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Worth pointing out that the genetically engineered Gamera and "Friend of all Children" Gamera are in two separate series- the engineered Gamera, from that 90s series, doesn't have that connection with kids, and is more an eternal soldier archetype. The original Gamera who loves kids is a prehistoric turtle who gets thawed out and is misunderstood and destructive at first but redeems himself after being exiled from Earth. Though in the 90s series, the Gyaos are engineered too (though I think they're some kind of mad science accident- the big deal is that they have no junk DNA or redundant chromosomes) and they're basically remorseless monsters who can't be reasoned with and must be killed en masse. So they're much closer to the PR kaiju. Though the main parallel to the PR kaiju is basically the monsters-of-the-week in the various Power Rangers series, who are almost always created by one of the main bad guy's henchman through some visual gimmick. Not sure how it works in the various sentai they're based on, though. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 02:26
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Kaiju are jaegers. Jaegers are vehicles. Who's driving the kaiju? (Who drives Gamera?)
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Jul 29, 2013 02:27
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The sentai/tokusatsu parallels are worth bearing in mind since they're clearly as big an influence on the story and premise as the Godzilla or Gamera movies. It's not even hard to imagine the action in the prologue- of the Jaegers consistently beating the big bad kaiju in such a way as to render the latter almost comical- as the events of an unseen series, "Pan Pacific Defence Corp: Jaeger". And in that case the Kaiju's alien masters are basically Rita Repulsa and company, and if we do get a trilogy the finale will probably be Supreme Gipsy Danger vs. a Precursor who has injected himself with Kaiju DNA and grown to giant size. Maybe the Kaiju-Jaeger hybrid will be a bad guy at first but end up joining the team because that's always what happens.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:39
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Maxwell Lord posted:The sentai/tokusatsu parallels are worth bearing in mind since they're clearly as big an influence on the story and premise as the Godzilla or Gamera movies. It's not even hard to imagine the action in the prologue- of the Jaegers consistently beating the big bad kaiju in such a way as to render the latter almost comical- as the events of an unseen series, "Pan Pacific Defence Corp: Jaeger". And in that case the Kaiju's alien masters are basically Rita Repulsa and company, and if we do get a trilogy the finale will probably be Supreme Gipsy Danger vs. a Precursor who has injected himself with Kaiju DNA and grown to giant size. The film, quite literally, features a Monster of the Week counter. The parallels are impossible to miss in that regard.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:42
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I mean, it's not even hard to find GDT discussing his influences. He talks about the anime he watched as a youth, in particular Tetsujin-28 aka Gigantor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESzy-NQRrWQ
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Jul 29, 2013 02:48
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ImpAtom posted:So we've gone from Death of the Author to Reincarnation of the Author I guess. I admit that's sort of fascinating to consider. Nobody's ever said that a director's history can't provide vital context. It's just that: another text (or a set of texts) to be read in concert with all the others. The issue is when "the author" is, credulously, treated as a sort of true and final authority whose Teen Choice Award speeches and Entertainment Weekly interviews override most or all other texts, supplanting actual literacy. The film itself invites a reading of the marketing and toys as part of the text as well - as in Jurassic Park. When the film has a gag about the entire jaeger-kaiju conflict being reduced to a shoe commercial and toy franchise, you should be asking what makes Pacific Rim any different. Fans love Knifehead-kun - but in the film itself, the irreverently bug-eyed kaiju mascot is a symbol of terrible decadence and impending catastrophe.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:50
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And to extrapolate from the genre commentary- the prologue represents the birth of the genre in the 60s/70s, wherein the Japanese, despite an understandable apprehension about scientific progress (frequently expressed through alien invaders and/or creatures like smog monsters representing environmental disaster) there was still an optimism and confidence that through science and technology (the Ultra Q and similar science teams, mecha) we could overcome our problems. That was perhaps too cocky and idealistic (and yeah, an excuse to sell toys) and Knifehead was brute reality smacking us in the face. But now of course the tide has changed and our visions of the future are almost uniformly apocalyptic and dystopian. Nobody honestly believes in a better tomorrow- at least not without a lot of bloodshed and horror in the meantime (because that's basically what any properly Marxist revolution will have to reckon with). That's the world of the walls and people hiding in bone slums, that's "reality". Nothing we can do but hunker down. That is the bullshit that Del Toro rejects, here as much as in Pan's Labyrinth (where the only opposition that means anything in the face of an overpowering tyranny is personal redemption- the little girl going to Heaven.) He insists there is something of value in the old foolish ideal, even if it wasn't entirely accurate. The smug confidence in the inevitable march of progress probably needs to go, but the Drift, the communication and empathy between people, the relationships- husband and wife, father and son, triplets, surrogate fathers, and whatever the protagonists are because it's not flat out romance- that holds the key, as does science (the geeky scientists drifting together into the kaiju brain.) It is basically saying that love will save us, and maybe that is naive, but I am so loving sick of end-of-the-world stories that I can't help but see the whole thing as a cry in the dark as much as the Wachowskis' Speed Racer. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 02:55
