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Peruser posted:You're gonna have to explain to me how the kaiju have yonic symbolism, because outside of a few (Otachi and maybe Scunner) I don't see it. But then again I wasn't really looking for it in the first place when watching the film. So I like how someone said that the novel and expanded universe stuff explicitly stated some of the kaiju have dicks and are male (since I guess the alternative is that the one kaiju is the Virgin Monster Mary so it had to be spelled out) and no one cared.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:42
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If I open the boosters, I'm down like, 18 bucks. No returns of opened items.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:42
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NoneSuch posted:Me too, everything about the film seems to scream not fascist to me. Pentecost is the only authority figure and his decision to not let Mako pilot the Jaeger is subverted. He's also literally ill and dying. As for the presentation of the kaiju as female, I think you can make a strong case they use feminine imagery, but the text of the film would seem to militate against them actually being presented as 'female' in the literal sense. An analogy could be made to old HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu, who is probably their largest inspiration: they are huge, gelid titans, often demonstrating their powers through fluids or by making openings, and are defeated largely through penetration: however, the 'baby kaiju' appears to be novel, because Hannibal Chau (who would presumably know) seems surprised at their presence, and is ignorant of their threat (of eating him alive). If I had to put a thesis into all this stuff, I would actually say that the argument is for completion and success coming through the cooperation of complementary aspects, the most obvious of which is male and female, but which is not exclusive to that particular balance, nor necessarily sexual. My evidence is thus!: One of the dominant notes in the introduction is that one person can't carry the load of Jaeger operation very effectively. You need two, and they have to be (drift) compatible. Compatible people must find each other and cooperate; this is the way forwards, perhaps the only way forwards. Rally loses his brother, but is able to survive. This is a sign of his great strength but it doesn't make him a hero; he goes and gets a lovely job in a situation of all against all, 'we lost three guys today - but we have three job openings!' The kaiju operate singly, and this is why the jaegers are able to stalemate them to the point where the governments of Earth decide to cease THEIR cooperation and look to their moats (walls). This happens just as things approach a new peak. The two scientist guys are obvious contrasts; only by drifting do they manage to learn more than extremely vague outlines, obtaining the critical information needed to solve the problem. Cherno Alpha's crew (incidentally a man and a woman) are portrayed as being the biggest badasses of them all, albeit rather implicitly. Striker Eureka's crew (father and son) appear to be their backup. The triplets from China are kind of problematic for this but they also seem to die quickly in any case. Stacker's combat success while fighting alone has thrown him off, even if he regains his understanding of the necessity of bringing complemetary people together. While he has nurtured Mako, he attempts to keep her from teaming up with Rally. His own self-doubts as well as Mako's fears (perhaps she wanted to team up with Stacker, not Rally) almost lead to disaster, but ultimate triumph!! Meanwhile the kaiju are most menacing when they work in pairs themselves. Perhaps meaningfully, they also gain a specifically sexual (rather than vaguely gendered) portrayal in the form of the two who come out, as one of them has the fetus Kaiju inside of its... head? They proceed to smash through Crimson and Cherno, disable Striker, and are only stopped in one on one conflict with Gipsy. Gipsy had the additional advantage of knowing their tricks due to the sacrifice of the first two jaegers. The finale tends to go against this reading, except I think the cooperation can be seen as being between the jaegers rather than Rally and Mako: Striker Eureka sacrifices itself for the higher goal. Rally is able to steer Gipsy to the finale, and ascends to the surface (as the sun comes out for the first time in 90 minutes, no less) to reunite with his complementary person. I think there is also a strong emphasis on learning how to let go of the past, or at least let go of its pain. Rally seems a little flat because Stacker's inspirational speech in Alaska actually works on him, and most of his conflict with Stacker later comes from Stacker not walking his talk. Mako and Stacker's understandable parent-child dynamic nearly dooms everything, and arguably is what kills Cherno and Crimson and their crews. Herc Hansen is able to wish his son off on what is obviously a probable kamikaze mission, one which his son has clearly embraced and desires, because he has internalized that lesson, even if it isn't articulated.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:44
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Slate Action posted:Hm, that's strange; I didn't have any trouble filing a claim. I haven't emailed Amazon Customer Service yet, though, I guess the redundancy factor might help speed things up? Yeah weird, I just got done chatting with Amazon support, and they said I can file the A to Z claim within the next 2 business days.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:46
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RBA Starblade posted:I like how someone said that the novel and expanded universe stuff explicitly stated some of the kaiju have dicks and are male (since I guess the alternative is that the one kaiju is the Virgin Monster Mary so it had to be spelled out) and no one cared. Pointless exposition is like 99% of expanded universe nonsense though, so people are right to not really care about that stuff in favor of what is presented in the film itself!
