Sorry guys, but your random name adjective-noun generator is not coming up with names that sound “right” for Jaegers. Ocelot Codpiece is obviously ridiculous, but at least it has the right rhythm (or something).
They all have words connoting fighting, strong stuff, military lingo, dominance, etc. Very few “backstory” Jaegers have one-syllable words either. Shaolin Rogue at least sounds hella tough.
Plus, almost none have true adjective-noun names. Crimson Typhoon is Chinese, and so references both China’s traditional red color and a fearsome Pacific weather phenomenon. That one works.
(Romeo Blue doesn‘t quite fit, but at least it’s funny due to the Lenny Kravitz connection)
I’m just back from seeing it. Unfortunately I didn’t have any alcohol with my lunch. The film is a rollercoaster ride alright, but one for senior citizens. It’s just not as fun as the first. It lacks the pizzazz and panache of the first. and there’s a hefty dose of stupid near the end.
That said, Boyega and Spaeny deliver good performances, but the latter is clearly channelling Star Wars’ Rey.
Loved every second of it. My expectations were fairly low, so it was a pkeasant surprise. More tomorrow. I’m off to sleep. Wish me dreams of giant robots.
Saw it yesterday. It’s lightweight, has gaps in logic, a generic supporting cast, and some “twists” that were telegraphed pretty far in advance. I mean, as my husband noted, the movie was basically funded by and for China, where the original made the bulk of its money so there’s no way Shao is going to actually turn out to be a bad guy, despite the inscrutable ice queen act of the first half of the movie; and there were a bunch of comments on various internet fora picking Dr Geiszler as the bad guy this time around.
The Jaeger-Kaiju fights aren’t nearly as good as last time - I really have trouble seeing Jaegers running and doing spin kicks because they’re freaking giant robots, they shouldn’t move like that. (I know, I know, I’m fine with giant robots, but giant robots doing spin kicks is just too far. The original Jaegers were brutal punchers and swingers of tanker ships, but even Striker Eureka could manage an implacable sort of half-jog at best.) And when your whole movie is aimed at people who want to see giant robots and giant interdimensional beasties walloping each other, getting the fight scenes right is kind of important.
That said, I like Jake Pentecost, though I think he could have been just a disgraced ranger without the family name - making him Stacker’s son is forced, and feels it - and John Boyega is pretty clearly having a ball with it. Cailee Spaeny does her best as Amara and gets as much as she can out of it. There’s some nice development for the two characters along the way. Charlie Day feels a bit like he’s running through the motions, although there is background there - Gottlieb called him a kaiju groupie in the first movie, so his development onwards is believable, I guess. Scott Eastwood is generically handsome, which is about all the script asks of him.
Won’t be rushing back to see it again, but it wasn’t a complete waste of popcorn.
The spin kick was too much for sure, but please forgive me the major geeking-out that’s about to follow:
I don’t think we saw Striker Eureka on land. Almost all Jaeger movement in PC was in water, and thus bogged down. Gipsy Danger was a lot more agile on land. She got up to a pretty good sprint on land in the battle of Hong Kong, and then took a great big jump, so even a Mark 3 was capable of that. She was originally built at least 17 years before the events of Uprising, too.
Most of the Jaeger movement in Uprising was on land, and most of the Jaegers were Mark 6s. (some sources say Sabre Athena is actually a Mark 7) It’s logical that we would see a significant improvement in apparent agility and speed.
HOWEVER, I agree that it was overdone. The Jaegers in PC were already breaking all laws of both physics and common sense, so even a “significant improvement” should have been more realistic within the existing framework. That they could dodge stuff better? Sure. That they could dodge stuff like gargantuan ninjas? Not so much.
The Leads: John Boyega and Scott Eastwood are mere shadows of their movie dad and real-life dad respectively. Sadly, John Boyega was as charmless in this as he was in Star Wars. At least Scott Eastwood is good-looking. (To be fair, PC had a charmless lead as well. I feel one of the biggest flaws of that movie was having Diego Klattenhoff get chomped by a kaiju and Charlie Hunnam survive. It should have been the other way around.)
Amara and the Cadets: Cailee Spaney was good. Not much to say there. The rest of them were pretty blah.
The Marshal: Zhang Jin just didn’t cut it. If they wanted to appeal to the Chinese audience, there are literally a billion other Chinese people out there to choose from. Chow Yun-Fat might have been a good choice, being known to both Chinese and Western audiences.
The Big Boss Lady: Jing Tian for the win. She was great fun, and I loved her fabulous villian-suits. Of course, she wasn’t the villian after all, but no matter. I look forward to seeing her in other movies.
**Missing people (based on what I’ve read): **
Raleigh Beckett: Apparently Charlie Hunnam couldn’t be in it due to scheduling conflicts, but may be open to being in a third. Therefore they didn’t want to give any explanation for his absence that they would have to deal with in a later movie. No explanation whatsoever was a terrible choice however. Certainly somebody could have thought of something that would work. Just completely not knowing what happened to him was not okay.
Herc Hansen: He was “Marshall Hansen” at the end of PC, and would have been the obvious person to lead the re-establishment of the Jaeger program. Apparently, he was in an earlier version, but got cut in a re-write. That was no reason to omit any mention of him. Having no mention of him whatsoever was disconcerting. They could have just said he retired or something.
Hannibal Chau and Tendo Choi - Scheduling conflicts prevented a cameo from Ron Perlman, and they didn’t think they had enough for Tendo to do to include him. Shame they weren’t in it, but it was okay to omit explanations for their absence. Fun trivia - the actor who played Tendo in PC is Scott Eastwood’s brother in law.
Speaking of, I’m watching Pacific Rim on FX right now and they just had some Charlie and Perlman scenes, does anything come of Charlies mind melding with the kaiju in the new movie?
Me three. So I yourtubed Neon with dance dance and got this 30 second video. It maybe what Asuka is talking about.
We enjoyed this mess of a movie - my only real question is how they got a name for the enemy jaeger in the first attack? Cause, seriously, that was a kick ass name.
The explanation of why the Jaeger program was continued just didn’t cut it. If the world felt they couldn’t afford to keep it up while the kaiju were still actively attacking, why would they re-start and expand it after the threat was seemingly eliminated? “They may still be out there?” Okay, yeah sure, maybe that could be used to justify some sort of continuation, but it would have made more sense if it had been more of a limited-budget sort of thing.
In keeping with that line of thought, the most obvious way to have re-started the program would have been to salvage Cherno Alpha and/or Crimson Typhoon. If they could refurbish Gipsy Danger after the damage she took in the battle of Anchorage, it seems possible that they could have done the same with one or both of those after the battle of Hong Kong. Yeah, sure, leave the big fancy battles to the shiny new Jaegers, but it would have been freaking cool to see Cherno still stomping around in some capacity. Hell, we keep WWII tanks around for nostalgia value, right?
What the heck happened to November Ajax? (the blue Jaeger that tried to catch Scrapper in the beginning) IIRC, only 4 Jaegers were left to fight the triple-kaiju because reasons, but given that November Ajax played such a big part in the beginning, having him just be gone with no explanation was weird - it went directly against the concept of Chekov’s Gun.
Chow Yun-Fat might have been a good choice, being known to both Chinese and Western audiences.