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Nobody's ever said that a director's history can't provide vital context. It's just that: another text (or a set of texts) to be read in concert with all the others. The issue is when "the author" is, credulously, treated as a sort of true and final authority whose Teen Choice Award speeches and Entertainment Weekly interviews override most or all other texts, supplanting actual literacy. Yes, but what you're arguing is that the director's history (In a limited sense) can provide context but the director's words can't, and it seems pretty likely the only reason you're willing to go that far is that you came up with a reading that you desperately want to appeal to authority with. You basically want to have you cake and eat it too. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 02:56
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Fans love Knifehead-kun - but in the film itself, the irreverently bug-eyed kaiju mascot is a symbol of terrible decadence and impending catastrophe. But is this any different to how Godzilla, the symbol of the pure hell of nuclear holocaust, was cheered by Japanese audiences? This happened even before they consciously started turning him face- it's WHY they did so, even. (Henry Sapirstein, the guy who ported over Gojira and most of the 60s movies, understood it as "they're cheering him because he's chasing the people stupid enough to set off nuclear bombs.") From what I've read in Del Toro's interviews about this film, he may think that we're inevitably going to like the kaiju anyway, like how we always do, like how in wrestling you cheer for the good wrestler even if the bad wrestler holds more of our attention.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:59
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Bongo Bill posted:(Who drives Gamera?) Teruo Aragaki.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:01
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:While I'm not really down with brawleh's provocations, given the already-reactionary reaction to even straightforward analysis, it's still notable that Del Toro's response to having his 'unmarketable' R-rated dream project scuttled is this aggressively toyetic, (sarcastically?) cryptofascist, PG-13, family-friendly and ultraviolent blockbuster targeted at preteens. Are you talking about a different version of this film, or one of his many many other projects (such as aborted At the Mountains of Madness)?
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Jul 29, 2013 03:01
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Lord Krangdar posted:Are you talking about a different version of this film, or one of his many many other projects (such as aborted At the Mountains of Madness)? Well, on the surface level of the text, he's referring to At the Mountains of Madness, but deeper than that he's referring to the different version of this film that he saw where fascism ran rampant, the baby kaiju trap was an antichristological statement, and so forth and so on.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:06
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If the only way you can reconcile your reading of a film with its director's history is by saying the film is sarcastic, and the director has given no indication of being anything but wholly enthusiastic, then you should consider the possibility that your reading is the source of the discrepancy.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:13
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Bonaventure posted:Well, on the surface level of the text, he's referring to At the Mountains of Madness, but deeper than that he's referring to the different version of this film that he saw where fascism ran rampant, the baby kaiju trap was an antichristological statement, and so forth and so on. You have your SMG impression all wrong, he never refers to any kind of depth vs. surface level dichotomy in his arguments/pronouncements (nor does he call other posters "vermin", for that matter).
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Jul 29, 2013 03:15
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No, merely treats them as such.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:16
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ImpAtom posted:Yes, but what you're arguing is that the director's history can provide context but the director's words can't, and it seems pretty likely the only reason you're willing to go that far is that you came up with a reading that you desperately want to appeal to authority with. I am focussing on the content of the films and Del Toro's direction because this is Cinema Discusso and not Celebrity Gossip & Marketing Discusso. Maxwell Lord posted:in the 90s series, the Gyaos are engineered too (though I think they're some kind of mad science accident- the big deal is that they have no junk DNA or redundant chromosomes) and they're basically remorseless monsters who can't be reasoned with and must be killed en masse. So they're much closer to the PR kaiju. The nuance here is that the Gyaos were designed to totally eliminate pollution - the gag being that they then began to kill people too. The Gyaos represent the same logic of the Jaegers, eliminating the pollution so that society can be 'perfect'. Gamera, on the other hand, is a 'last son of krypton' savior figure who bonds with the 'garbage' humans even though they despise him as a monster. The Gamera figure in Pacific Rim is the baby Otachi.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:19
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Isn't it a baby Leatherback?