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Jul 20, 2013 22:48
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This whole fascism debate is weird because the movie presents a simplistic, convenient narrative of good vs. evil and that is superficially similar to fascism in that fascism also attempts to simplify reality into good guy action heroes vs. unquestionably, objectively evil enemies. The problem here is that Pacific Rim is fiction, and ridiculous fiction at that. Like, you can argue it's fascist and you might even be right in the sense that they share a superficial similarity, but that misses the big issue is that actual fascist media presents itself as an actual depiction of reality while Pacific Rim depicts itself as a fantasy. Yeah, this can be problematic, if say, someone decided to base their life philosophies around what they learned from watching Pacific Rim. But if someone did that we'd all very reasonably think they're crazy. Edited for clarity. Augustin Iturbide fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 22:48
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Kaiju are clearly the masculine in this movie.  They have unfailing confidence and aggression and seek only to destroy, reduced to the barest warrior-man essence of vitality and virile action. They do not care to ask questions or investigate, only to carry out their biological programming and dominate the opposition through grappling and crushing. Their primary weapons are teeth, claws, and horns, which they repeatedly use to impale and stab the opposition into submission  . In effect, they are raping the Jaegers to death. They are shot out of the Breach like hot loads  , and one of them even has an explicitly ejaculatory weapon which proves terribly deadly against a particular woman who opposes it in both combat and through appropriating typically masculine dress and mannerisms. The Jaegers on the other hand are explicitly feminine for most of the film, acting only to protect innocents and prevent destruction in reactive, passive combat.  They emerge from the Shatterdome bays in a birthing action, and their pilots are implanted and expelled like foetuses. Their weapons are also very rarely impaling, rather slashing. Instead of stabbing and raping like the Kaiju, they inflict gashes on the enemy, weakening the masculine by covering it in vaginas. The only impaling attack is as part of a lovers embrace as they fall towards oblivion, implying deep love and acceptance even in the midst of a death struggle.Also, Otachi and Leatherback are stand-ins for American Godzilla and King Kong, with Gipsy Danger being Godzilla.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:50
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Also, not only does Yancy die entirely onscreen (the film cuts away so we don't see his life-less corpse fall 280 feet into the ocean). We see Crimson Typhoon's crew get crushed, and Cherno Alpha's drown (and then get crushed). There was no shortage of onscreen death in this film.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:50
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Lt. Danger posted:All this combines to create a basically fascist film - not in the sense that it's pro-fascist, or only fascists like it, but in the sense that it portrays a world that operates according to the basic tenets of fascism: warriors are good, violence in service of the state is good, alien others are bad, limp-wristed office suits are bad, so on so forth. You just described not only the lion's share of anime and kaiju films Pacific Rim's plot is intentionally derivative of, but most big budget action scifi movies. Heroic, militaristic state violence wielded to defeat an alien aggressor - sure, it fits, but you might as well argue that the entire genre is fascist. I think you're pinpointing the basic heroic story blueprint that fascism relies on, rather than the very specific political movement of fascism that only existed in a meaningful way during WW2 in MAYBE three (but probably only two, really) countries. Lt. Danger posted:Why is it that in this post-national future, where the nations of the world the Pacific come together to fight alien invaders, everyone (the warriors, the politicians, everyone) is still tagged with their nation of origin? If national boundaries have blurred and faded in the face of a common threat, how is it that we can still tell that Mako's Japanese and Raleigh's American and those two are Australian and those two are Russian...? Why does the film draw attention to Mako being Japanese with Japanese dialogue and Japanese cultural exchanges? The film never claims that it takes place in a "post-national future". Cooperation doesn't equate to a disintegration of autonomy. I think the fact that each Jaeger/pilot team still retains its own unique cultural quirks is an argument against the film being specifically fascist. Fascism emphasizes conforming to a single heroic national archetype. A fascist film might see the nations of the earth all shedding their individuality in order to adopt a single culture. Instead a cast of characters all with different origins come together and prevail - and they do it whilst being a bunch of petulant, dysfunctional troublemakers. Not exactly a hallmark of the fascist dream.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:50
