhere, and at best you can shadow it with an attack sub so you know which Jaeger to deploy to intercept.

(Also, the breach looked like it was pretty deep, so you'd be fucked if you deployed all your jaegers close and the kaiju just swam up out of reach)

[Guardsman Bass]

The novelization says it's down in the Marianas Trench, but it didn't seem as deep as that in the film.

[SylasGaunt]

Generic is toxic would work a lot better. Some stuff really does exist like methylmercury that we could simply be functionally incapable of dealing with if it spilled on a large scale. Ammonia is one of the dumber choices possible, since it would just evaporate over time worst comes to worse. I hope that isn't true, I'm waiting to see this until when its nearly out of theaters, as going to a packed theater in the city sucks.

The ammonia thing isn't something that's said anywhere. Hannibal Chau says that the brain has too much ammonia in it to be worth much to anyone.

They say the blood has acidic properties. It's the decay phase you have to worry about though. The blood is acidic and highly toxic but not immediately so. It's when the stuff starts to decay that it starts throwing off lots of toxic horrible. That's part of what let Hannibal Chau's operation run, he'd figured out a way to delay the toxic breakdown which would let his workers get what they needed and then get cleaned off and clear the area before the kaiju corpse gassed the entire area.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The weakest part of this film is the lack of a first act, in part covered by the tie in comic, which is annoyingly a trend these days. But, reading the Something Awful review, if you consider it a sequel to Cloverfield, it kinda works. Just imagine Clovie was in San Fran and not NYC...

[Highlord Laan]

I still had a chuckle at the US/Council of Nations.

"We're at war with another world and the Kaiju aren't stopping. Lets yank the funding of the only military force standing in it's way and instead build walls out of the same materials as our easily smashed cities."

I always find it amusing in movies or other media when profits and economies are considered more important than survival. Whats that? The enemy isn't letting up? Well, I guess we need more men and material. What? You're refusing the contract because you think you should have more money? Fine. Your business is now nationalized and under the command of the Army. What? You'll shut down the lines stonewall us until you get more money for a ninth mercedes?

*single gunshot*

You are now the Army's representative at this production center. Quit bitching, your stock portfolio won't count for shit if we're all dead.

[TOSDOC]

Nicole and I saw it again last night (thank the universe our block lost power in a thunderstorm, it gave me the perfect excuse to go again).

We were pleased to see it held up to a second viewing, and I'm grateful the movie is so well-paced, while Nicole loves that Raleigh and Mako are a close partnership without romance involved. I caught the musical themes Lady Tevar mentioned this time around, that was nifty. I've read some complaints on the net that the movie was racist and sexist, but we were talking and could only say that the cast and production design seems way too cosmopolitan to complain about, and Mako kicking the Aussie's ass instead of Raleigh would have been out of character for her--she's too respectful of Stacker. And that brawl was just a long time coming and would have happened anyway without a woman to fight over. Though Nicole wishes it was the Russian wife who buried him instead.

I still don't understand the analog thing, Gipsy's control boards and interfaces seem to say the opposite. They could have gotten away with Gipsy working because she was off and shielded at the Shatterdome at the time the blast went off, and I would have been happy with it. But at least her reactor did look designed to self-destruct.

I still didn't catch any dialog this time around that kaiju were toxic just because of ammonia. Kaiju Blue seemed described as a separate substance.

The flare gun scene is still my favorite part.

[SylasGaunt]

I saw it for a 4th time last night, took the opportunity to look for little details I may have missed the first couple times.

1.) Kaiju blue is a secondary phenomena caused by the decay of kaiju remains, hence why Hannibal's group is able to get in and start harvesting without dying horribly.

2.) Herc Hansen has piloted every generation of jaeger.

[LadyTevar]

Could they have meant that Gipsy's start-up protocol was analog?

[Zinegata]

Re: Ammonia Toxins...

The movie actually calls the toxic stuff the Kaiju leave as "Kaiju Blue", not ammonia specifically. Ammonia is more directly mentioned when they were talking about the Kaiju parasite, where they say the parasites can survive after the Kaiju dies if they dip it in ammonia (and they actually show the dipping being done).

[Ford Prefect]

Now that I think about it, this movie could possibly the first to blur the line between the categories of real robots and super robots.. but I am not the most well-versed in roboturological matters here.

That lined was blurred a long, long time ago.

[Borgholio]

What was that blurb about the aliens trying to colonize back during the time of the dinosaurs? If the purpose of the invasion was to colonize or mine resources or something, wouldn't it have been easier to invade back then?

[CaptainChewbacca]

What was that blurb about the aliens trying to colonize back during the time of the dinosaurs? If the purpose of the invasion was to colonize or mine resources or something, wouldn't it have been easier to invade back then?

After the time of dinosaurs, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped considerably and have only recently been getting high.

[2000AD]

Could they have meant that Gipsy's start-up protocol was analog?

I just took it as a metaphor, new stuff was reliant on more technology that could get disrupted whilst older stuff was more hardened.

[Borgholio]

What was that blurb about the aliens trying to colonize back during the time of the dinosaurs? If the purpose of the invasion was to colonize or mine resources or something, wouldn't it have been easier to invade back then?

After the time of dinosaurs, atmospheric CO2 levels dropped considerably and have only recently been getting high.

So I guess despite all their technology, they can't terraform on a large scale yet.