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Jul 29, 2013 03:20
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If it's justifiable for the Gyaos to be murdered en masse by Gamera without stopping to negotiate or talk, why not the Kaiju? Why is destroying the latter without remorse fascist?
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Jul 29, 2013 03:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I am focussing on the content of the films and Del Toro's direction because this is Cinema Discusso and not Celebrity Gossip & Marketing Discusso. Except you're still saying that the director's intentions matter, but only in your tiny and specific area. It's only "gossip and marketing" when you don't want it to be and you conveniently change that every time it would devalue your own argument.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:31
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Bongo Bill posted:Isn't it a baby Leatherback? No; in this one instance, SMG has recalled a detail from the film correctly.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:34
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Maxwell Lord posted:If it's justifiable for the Gyaos to be murdered en masse by Gamera without stopping to negotiate or talk, why not the Kaiju? Why is destroying the latter without remorse fascist? For the same reason Aliens is not actually fascist: the Gyaos are presented as an expression of the violence latent within society itself. They are not an external threat. Remember that the Aliens aliens are a colony of soldier-drones who thoughtlessly kill and exploit those deemed inferior. They're the earlier dialogue about 'bug hunts' and 'arcturian poontang' come back to bite the colonial marines in the rear end. So, the marines can't beat the aliens because they are the aliens. Ripley has emerge as an authentic freedom fighter in order to save the day. The crucial point is that Ripley doesn't only hate the bugs. She hates everyone who stands between her and universal freedom - Burke most of all, really. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 03:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For the same reason Aliens is not actually fascist: the Gyaos are presented as an expression of the violence latent within society itself. They are not an external threat. But doesn't that mirror the cockiness of the PR prologue? The kaiju are reduced to figures of fun and easy merchandising, they're exploited, and then they kill you. It's only when we take them seriously that we have a chance.
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Jul 29, 2013 03:46
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Maxwell Lord posted:But doesn't that mirror the cockiness of the PR prologue? The kaiju are reduced to figures of fun and easy merchandising, they're exploited, and then they kill you. The point of Aliens is not that they should've hosed the arcturians harder. The message is that the marines should self-identify as the arcturians, that they should give up everything to defend the lowest bugs. Ripley is an arcturian, is what I'm saying. The jaeger pilots and kaiju are the colonial marines/xenomorphs in this analogy. The PPDC and the precursors are the corporation/queen. The baby kaiju and those slum-dwelling protesters are the arcturians who get hosed. There's no Ripley.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The point of Aliens is not that they should've hosed the arcturians harder. The message is that the marines should self-identify as the arcturians, that they should give up everything to defend the lowest bugs. Except she specifically confronts the queen and then the queen tries to backstab her, so Ripley is superior after all and is justified destroying all the alien eggs. And it's not like any tears are shed over the genocide of the arcturians. EDIT: And I do think you're way off trying to attribute qualities to the baby kaiju that it never bothers to manifest. It slavers, it chomps, it tries to eat Newt and eats Chau, and it chokes itself to death. There's never any hint that it would do anything good if it survived. Nothing in the narrative. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 04:10
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Maxwell Lord posted:Except she specifically confronts the queen and then the queen tries to backstab her, so Ripley is superior after all and is justified destroying all the alien eggs. Are you referring to the part in the scene where the egg opens up as Ripley's trying to back out of the hive? There's nothing that explicitly places the blame on the Queen for that, as evidenced by the earlier parts of the film where the eggs open up and infect the colonists entirely without the presence of a Queen.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:18
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Maxwell Lord posted:Except she specifically confronts the queen and then the queen tries to backstab her, so Ripley is superior after all and is justified destroying all the alien eggs. And it's not like any tears are shed over the genocide of the arcturians. I think you're misunderstanding; xenomorphs are not arcturians. They represent opposite concepts. The arcturians are the dominated and exploited, while the xenomorphs represent the humans' logic of dominance and exploitation taken to an extreme. The hint in the narrative that the baby can do good is when Newton communicates with it, demonstrating the potential to ally with the kaiju. Recall that Newton was earlier presented as some sort of social pariah and outcast in the bomb-shelter scene. Instead of uniting with his fellow outcasts, he tries to ingratiate himself back into the PPDC. That's a betrayal.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:23