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Nessus posted:Perhaps meaningfully, they also gain a specifically sexual (rather than vaguely gendered) portrayal in the form of the two who come out, as one of them has the fetus Kaiju inside of its... head? They find it near the secondary brain, which is in its abdomen. edit: Whoops, missed the opening tag. Neurion fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 22:51
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Shadeoses posted:Kaiju are clearly the masculine in this movie. The first Kaiju really does shove his big horn into that Jaeger multiple times! That oddly was my favorite fight in the film, the Kaiju emerging from the wave was great and my cinema was so drat loud my seat felt like it was shaking. It was also the most dramatic, with whom I thought was going to be one of the main characters getting killed and Raleigh having to pilot the Jaeger solo in combat. Something we've been told should be impossible like 5 minutes earlier. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 22:55
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Edit: Shadeoses pretty much covered everything, but have some  anyway  Lt. Danger posted:Of course I'm talking about the associated value systems. Nobody's saying Pacific Rim is literally Nazi Germany. quote:The best way to describe it is that Pacific Rim is a traditional hero story, the structures of which were appropriated by fascist movements to flesh out their ideology. This doesn't make it fascist per se. quote:However, Pacific Rim has a lot of other elements that also link with fascist concepts - the aforementioned stuff on futurism, martialism, etc. quote:All this combines to create a basically fascist film - not in the sense that it's pro-fascist, or only fascists like it, but in the sense that it portrays a world that operates according to the basic tenets of fascism: warriors are good, violence in service of the state is good, alien others are bad,limp-wristed office suits are bad, so on so forth. quote:Why is it that the monsters are defeated through technology (giant robots, not matter how outdated they are) and not through guerilla warfare or diplomacy?  quote:Why is it that Stacker gets to go out in a big badass nuclear explosion with loads of emotional catharsis that takes out a whole bunch of kaiju instead of coughing blood and making GBS threads himself in a hospital bed, full of regret, the victim of the war's toll on his health? Why is it that the tragedy of Raleigh's brother's death basically occurs off-screen? quote:Why is it that there are... what, two female parts? One of which does nothing except speak some Russian and die, the other (ostensibly a female lead) ultimately subservient to her co-pilot? Before you answer: why is it that the girl is the young naif and the boy the experienced veteran who has to take charge and save the day more often than she does? quote:Why is it that we see a definitely-female kaiju, but we don't see any definitely-male kaiju? Why do the kaiju have yonic symbolism? quote:Why is it that in this post-national future, where the nations of quote:I don't think anyone wants a line-by-line answer to these questions  quote:it's to ask whether there's a reason or purpose for why the film was written that way in the first place. quote:The whole point of the film is that the jaegers are totes right because they're the only ones willing and able to use violence to defeat the aliens. Despite being demobbed by the governments of the world (their ostensible bosses), they persist in fighting the war and ultimately win it, legitimising their authority directly in front of your eyes. Kegluneq fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 22:57
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Shadeoses posted:
Go on.... I kinda might see this and it's kinda cool.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:58
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I got my one lonely Scunner Heroclix in the mail
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Jul 20, 2013 23:00
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ImpAtom posted:He is. He even says as much when arguing with Pentecost later. The entire reason that Mako freaks out is because he freaks out first and it causes a feedback because they're drifted together. Not really, though. I mean maybe it's technically Raleigh's fault that Mako has her whole episode? I don't remember anyone saying anything about it, but sure, I'll buy that in the script of the movie it's Raleigh making some kind of mistake that forced Mako to relive past trauma. I seem to reacll Raleigh yelling at Mako not to "chase the rabbit" and Mako failing to comply, though. The thing is, it's Mako's dream we actually enter, and Mako's stupid screaming helplessness that takes up many minutes of screen time and serves as an extremely important point of dramatic tension. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is underlined almost completely with Raleigh yelling obvious, correct information at Mako - no poo poo she's in a dream, dude! - but Mako being too weak/scared/childish/lost/whatever to listen. Raleigh gets to stay in his badass sculpted-pecs cyberarmor while Mako is literally transmogrified into a child. This whole thing being technically Raleigh's fault only serves to further flatter Raleigh, honestly, since it reminds the audience that he, too, has Deep Gritty Serious Trauma but isn't a huge baby about it unlike some people. The more I write about this the more it strikes me how much better it would've been if the scene were reversed. Imagine if Raleigh's been a cocky yet bitter rear end in a top hat all movie (he and Hansen should be combined into one character), and he and Mako finally drift together, and Mako makes a rookie mistake (because she is a rookie) but ends up triggering Raleigh's horrible trauma, and that's when we, the audience, realize that Raleigh's so screwed up because he's spent the last ten years with his brother's psychic death screams echoing around in his skull. Bonus: it would make perfect sense that, during the traumatic episode, Gipsy Danger raises its arm and starts charging its plasma cannon, because that's the exact same weapon that Raleigh was desperate to use during the traumatic episode he'd be reliving.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:07
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Peruser posted:Also, not only does Yancy die entirely onscreen (the film cuts away so we don't see his life-less corpse fall 280 feet into the ocean). We see Crimson Typhoon's crew get crushed, and Cherno Alpha's drown (and then get crushed). There was no shortage of onscreen death in this film. I wasn't talking about the actual act of dying, but things like grief, mourning, stuff that signifies the loss that comes with the ending of life. This is more or less glossed over in the film - the only one who seems to have any trouble with it is Mako. quote:You just described not only the lion's share of anime and kaiju films Pacific Rim's plot is intentionally derivative of, but most big budget action scifi movies. Heroic, militaristic state violence wielded to defeat an alien aggressor - sure, it fits, but you might as well argue that the entire genre is fascist. I think you're pinpointing the basic heroic story blueprint that fascism relies on, rather than the very specific political movement of fascism that only existed in a meaningful way during WW2 in MAYBE three (but probably only two, really) countries. I agree, except for the very last bit. I think the futurism and masculinism push the film over the boundary from merely being generically heroic (like fascism wants to be) to having noticeable similarities to the cultural movements in the early twentieth century. And yes, a lot of action/sci-fi has fascist tendencies! quote:The film never claims that it takes place in a "post-national future". That was a jab at some of the posts in this thread. Again, it's not that the film depicts a fascist future where everyone has been subjugated under the Pacific Rim supra-government, it's that in a fascist narrative, nations are important and your national identity is central to defining who you are... which in turn means that characters in Pacific Rim are all very obviously, very strongly American/Japanese/Australian/Chinese/Russian/British etc. In a non-fascist narrative, that stuff isn't quite so important and wouldn't be highlighted as much, if at all.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:08
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Ferrinus posted:The more I write about this the more it strikes me how much better it would've been if the scene were reversed. Imagine if Raleigh's been a cocky yet bitter rear end in a top hat all movie (he and Hansen should be combined into one character), and he and Mako finally drift together, and Mako makes a rookie mistake (because she is a rookie) but ends up triggering Raleigh's horrible trauma, and that's when we, the audience, realize that Raleigh's so screwed up because he's spent the last ten years with his brother's psychic death screams echoing around in his skull. Bonus: it would make perfect sense that, during the traumatic episode, Gipsy Danger raises its arm and starts charging its plasma cannon, because that's the exact same weapon that Raleigh was desperate to use during the traumatic episode he'd be reliving. You are right about this. A role reversal would have been a better choice.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:10
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Miltank posted:You are right about this. A role reversal would have been a better choice. But that scene is all about Mako and Pentecosts relationship and reliving Raleigh's nightmare would be retreading old ground.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:17
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Lt. Danger posted:Again, it's not that the film depicts a fascist future where everyone has been subjugated under the Pacific Rim supra-government, it's that in a fascist narrative, nations are important and your national identity is central to defining who you are... which in turn means that characters in Pacific Rim are all very obviously, very strongly American/Japanese/Australian/Chinese/Russian/British etc. In a non-fascist narrative, that stuff isn't quite so important and wouldn't be highlighted as much, if at all.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:18
