# Today, we are cancelling the Apocalypse! (Pacific Rim) SPOILERS! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 12, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355 "2013-07-12T20:22:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/41 "2013-07-14T23:33:15Z")
In a Hellboy-like scene, Ron Perlman cuts his way out of the baby kaiju with his butterfly knife and shouts “Where the hell is my goddamn shoe!” ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/42 "2013-07-14T23:40:10Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > In a Hellboy-like scene, Ron Perlman cuts his way out of the baby kaiju with his butterfly knife and shouts “Where the hell is my goddamn shoe!” I didn’t stay to watch, so I’m glad to hear that - when I saw the initial scene, I thought for a couple seconds that maybe he just got swallowed whole. (One of my nitpicks: Why would cloned combat monsters come complete with reproductive organs? And how would one show up heavily pregnant? And then I thought maybe it wasn’t so much ‘pregnant’ as ‘ready to drop a second monster soon after arrival,’ and then I just went ‘ok, back to the monsters.’) ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/43 "2013-07-15T00:04:35Z")
Being clones of each other doesn’t mean that they don’t reproduce naturally, just that they do it in a way that doesn’t involve recombining DNA. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/44 "2013-07-15T00:07:03Z")
> [@obfusciatrist](#): > > Being clones of each other doesn’t mean that they don’t reproduce naturally, just that they do it in a way that doesn’t involve recombining DNA. I would normally agree, but from one of the “drift” scenes it looked like the monsters were being constructed from the ground up, with muscles being laid onto bones, etc. So it didn’t seem to make sense in that context why they’d bother putting reproductive organs into one of your shock troopers. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/45 "2013-07-15T00:43:19Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Just like I felt when watching Godzilla movies as a kid, I couldn’t wait for the “People” scenes to end so we could get to the monsters! That was my reaction too. That said, something that nagged at me: the level of international cooperation is improbable. I suppose a bare majority of people in countries with a Pacific coast would agree that something had to be done, but the kaiju would be in Uzbekistan before there was anything like a consensus on what and by whom. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/46 "2013-07-15T01:57:15Z")
Does hitting something underwater decrease the effectiveness of Bunker Busters? I’m honestly curious. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/47 "2013-07-15T02:03:46Z")
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH! What a spectacularly kickass movie!! I think I got a boner over it, no lie! When that sword came out, my sword came out! This was a superb action movie, I’m going to see it again next week! ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/48 "2013-07-15T02:35:45Z")
What an awesome movie. Especially if you accept it for what it is, a live action anime. ---
**Author:** ![txtumbleweed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/278dde/32.png) [@txtumbleweed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/txtumbleweed)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/49 "2013-07-15T02:36:45Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > Does hitting something underwater decrease the effectiveness of Bunker Busters? I’m honestly curious. I don’t know. I really doubt they are effective on something more than a few feet under water. On the other hand, my understanding is that the concussion waves are much more effective underwater than in the air. So being close is going to count. It would be like hunting submarines and I would guess a kaiju is much easier to find than a modern submarine. Localize it and drop a metric crap load of torpedoes or depth charges on them. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/50 "2013-07-15T03:46:06Z")
> [@Stephe96](#): > > Also, did anyone else think all the nose-bleeds were somehow connected and setting up for a massive twist that never happened? Yep, but that seemed to be a running theme in this movie. It started to set up a lot of stuff that…never happened, or they never got around to. Hell, the prologue sequence, giving the backstory, before the main plot started? _That_ would have been an interesting movie by itself—the society shocked with the appearance of alien monsters, becoming centered around combating them, the pilots of the robots becoming almost “rock stars”—fascinating stuff. I wanted to see _that_ movie. Even in what we _did_ see—society crumbling because it can’t fight the monsters anymore, evidence of famine, and economic collapse, the implication of “the rich” being safe on the continental interiors while the coastlines are evacuated, or left to rot, and the problems of the refugee population. _Any_ of that, if we could have gotten to see it, would have been fascinating if we really got to see it’s depths…but, nope, just glitzy Hong Kong, and the Del Toro-style funky retrotech base, plus robot fights. Even the robots, with their control systems, left so much unexplored. So two pilots have to use the mind-link system to control it, together? All we really see is that it can send you into a flashback fugue, it can cause you pain if the robot or the other pilot is damaged, and the pilots move slightly more in synch. So much possibility there, just kind of…left sitting. I can point out a bunch of other, niggling little stylistic or technical details that got to me—and most of the latter could have been easily avoided by either just not mentioning exact details, or by gussying them up with something futuristic. Eight Chinooks being a bit too underpowered to lift a Jaeger? _Just use a fictional aircraft_. The physical size that they quote for the nuke, technical details about the robots’ computer systems—they seemed to go to the _trouble_ of including little details that would only be noticed by viewers who’d _know how they were wrong._ Maddening. Bah, but all aside—did I enjoy it? _Hell_ yes. But I was disappointed because it _easily could have been more_. What we _got_ felt more like a spinoff, or the last part of a trilogy. ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/51 "2013-07-15T10:04:28Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > Yep, but that seemed to be a running theme in this movie. It started to set up a lot of stuff that…never happened, or they never got around to. > > Hell, the prologue sequence, giving the backstory, before the main plot started? _That_ would have been an interesting movie by itself—the society shocked with the appearance of alien monsters, becoming centered around combating them, the pilots of the robots becoming almost “rock stars”—fascinating stuff. I wanted to see _that_ movie. > > Even in what we _did_ see—society crumbling because it can’t fight the monsters anymore, evidence of famine, and economic collapse, the implication of “the rich” being safe on the continental interiors while the coastlines are evacuated, or left to rot, and the problems of the refugee population. _Any_ of that, if we could have gotten to see it, would have been fascinating if we really got to see it’s depths…but, nope, just glitzy Hong Kong, and the Del Toro-style funky retrotech base, plus robot fights. > > Even the robots, with their control systems, left so much unexplored. So two pilots have to use the mind-link system to control it, together? All we really see is that it can send you into a flashback fugue, it can cause you pain if the robot or the other pilot is damaged, and the pilots move slightly more in synch. So much possibility there, just kind of…left sitting. > > I can point out a bunch of other, niggling little stylistic or technical details that got to me—and most of the latter could have been easily avoided by either just not mentioning exact details, or by gussying them up with something futuristic. Eight Chinooks being a bit too underpowered to lift a Jaeger? _Just use a fictional aircraft_. The physical size that they quote for the nuke, technical details about the robots’ computer systems—they seemed to go to the _trouble_ of including little details that would only be noticed by viewers who’d _know how they were wrong._ Maddening. > > Bah, but all aside—did I enjoy it? _Hell_ yes. But I was disappointed because it _easily could have been more_. What we _got_ felt more like a spinoff, or the last part of a trilogy. I would disagree that the film would be better for being more. I don’t think we really want to see the real effects of economic collapse, thats a different film. We don’t really want to know all the details of the drift, its just a plot device. Knowing more details of the drift would just lead to more questions, and the film isn’t about that. Eight chinooks too underpowered? Maybe they were new super chinooks, who knows, who cares, they are just a cool way to get the robots to the action. The movie includes various other information for the sake of world building, but it is not about those things and is right not to dwell upon them. Its an action movie about the remaining Robots defending against the Monsters then striking back at the rift to win the day, thats all. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/52 "2013-07-15T13:50:30Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > they seemed to go to the _trouble_ of including little details that would only be noticed by viewers who’d _know how they were wrong._ Maddening. I actually suspect this is intentional. Winky-noddy stuff. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/53 "2013-07-15T14:59:30Z")
my only issue with the helicoptors is one of physics - I can ‘buy’ them able to lift and carry the bots, but as soon as they were released, the choppers would be ‘sent tumbling’ upwards with the release of all that kinetic energy. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/54 "2013-07-15T17:31:49Z")
I enjoyed the movie, thought it was fun and extremely well made. Is it particularly sophisticated? well no, it is quite the opposite. So what? It was hella fun. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/55 "2013-07-15T18:46:18Z")
I don’t think this was the kind of movie to really extrapolate what a world really would be like if Giant monsters really kept trashing the coasts. This movie was the late seventies Godzilla movies. Next year a more somber and serious Godzilla movie is supposed to be coming that may address those kinds of issues. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/56 "2013-07-15T19:26:04Z")
They were already working on the sequel in March. I wonder if it actually gets made or shelved after the lackluster performance at the boxoffice. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/57 "2013-07-15T19:39:07Z")
> [@Moonlitherial](#): > > They were already working on the sequel in March. I wonder if it actually gets made or shelved after the lackluster performance at the boxoffice. Almost certainly. A better US take would have been nice, but it’s been playing pretty well in Asia and Russia so far. And it hasn’t opened in much of Western Europe, China, or Japan yet. And the movie was obviously aimed more at global audiences than American ones. It’s made north of $90M so far, and the anticipated take is at least $300M (at least $100M in the US alone) at a conservative guess with $400-$500 worldwide as more likely. That’s just box office receipts, and there’ll be some ancillary income from rentals and DVDs, of course. It’s almost safe to say that profitability won’t be the limiting factor in a sequel. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/58 "2013-07-15T20:30:02Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Almost certainly. A better US take would have been nice, but it’s been playing pretty well in Asia and Russia so far. And it hasn’t opened in much of Western Europe, China, or Japan yet. And the movie was obviously aimed more at global audiences than American ones. > > It’s made north of $90M so far, and the anticipated take is at least $300M (at least $100M in the US alone) at a conservative guess with $400-$500 worldwide as more likely. That’s just box office receipts, and there’ll be some ancillary income from rentals and DVDs, of course. > > It’s almost safe to say that profitability won’t be the limiting factor in a sequel. Today, we are cancelling the … err… Today, we are delaying the apocalypse in preparation for an even bigger apocalypse in the sequel! ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2013, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/59 "2013-07-15T23:49:57Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Knowing more details of the drift would just lead to more questions, and the film isn’t about that. Details nothin’—I don’t need to know _how_ it works, just to _see it_ working at all. It’s like if you made a martial arts movie where the hero trains under the greatest Chu Gar Gao masters on Earth, and then fights like a street brawler for the rest of the story. It _could have been_ just a stupid action movie, another _Transformers_, but it added in elements that could have made it much _more_ than that. And then just left them gathering dust. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2013, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355/60 "2013-07-16T05:00:09Z")
> [@simster](#): > > Today, we are cancelling the … err… Today, we are delaying the apocalypse in preparation for an even bigger apocalypse in the sequel! “At my signal, unleash hell . . . again.” “Same signal?” “Er, yes.” “Same hell?” “Pretty much, yeah.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-we-are-cancelling-the-apocalypse-pacific-rim-spoilers/663355.md?page=4)