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I think you're misunderstanding; xenomorphs are not arcturians. They represent opposite concepts. But then aren't the invaders in PR just our environmental rapaciousness taken to an extreme? quote:The hint in the narrative that the baby can do good is when Newton communicates with it, demonstrating the potential to ally with the kaiju. But communicating with the kaiju baby doesn't mean they'll necessarily reform. We can talk to GOP politicians all we want, they'll still never vote for a carbon tax.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:25
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The act of reform is itself a betrayal (for instance the supposed opposite Democrat of your example who would vote for a carbon tax) as it not only continues to rely on, but doubly ensures, an inherently exploitative and ultimately catastrophic structure. To truly ally with the abject would require an authentic rejection.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:35
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Maxwell Lord posted:But then aren't the invaders in PR just our environmental rapaciousness taken to an extreme? You're missing the crucial distinction between the precursors and those they enslave, as well as the point in Aliens that every drone is born from the subjugation of a person. (In a very specific way, they are 'screwed' by Burke.) We can understand the drones as victims without also discounting the small-scale danger they pose. BUT, the important thing is to recognize the large-scale danger posed by Burke/the company/liberal capitalism. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 04:38
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I hate to interrupt "pacific rim meaning chat", but has there been any update on sequel potential? It seems like the movie is absolutely cleaning house in the international market, which should make up for the lackluster North American numbers.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:40
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I think the money it makes in foreign markets can be deceptive. Doesn't the studio take something like a 50% cut in the US while the theaters get the other half? In China the studio gets even less, like 20%. So making 100 million outside the US isn't as good as it sounds.
Mu Zeta fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 04:46
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Pacific Rim's never going to make a sexy amount of money, from a studio's perspective. Getting a sequel is going to depend on Legendary Pictures taking the view that the money they spent on the first film was an investment, seed money to get a franchise rolling.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:48
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Superstring posted:I mean, it's not even hard to find GDT discussing his influences. He talks about the anime he watched as a youth, in particular Tetsujin-28 aka Gigantor. I tell you, some of his influences must include the sentai shows, particularly Ultraman. When the Jaegers hit the ground and either cause an explosion of water or dirt / dust, that's straight out of every Ultraman series since 1999. That one shot of Striker Eureka rushing in from the background while Typhoon and Cherno are taking a beating is right out of episode 4 of Ultraman Gaia, where Gaia is running into the shot to save Agul. And the roundhouse throws are a nod to every Ultraman episode where the hero grabs the monster by the tail and swings him around WWF style. Even the placement of Gipsy's chest turbine is identical to the placement of the color timer on most Ultramen. As an aside, the defeated Jaeger they said was at Vladivostok during the opening montage looked awfully like a Kree Intergalactic Sentry.. Binary Badger fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 04:51
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Even if del Toro didn't, you can bet a decent percentage of the hundreds of other people that worked on the film did.
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Jul 29, 2013 04:55
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brawleh posted:Like the response to Xenomrph yes appreciate the surface qualities and little details, but not simply the way a child would see them. Enjoy the textual visual experience, but don't ignore the symbolic one, it can actually better inform the movie experience(the post about Knifehead being awesome in the sense talked about). Really the long and short of it is that different people go into watching a movie with different intentions and different expectations, and to get different things out of the experience. I really, truly do not care about subtext and whatnot. It isn't why I watch movies. I watch movies to be entertained, to experience stories, visuals, and characters I couldn't otherwise experience, and hopefully the movie makes me feel something by the time the credits roll. I have nothing against people who want to discuss subtext and the like, or have different readings of films or whatever. It's simply not my cup of tea, and it's not why I watch movies.  Not to mention, I'm confident I'd personally get the most enjoyment out of 'Pacific Rim', a movie where the director outright said he wanted to "make a movie that would blow his mind if he were twelve", if I specifically chose to look at it "the way a child would see it". 