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I enjoyed this film, nothing spectacular but a lot of fun. It didn't strike me particularly as fascist but the Jaegers did remind me of Nazi weapons and vehicles. You see Hitler would've absolutely loved this film. He loved super fancy and over engineered stuff much as the 12 year old boys the film is aimed at do. That was why Nazi Germany had so many different types of tanks and planes and why so much resources were squandered on the Wunderwaffe. The Jaeger are absurdly complex and over engineered weapons because that is cool. The launching of Gipsy Danger at the beginning of the film had grinning at how many potential points of failure or mistakes it had for instance. Now I am not complaining the film had cool robots nor am I saying the similarity made anyone involved to be pro Nazi. I just think it likely if Hitler were around today the fuehrer bunker would be full of transformers toys.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:19
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NoneSuch posted:But that scene is all about Mako and Pentecosts relationship and reliving Raleigh's nightmare would be retreading old ground. Remember, in a just world Mako would be Pacific Rim's main character. The movie's first scene would be that giant crab thing crushing Tokyo while kid Mako runs away, and then we'd get to see Stacker solo it in his Jaeger and rescue Mako. This would work to show us, rather than tell us, what an easy time early Jaegers had against Kaiju so that once Category 3s+ start hitting and tearing Jaegers to pieces it's more of a shock.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:21
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PaganGoatPants posted:I got my one lonely Scunner Heroclix in the mail Man, the path of least resistance for Hastings would have just been mass-cancelling the orders and shooting everyone a "hey we hosed up, sorry 'bout that here's a $5 credit towards an actual booster box" e-mail. Now that they actually shipped them out in gigantic boxes (seriously the one mine came in could have easily held another 23 figures but instead had airbags) with packing slips that don't match the order description, they have a ton of poo poo to deal with. e: come to think of it, how many confirmed orders do we have? Maybe they only had one 24-pack and split it amongst the first 24 people. 
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Jul 20, 2013 23:21
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So using a large array of tools at my disposal, I've figured out I have a Coyote Tango and the ChiCom mech. No rips or tears in the packaging. And nowhere within 100 miles has the Heroclix. :-(
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Jul 20, 2013 23:22
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Kegluneq posted:I know I played this up earlier, but I don't once remember any character other than Mako make any reference to their home country or culture - even then she doesn't specifically refer to Japan by name, she just lives it more than other characters live theirs. Stacker never talks about being British, Raleigh never talks about being an American, and it never seems to inform their decisions. Describe the characters of the pilots of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:22
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Ferrinus posted:Remember, in a just world Mako would be Pacific Rim's main character. The movie's first scene would be that giant crab thing crushing Tokyo while kid Mako runs away, and then we'd get to see Stacker solo it in his Jaeger and rescue Mako. This would work to show us, rather than tell us, what an easy time early Jaegers had against Kaiju so that once Category 3s+ start hitting and tearing Jaegers to pieces it's more of a shock. Lt. Danger posted:Describe the characters of the pilots of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon. Edit: VVVVVV Kegluneq fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 23:24
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Lt. Danger posted:Describe the characters of the pilots of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:24
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Srice posted:Pointless exposition is like 99% of expanded universe nonsense though, so people are right to not really care about that stuff in favor of what is presented in the film itself! Yeah, but even in the film itself, "they're all female because the one is and they're clones" isn't really held up by much considering that, for clones with identical dna, none of them look anything like the others, and several have unique physical structures. It's nonsense in the same way every other science term tossed around in the film is, much like how the Kaiju are "evolving" to fight better against the Jaegers (even though exactly zero Kaiju that fight the Jaegers survive) and the wonderful analog line. There's nothing in the film to support it, but that's not stopping anyone. quote:I just think it likely if Hitler were around today the fuehrer bunker would be full of transformers toys. There's no way Hitler wouldn't have been a goon.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:27
