Giant humanoids robots are strictly Rule of Cool stuff. You can handwave it however you like, but it makes very little rational sense.
Pretty much.
Del Toro gave a few interviews saying he did have a few ideas floating around for potential sequels.
Seems like judging the movie for what it’s not (or what it could have been) rather than what it actually was.
The movie worked for what it actually was. A lot of the criticisms I see are that it wasn’t something else. With seemingly every movie an “event” or a “blockbuster”, it’s exceedingly refreshing watching a movie that clearly isn’t taking itself so seriously or trying deliberately to set sequels.
The criticisms given so far are fair, to an extent, but it really just seems like a way to suck all the fun out of a movie. This movie was just plain fun in a way that a smarter (or even just a not dumb) Transformers movie would never have been. That’s a franchise that takes itself way too seriously, and there’s little joy in the incredibly corporate way those movies are produced, marketed, and viewed.
Saw it last night. My face hurts from smiling so much. Awesome, awesome flick.
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[li]Gipsy Danger - is a stupid name before we even get to the spelling. All the other Jaegermeisters had cool names.[/li][li]Gipsy and Striker Eureka (AUS) got the most screen time, but were frustratingly the least interesting designs. They were extremely generic compared to Russia and China’s entries.[/li][li]I did like how Cherno Alpha’s bio captured the Russian mentality of ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It was only gen 1 bot that could still hack it because of Russian engineering. Pretty like Russian tractor, strong like Russian woman. And it was piloted by Zangief and Ivan Drago’s wife, Ludmilla.[/li][li]I found myself wishing they had a full length fight on land. We got snippets of a few, but every major battle was waste deep in the ocean at night. Perhaps the sequel will have an extra 100 million in the budget for this.[/li][li]Charlie Hunnam’s accent is all over the map. I’m used to it on the small screen from Sons of Anarchy, but it really stood out on the big screen.[/li][/ul]
Cherno Alpha was my favorite Jaeger. When it walked, the little portholes on its chest opened and closed. It had a giant nuclear reactor for a hat. It had piston punches and elbow dropped a giant lizard monster!
I wished they showcased their abilities more- Gypsy Danger and Striker Eureka had ranged weapons, and in the background info so does Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon.
I don’t think it’s quite “projecting,” or unfairly judging it on what it “could” have been, when the movie puts in the interesting elements of-what-could-have-been itself.
I’m not criticizing the (fun!) movie for not being a gothic romance, or for having too few space battles, or for failing to explore the relationship between language and class. I’m critical that they mentioned how cool the rifle was and bits of it’s intriguing backstory, and thenleft it on the mantle for the whole play.
I really liked the movie–seriously, it’s worth doing the IMAX 3D for–but I agree with many of Ranchoth’s criticisms. There was so much left unexplored. I would have loved to see more of Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha, and more battles, especially a land battle. That said, it was balls out fun, and a decent story to boot. It’s the movie the twelve year old Gaodzilla fan in me was waiting for. It wasn’t perfect, but it will do.
Wait–you’re criticizing the physics of the helicopters?! Dude, other than the fact that gravity held people to the planet, there was nothing of physics in this movie. It existed in a universe with different laws of physics from our own. And that’s part of the joy. Also different human brains, given the cheesy dialog and sartorial choices.
Yes, del Toro could have told a movie about the sociological impact of Kaiju. But he couldn’t have included so many big freakin’ monster fights if he’d done that. He made some clear choices, and I think it resulted in a brilliantly dumb movie.
After watching the Transformers movies, The Avengers, Man of Steel, and now Pacific Rim I think I’ve seen all the “alien destroys a skyscraper” scenes I need to see for a while.
Also how many movies end with the good guys sending a nuke through the portal/ into the mothership. TVTropes has tackled this subject matter thankfully: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NukeEm (besides Avengers and Pacific Rim, Independence Day, Star Gate, and Battlefield Earth used sneak nuke finale).
If, movie title notwithstanding, the portal was in the South China Sea, why did the first one attack SF?
But I say again, the rifle is cool because its left on the mantle. The rifle is Boba Fett, it looks cool and we want to know more, except that really we don’t because finding out the details detracts from that original coolness.
Take the drift for example. The more information you know about it the easier it would be to point out how impossible it probably is. We have a guy who actually seems concerned about why the first Kaiju went to SF instead of China, peoples heads would explode in nerd rage if the film tried to explain more about things like drifting, they would nitpick it to death.
Its a fine line, show enough to titillate, but not so much that you trip yourself up. I think the film judged it well.
…I am truly baffled by the concept that the cool elements, introduced by a skilled story, are better when not used, thus not risking sullying their perfection.
You mention Boba Fett, but I counter with the Lightsaber—by your reasoning, would it not have been best if all we ever saw of one was Obi-Wan chopping off a barfly’s arm?
It’s not so much that - though there’s a lot of that - but that the response of the human defenders is so entirely, mind-bogglingly nonsensical.
But Star Wars doesn’t try to explain the lightsaber, it just is, like many of the things in Pacific Rim just are.
If Star Wars had people showing the technology behind how lightsabers work, telling us about crystals and refraction or somesuch, then the coolness factor of lightsabers would be diminished as nerds start pointing out that those things wouldn’t be physically possible. But Star Wars doesn’t do that, it just shows the lightsabers being used.
Same with Pacific Rim. Drifting. Arm swords. Super lifting Chinooks. Don’t explain these things, just nod to them and let people enjoy the spectacle.
Absolutely agreed. Their responses were totally nonsensical.
Because this was a cartoon.
Nothing about it, including character motivations, was reasonable. And if you require things in your stories always to make sense, then yeah, this movie wouldn’t work for you. But if you can watch it as a cartoon, then it’s tremendous fun.
I think that it is quite on purpose a live action version of a Japanese anime.
Exactly - as I said in my original response, best Anime film I’ve seen in a long time.
Have I…been that obtuse? I don’t need to see the lightsabers explained—though hell, if someone’s actually got the chops to do it, more power to 'em—I want to see them used once they’ve been introduced. I want to see them expanded beyond “yep, we had laser swords…bzzh see, now Walrus Man is a southpaw.”
Nerds will gleefully nitpick fictional technology and science, true…and we also rationalize, theorize about, or justify them within the rules of a fictional framework. We don’t refuse to enjoy Star Trek because faster-than-light travel is apparently impossible in real life—we ask why they don’t use the transporters in the shuttlecraft. We compare schools of lightsaber combat. And we take a peak at Godzilla’s guts.
There’s a difference between a work that you don’t have to think about to enjoy, and a work you have to not think about. Pacific Rim did not and does not have to be the latter—that’s a disservice to the fans, the genre, and most of all, to Pacific Rim. Which is better than that, and had the makings of more than that.
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[li]Why did the riders have to be inside the robots?[/li][li]Why did the robots toss the monsters and grapple with them instead of stabbing them directly in the eyeball?[/li][li]Why didn’t the humans build the robots to be bigger than the monsters?[/li]
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The answer to all these questions? Because it looked cool. As for the helicopters thing, I think that was just laziness. They could have given the robots jetpacks that they use to get to the monsters and take off to fight. Would have been cooler.
…although, maybe they were trying to highlight the ‘near’ part of their near-future setting with the choppers. Plus, the limited resources/ rationing element.