[jollyreaper]

One line review: I want to see it again. Given that most movies aren't even worth the first viewing, this is very high praise.

Longer review: What a goddamn enjoyable movie. It says it's going to be robots vs. godzilla and delivers exactly that. What's really notable here is what doesn't get in the way of the premise. There's no love story, no contrived secondary story that gets in the way of the robot/monster action which basically amounts to "we don't have enough money to deliver all battles all the time." It's simple and honest like a fry-up feast. It may not be good for you but you're going to love the taste.

Movies that don't really deliver on their premise tend to piss me off and I have angry criticisms. With this movie, what I have are more like niggles. Maybe there is an explanation, maybe it's an oversight. Praises and niggles follow.

I'll have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I originally felt a sense of meh for the film simply because giant blockbusters tend to be giant disappointments. I only saw it in theaters because of the strong word of mouth following release.

I liked how they put a lot of effort into trying to ground the premise. Of course it's ridiculous on the face of it but by being so earnest and serious about it they manage to make the suspension of disbelief easier. Where do these things come from? Aliens and a portal. Easier to explain than atomic bombs and mutation. Why are conventional weapons useless? They aren't useless, they're inefficient. Why are robots better? Take down the monsters without quite as much environmental contamination.

Why did the F-22's have to show off by flying between the legs of the first kaiju? Showing off. Yeah, looks cool but you'll likely go splat as we saw.

Deep backstory with the jaeger history and the 30-odd units we never saw. I want to know more. Leaving the audience wanting is always good.

Stacker Pentecost? These names are anime as fuck. Why did he not notice his pilots weren't obeying orders until the last second? No idea.

Where do the Kaiju codenames come from? Some seem random, others descriptive of the monster itself. Not explained yet.

The Wall. It appears to be intended as an obvious bad idea, like a Maginot Line or Great Wall of China. But it seems a little too obviously stupid, implausibly stupid. And certainly once a kaiju was seen effortlessly breaching the wall, there should be no further question about needing another solution. The whole situation is intended to give an underdog status to the giant robots, like the cop who plays by his own rules and is the best man on the force who is constantly butting heads with his superior. The implausibility of the dimensions of the Wall as presented kind of hurts the story. It might have worked better if they had some fiction about relocating all society into geofronts and subterranean cities with the understanding amongst the elite that there won't be enough space for everyone. The Jaeger program would still have top funding but the elite know it simply won't be enough and thus Pentecost's radical idea is not just holding the line for the elite to escape but saving the rest of the world. It's ultimately a niggle. It's still not anywhere near enough to ruin the movie for me.

Yaeger defense plan. When I first watched Evangelion, before I really understood the premise, I'd considered the EVA defense plan to be rather silly since they had to count on the Angels attacking close enough to their support base for extension cord-powered mecha to be of any use. I didn't yet understand that this wasn't a problem since the Angels only had eyes for Tokyo III and what lay below it. Likewise, it looks like the kaiju are drawn to population centers so it makes sense that the shatterdomes would be located within close transit distance to the biggest population centers on the pacific rim. Can't destroy the Breach, it's been tried. Why not put nukes right outside and pop them whenever anything comes through? I'm assuming that they don't want all the radiation in the ocean.

Helicopter deployment? Ugh. This one kind of hurts. It's simply not possible. It looks wrong on the face of it and the calculations bear it out. Given that this is an anime-as-fuck movie, why not rocket deployment? jaeger weights are all over the place. I see one reference for 1,800 tons for Gispsy. A modern corvette is around 2,000 tons. A Saturn V is 3,000 tons, though a huge chunk of that is fuel. Choppers with slung loads don't have much range so the jaeger isn't going far. We know that Gipsy can survive a fall from 50k feet because robots are awesome. Why not use giant rockets to deploy these suckers? They need to get a few hundred miles downrange ASAP. Strap giant boosters to their backs and have the pilots screaming in Japanese when they light off? Pile-drive the kaiju from a ballistic trajectory?

The tattooed scientist was grating as hell. I got what they were trying to do with him but he was not an engaging character. Not sure if the failure was in the writing or the acting.

Loved the second order stuff they did with the premise, saying "If we've got giant monsters from another dimension, what happens next?" Black market kaiju interest makes sense. Kaiju cults make sense. Someone like Hannibal would have to exist.

Reading the novel now but it screws stuff up. When watching Striker Eureka fight, the quote is "Raleigh had never been inside a Mark V. None had existed when he was a Ranger." Then on the next page it says "He'd fought with Striker Eureka once, in Manila." This along with typographical errors and perfunctory writing. Annoying but survivable.

Aliens and dinos. No, no, no. Invoking dinosaurs never goes well in these sorts of stories. One of the first Predator comics tried to explain that the dinosaurs went extinct from Predator hunting. Really? No. You harm your premise with that. Just leave it out. You might get a pass if time progresses very differently in the other dimension and so it's 20 years for them between the Jurassic and Holocene and kaiju deployments from their perspective are happening every week.

Still wanted to see more with the pilots of the other surviving jaegers. Would have likely ruined the pacing of the film. Leaving people wanting more is a good thing. I have a lot more questions concerning the world-building. Again, the movie isn't the time or place. Probably best left for supplemental materials.

I am curious about how much detail is in the backstory. Have they worked out the broad strokes for every jaeger, every kaiju? Good enough for prequel material? Where would they go for a sequel?