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Kegluneq posted:Why would you want the opening message to be that Stacker made himself look awesome to the protagonist by doing something relatively unchallenging and mundane? I feel like it's not out of order to open a movie about a bunch of badass heroes showing the heroes successfully being badasses? It'd be great - the big monster's knocking tanks aside and biting the tops off buildings, then bam, it gets tackled by a giant robot and taken apart. I mean, it doesn't have to be a complete upset - maybe it's a Category 2, and plus Stacker's piloting solo so he's really sweating, but he wins definitively and thus we get to see how the Jaeger program is supposed to work (and why Mako's obsessed with joining it) before the Kaijus get bigger and the funding gets smaller. Later, as Mako's growing up, she can learn in a montage about the Category 1s, how drifting works, etc.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:27
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Ferrinus posted:I feel like it's not out of order to open a movie about a bunch of badass heroes showing the heroes successfully being badasses? It'd be great - the big monster's knocking tanks aside and biting the tops off buildings, then bam, it gets tackled by a giant robot and taken apart. I mean, it doesn't have to be a complete upset - maybe it's a Category 2, and plus Stacker's piloting solo so he's really sweating, but he wins definitively and thus we get to see how the Jaeger program is supposed to work (and why Mako's obsessed with joining it) before the Kaijus get bigger and the funding gets smaller.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:30
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Ferrinus posted:Not really, though. I mean maybe it's technically Raleigh's fault that Mako has her whole episode? I don't remember anyone saying anything about it, but sure, I'll buy that in the script of the movie it's Raleigh making some kind of mistake that forced Mako to relive past trauma. I seem to reacll Raleigh yelling at Mako not to "chase the rabbit" and Mako failing to comply, though. We enter Raleighs dream too. In fact we enter it before Mako's. The thing is that we already lived through Raleigh's dream. It was the opening of the film. It was the trauma so bad he literally went and took suicidal jobs working on building a wall because he couldn't get back in a Jaeger, and the first time he gets back into a Jaeger he has a flashback so serious and so traumatic that it starts the entire sequence. We don't see the entire thing again because they showed it to us once and the movie assumes the audience doesn't need to see the entire flashback again to understand what Raleigh is going through. They just show us the critical scene (his brother being ripped out of the Jaeger) which is what starts the entire thing. Now, the trauma is gotten over remarkably quickly by both characters. They suffer no problems in their second launch. It doesn't linger on it long. But it isn't a case where it's Mako fails while Raleigh is awesome. It's "Raleigh fails and drags Mako down with him." This is even part of the argument later and eventually comes to a head with the "all I have to do is fall" scene where it's implied that he is worth less than she is. (That scene has other problems however and I'll rightly agree on those.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 23:31
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Lt. Danger posted:Why is it that we see a definitely-female kaiju, but we don't see any definitely-male kaiju? The only Jaegar which is gendered is definitely-female, as well. Do we disregard that because it's standard military protocol to refer to ships in the feminine, while making the femininity of the Kaiju (which are still purpose-built war machines) relevant? It seems odd to pick and choose that way. Anyway, I just got back from seeing this with my dad a few hours ago. In an age where everything in Hollywood comes in trilogies, it's unusual to watch a movie that desperately begs to have been in a serial format (like, say, Evangelion) rather than a single two-hour film. Nothing that happened had any impact at all, I didn't give a poo poo about any of the characters (including the Earth), and it felt like it existed in this weird tonal middleground where it was still a little too realistic and boring and subdued (re: things like the Kaijus' design) to be fantasy and too animated and silly to be in any way grounded or believable. I don't really understand its positive reception at all; maybe it just wasn't "for" me.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:31
