What, no thread?
So I decided to go watch the movie, Pacific Rim, over the weekend.
Premise: Godzilla-like monsters are coming through a transdimensional crack in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, so humanity builds giant human-driven robots to engage them in hand-to-hand combat. Yay!
First interesting detail: this could easily have been an “origins” movie, detailing the discovery of the aliens and trying to fight them with conventional weapons before finally determining a better solution was needed, and choosing to build the “jaegers” (i.e. giant robots) for the climactic finale. Instead, they tell that story in the opening montage and set up the story of this movie. So points for that.
Second, the movie is enjoyable and funny and exciting, assuming you don’t actually think about the premise or any of the details. Because there’s lots of [del]stupid[/del] Rule of Cool going on. But within those premises, it is fun and engaging. A bit predicatable - there doesn’t seem to be a cliche they avoided.
So first big “don’t think about it” - the Jaegers are giant, overly-complicated robots built to essentially move like giant humans and engage in combat directly with the beasts. Okay. They walk like humans. Okay. Except they fight the Kaiju (giant monsters) in the middle of the ocean. That’s right, giant anthropomorphic robots standing at the surface of the ocean (knee deep or so) so they can fist-fight giant monsters like a barroom brawl. Uh huh.
They do get the occassional cool weaponry to aid their effectiveness. One Jaeger has hands that transform into giant energy cannons that deliver repeated blows. Another Jaeger opens its chest to reveal a battery of gaint missile-cannons.
The Kaiju are described by a category scale, based upon size and something vaguely about shape. The story we follow is at a point where the humans have been winning for several years, but the Kaiju start getting bigger and coming for frequently, making them tougher to kill and destroying the Jaegers.
So to make these Jaegers more interesting (because anthropomorphic robots that walk on water isn’t interesting enough), the control process uses dual pilots that use a combination motion-capture system and switches and knobs. The motion capture system places them in controller suits and then mounts those suits into the control center in the robot’s head, and the body movements drive the robot’s body movements. So walking involves walking, moving your feet, and thereby moving controllers that then tell the legs to move.
Second “don’t think about it” - there’s a serious issue with scaling up of this nature. Think how fast you can move your body, then think about a robot the size of 30 story building moving at that speed. Hmmm. Alternately, think about the lag-time issues of tracking your motions at normal speed and then translating them to that 30 story building and making it move at reasonable speeds. Hmmm.
Oh yeah, I mentioned the dual pilot issue. The robot drive system involves linking to the brain in order to control the actions. For some reason there is brain synch and body synch. Anyway, due to unexplained difficulties of the neural load or whatever, they quickly discovered that one person could not control the robots, so they invented the dual pilot system, whereby each pilot takes half the robot’s brain load. But in order to keep the pilots in synch, they devised a system of brain merging whereby the pilots link consciousnesses. This I assume is to help them coordinate body movements so they aren’t working out of synch with each other. The complication is that their memories get intermingled and so it is important to stay in the moment and not get sidetracked into memories and thus get lost.
Um, whatever all that means.
Let’s see, there’s not only plenty of robot on monster combat, but also human drama. The hero is a pilot who lost his brother in combat, ran off to hide building the “Coastal Wall”, only to be called back into service when the wall is shown inffective and the invasion is ramping up and the last of the Jaeger defenders need the best they can scrounge up.
Don’t think about it moment: apparently someone decides that the giant robots are costly and losing ground to the Kaiju, so the solution they come up with is to build a giant coastal wall all around the Pacific ocean. That’s right, all along the coast not only of North America, but South America, Austrailia, Russia, China, Japan, and probably around all of the islands in the Pacific. A giant wall. Big enough to keep out monsters the size of 30 story buildings. Because that’s cheaper.
The leader of the Jaeger program is a tough old former pilot, who is the epitome of the combat veteran/moral leader. He’s tough, he’s smart, he’s a force of personality and admirability, and he’s (duh duh duh) sick with some mysterious illness that he hides from everyone.
There’s a couple of other pilot sets, the throw away groups (a couple Russian stereotypes, and a set of three Chinese dudes/brothers with a three-armed Jaeger). And then there’s the Australian duo, an older vet and a young, brash, cocky shit who doesn’t like the hero because that’s just the way things go in these movies.
And then there’s the hot Japanese chick, who was rescued by the old military leader and raised as his daughter, trying to become a pilot but being kept out of the fray by her pop even though she’s got the best reflexes and training of all the new crop of pilots. And she’s hot.
So we’re treated to the combat screening technique to find a suitable partner for our returning hero (since his brother is dead), which involves stick-fighting in a floor mat. Because that somehow allows evaluating fighting style and mental compatibiliity, how is not explained.
More fun ensues when our heros go off to battle in the restored Jaeger against the new bigger Kaiju. These Kaiju are able to take blows that rip off parts and break joints and then still function. And they leak glowy blue gunk.
So we get lots of fun combat techniques, including dragging a ship from the harbor to use as a stick and emulate the stick fighting we saw before, smashing robots and Kaiju all over Hong Kong, and then a magic sword deployed out of nowhere (from within the robot’s arm) to cut up Kaiju. Wait, there’s a giant sword hiding in the arm of the Jaeger, but they didn’t think to deploy that earlier in the fight, and rather waited until a last ditch effort? Instead, they’ve been duking it out with fists? :smack:
And if robot-monster fist-fights isn’t cool enough, they drag in the crazy scientist angle, with not 1, but 2 crazy scientists, each with an independent approach and crazy theory. One guy is a stuffy British statistician, studying the patterns and predicting the future activity ramp up. The other is a flaky biologist and Kaiju groupy, who has tattoos of his favorite Kaiju and knows their stats like trading cards. He has this brilliant idea to use the brain-bonding technology to try to read the aliens’ minds. And that works out well. 
And then there’s the opportunist, the guy who runs a shadow network harvesting Kaiju bodies and selling the parts on the black market. Want some ground up Kaiju bone to act as a boner enhancer? He plays a useful comedic angle.
One moment of tactical genius I did approve: in the climactic battle, two Jaegers are approaching the undersea rift by walking along the ocean floor, they get jumped by some Kaiju guarding the gateway. One of the Kaiju is swimming toward our hero at breakneck speed, going to slam into the Jaeger and beat it up some more (it’s already half crippled). Our hero instead deploys the giant sword and ducks the strike, bracing the sword and letting the Kaiju split itself from head to tail as the momentum carries it across the blade. Neato.
One more “wait a minute” moment: one of the Kaiju shows up and sprouts wings. Now we’re talking about a flesh and bone monster the size of a building, that sprouts flesh wings, and then no only takes flight, but does so carrying a Jaeger. And the wings themselves aren’t much longer than the body of the beast itself. Right.
So it carries the Jaeger up to 50,000 feet (as clearly stated) before the Jaeger gets free and starts falling toward the ground. And starts glowing from the plasma cloud of atmospheric reentry. :smack:
Okay, stupid movie, but a lot of fun.