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Lt. Danger posted:Again, it's not that the film depicts a fascist future where everyone has been subjugated under the Pacific Rim supra-government, it's that in a fascist narrative, nations are important and your national identity is central to defining who you are... which in turn means that characters in Pacific Rim are all very obviously, very strongly American/Japanese/Australian/Chinese/Russian/British etc. In a non-fascist narrative, that stuff isn't quite so important and wouldn't be highlighted as much, if at all. But that isn't fascist. Identifying as your nation isn't fascist it's just part of the tribalism of being human. It's also important to show that this is an international team, working together not because of national unity, but in spite of the disunity that comes from being from different nations.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:31
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I'm about an hour in to the iOS game, and its a skip. It's repetitive, and not the deep of a combat system.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:34
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Saw the movie, it was awesome but I have a question why is there a big deal made out of Stacker being so ill from repeated drifts that doing it again would kill him and yet he appears to be perfectly fine when he links up to the other guy? Sorry if it's already been answered a few pages back. Also it was great how Mako was not used for fanservice or a love interest, it's kind of sad how rare that is with female co-stars.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:37
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Kegluneq posted:This would definitely have made for a slower film. I think it was stronger for starting with Raleigh being over confident and arrogant (set up by the opening monologue), then barely managing to escape with his life. When you find out later that Stacker fought for three hours like that, even though it happened off screen it comes across as much more amazing. Not at all. We just straight up never got to see an on-the-ground battle between a Jaeger and a Kaiju in which the Jaeger actually fulfilled its function except for like five seconds on a TV screen with the whole wall fiasco. There's plenty of crap you could cut for the purposes of giving the audience more than one clear, well-lit, and watchable fight scene. We can watch Raleigh get his rear end kicked later. ImpAtom posted:We enter Raleighs dream too. In fact we enter it before Mako's. The thing is that we already lived through Raleigh's dream. It was the opening of the film. It was the trauma so bad he literally went and took suicidal jobs working on building a wall because he couldn't get back in a Jaeger, and the first time he gets back into a Jaeger he has a flashback so serious and so traumatic that it starts the entire sequence. We don't see the entire thing again because they showed it to us once. They shouldn't have showed it to us at the beginning of the movie because we had no context with which to evaluate the Jaeger/Kaiju battle. In retrospect that was a Category 3 that either presaged or continued the trend of Jaegers suddenly losing fights that they were supposed to win, but actually the back and forth looked totally logical and not at all like some kind of shocking tragedy. Also, Raleigh sucks, and is boring, who wants to watch him be mopey? Certainly not right-thinking people. Edit: quote:Now, the trauma is gotten over remarkably quickly by both characters. They suffer no problems in their second launch. It doesn't linger on it long. But it isn't a case where it's Mako fails while Raleigh is awesome. It's "Raleigh fails and drags Mako down with him." This is even part of the argument later and eventually comes to a head with the "all I have to do is fall" scene where it's implied that he is worth less than she is. (That scene has other problems however and I'll rightly agree on those.) No, I don't buy it. As soon as the flashback started, tough armored Raleigh was yelling at Mako to snap out of it but she was too busy being a crying child. The two characters' traumas weren't treated in a balanced way, and like I said, they weren't treated in a way that was logically imbalanced, either, because it's absolutely Raleigh who should've been suffering horrible flashbacks after plugging into the same Jaeger his brother died in. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 23:38
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RBA Starblade posted:Yeah, but even in the film itself, "they're all female because the one is and they're clones" isn't really held up by much considering that, for clones with identical dna, none of them look anything like the others, and several have unique physical structures. It's nonsense in the same way every other science term tossed around in the film is, much like how the Kaiju are "evolving" to fight better against the Jaegers (even though exactly zero Kaiju that fight the Jaegers survive) and the wonderful analog line. There's nothing in the film to support it, but that's not stopping anyone. They have the same DNA in the same way every Mitsubishi that rolls off the assembly line has the same DNA, and they're "evolving" the same way the Mirage went from 5-door to sedan to 3-door back to sedan and now hatchback again with three different racing variants and a handful of related Lancers. 
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Jul 20, 2013 23:38
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NoneSuch posted:The first Kaiju really does shove his big horn into that Jaeger multiple times! That oddly was my favorite fight in the film, the Kaiju emerging from the wave was great and my cinema was so drat loud my seat felt like it was shaking. It was also the most dramatic, with whom I thought was going to be one of the main characters getting killed and Raleigh having to pilot the Jaeger. Something we've been told should be impossible like 5 minutes earlier. Really, the whole film is a retelling of that classic "Woman gets raped, recovers her confidence after years of malaise, firebombs her rapist's house" story. If you can't see the obvious paralele, then maybe your, ahem, reading, isn't up to nič.  Gatts posted:Go on.... The two most famous 'giant monster' guys in cinema are King Kong and Godzilla, and their favourite locales are New York and Tokyo. The biggest setting in Pacific Rim is Hong Kong, a vibrant Oriental metropolis with a historically strong Western influence, which is also home to two Oriental and two Western protectors (Cherno and Striker are interesting here, as Russia and Australia straddle the East-West divide geographically and politically). In their original forms King Kong and Godzilla are possessed of a certain primal intelligence, an innocence that makes their opposition to humanity more of an accident or incompatibility, and ultimately they're on humanity's side, shown by how they fight equally threatening monsters that seek to destroy humanity. This 'destroy half the city, but protect it from the monster who wants the other half' theme is carried on by the Jaegers, but most of all Gipsy, who is humanity's mascot. You might also say the other Jaegers represent the JDF, attempting to defend Tokyo without being able to meet the monsters on equal footing. Also,  Gipsy's nuclear breath Leatherback is tough brute built in the form of a giant gorilla, King Kong stripped of his cute monkey ways and cuddly mammalian instincts, who fights in the shipping yard where King Kong was involuntarily imported. He's left there in an unceremonious heap, defeated by the humans at his point of entry by the American. King Kong is not welcome in New York. Otachi is a sleek, lizardy hunter, lurking among the skyscrapers like American Godzilla as it hunts prey, but it's no match for the righteous martial anger of Japan. It is fairly assumed that it is a singular threat, but it's pregnant! Gipsy Danger comprehensively assumes the classic Godzilla persona of 'king of the monsters, protector of humanity' by mastering Japanese and American monster styles, fast and slow, old and new, while defending Hong Kong. That's basically why some are so pissed at the film. They're subconsciously on the side of the sea-monsters because that's what Godzilla was, but now Godzilla is the bad guy like the giant slug or shrimp. The new protector of humanity is actually human, saving Tokyo just as classic Godzilla did, while the new, literal Godzilla is stomping around trying to eat Japanese people because that's what he does. The film climaxes with the ultimate Kaiju, a Super Mechagodzilla if you will, being defeated in close combat and killed by good old regular Godzilla, shortly before humanity ends both Jaeger and Kaiju, definitively saying "Sea monsters sure are chumps compared to us, huh?" 
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Jul 20, 2013 23:45
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planetarial posted:Saw the movie, it was awesome but I have a question why is there a big deal made out of Stacker being so ill from repeated drifts that doing it again would kill him and yet he appears to be perfectly fine when he links up to the other guy? Sorry if it's already been answered a few pages back. Also it was great how Mako was not used for fanservice or a love interest, it's kind of sad how rare that is with female co-stars. It wasn't the drifts, it was the radiation from the old Mark 1 jaegars.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:48
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Augustin Iturbide posted:This whole fascism debate is weird because the movie presents a simplistic, convenient narrative of good vs. evil and that is superficially similar to fascism in that fascism also attempts to simplify reality into good guy action heroes vs. unquestionably, objectively evil enemies. The problem here is that Pacific Rim is fiction, and ridiculous fiction at that. Like, you can argue it's fascist and you might even be right in the sense that they share a superficial similarity, but that misses the big issue is that actual fascist media presents itself as an actual depiction of reality while Pacific Rim depicts itself as a fantasy. Yeah, this can be problematic, if say, someone decided to base their life philosophies around what they learned from watching Pacific Rim. But if someone did that we'd all very reasonably think they're crazy. By this standard it is theoretically impossible for any film to mean anything, since even the most stringent documentary is not, itself, reality. You can appeal to the film's ridiculousness, but then the same can be said of the ridiculously fascist protagonists of Starship Troopers. The parallels between the treatment of 'kaiju' in this film and the treatment of the 'bugs' in such politically-charged fictional films as District 9, Starship Troopers, and 300 have already been outlined. What is your precedent for reading a film of this sort as 'apolitical'? And, to repeat: if the resistance is not fascist, what is it?
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Jul 20, 2013 23:53
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So I'm gonna see it again. Last time it was in 3D.im thinking just the regular thin this time. Also, any Seattle goons game for a showing in Bellevue? I'm not paying for you, but I'm good at smuggling candy into theatres.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:54
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