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Jul 29, 2013 05:08
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Maarak posted:Even if del Toro didn't, you can bet a decent percentage of the hundreds of other people that worked on the film did. I also just noticed something else.. this 'PPDC', the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. It seems to be the movie's equivalent of NATO, as different countries banded together to safeguard the Pacific against the kaiju. It's a direct steal of an Ultraman tradition where every different show had to have a different agency that was set up to defend the populace.. Ultraman Tiga had GUTS, the Global Unlimited Task Force.. Ultraman Great had UMA, the Universal Multipurpose Agency (yeah I don't get it either, but for the show it worked), Ultraman Dyna had SUPER-GUTS, and Ultraman Gaia had two different agencies whose purposes overlapped, XIG (eXpanded Intercepting Guardians), G.U.A.R.D (Global Universal Alliance against Radical Destruction) No wonder the Japanese are going to eat this up, it's like it was tailor made to be a homage to their sentai culture.
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Jul 29, 2013 05:13
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In the black power super-soul musical The Wiz, the winkies are grotesque, bestial stereotypes who perform tortures and other evils at the service of wicked witch/sweatshop owner Evillene. When Evillene and her sweatshop are destroyed by Dorothy, the winkies are torn apart from inside, and real people emerge. This is my earlier point about inferiorization. The message is not that the winkies are 'good at heart' and that the grotesque shell is only an illusion - nor is it (obviously) that black people should be eliminated. The message is that dehumanization by an oppressive system works, stripping people of their humanity and turning them against eachother. When the winkies dismember Michael Jackson as Scarecrow, is this not the spectre of black-on-black violence and crime? The winkies, like the kaiju here, are violent and dangerous, but only symptoms of the real systemic problems. After all, isn't the message of Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion that, yes, we are merely garbage, robots, and animals - yet...
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Jul 29, 2013 05:17
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MatCauthon posted:I hate to interrupt "pacific rim meaning chat", but has there been any update on sequel potential? It seems like the movie is absolutely cleaning house in the international market, which should make up for the lackluster North American numbers. Numbers from boxofficemojo.com right now show a total of over $240 million on the worldwide grosses, with what seems to be very good tracking coming from China & Japan that will boost it. We may very well see $300m worldwide on its theatrical run. Hopefully WB will see how hard people are hammering Amazon and NECA for merch, and take this into consideration as well. Funny, as this is the final movie in a partnership that's crumbled between Legendary & WB.
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Jul 29, 2013 05:21
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Maxwell Lord posted:Worth pointing out that the genetically engineered Gamera and "Friend of all Children" Gamera are in two separate series- the engineered Gamera, from that 90s series, doesn't have that connection with kids, and is more an eternal soldier archetype. The original Gamera who loves kids is a prehistoric turtle who gets thawed out and is misunderstood and destructive at first but redeems himself after being exiled from Earth. Binary Badger posted:I tell you, some of his influences must include the sentai shows, particularly Ultraman. When the Jaegers hit the ground and either cause an explosion of water or dirt / dust, that's straight out of every Ultraman series since 1999. Binary Badger posted:And how! I just wanted to say thank you. As I was saying upthread, I know nothing about sentai, so posts like these are extremely interesting to me. SuperMechagodzilla posted:When Evillene and her sweatshop are destroyed by Dorothy, the winkies are torn apart from inside, and real people emerge. Pacific Rim agrees with that, though, perfectly? The Kaiju are, from scratch, so extremely effectively stripped of anything resembling even animal agency (the instinct to survive until breeding) that the only solution to deal with them is to destroy them. Dehumanisation by an oppressive system works. The 'destroying Evillene' analogy in Pacific Rim would be, oh, going to the alien homeworld and destroying the Kaiju masters. Tell me, honestly: if that happened, what're the chances you wouldn't cry 'fascism' and 'colonialism' then? Maxwell Lord posted:That is the bullshit that Del Toro rejects, here as much as in Pan's Labyrinth (where the only opposition that means anything in the face of an overpowering tyranny is personal redemption- the little girl going to Heaven.) He insists there is something of value in the old foolish ideal, even if it wasn't entirely accurate. The smug confidence in the inevitable march of progress probably needs to go, but the Drift, the communication and empathy between people, the relationships- husband and wife, father and son, triplets, surrogate fathers, and whatever the protagonists are because it's not flat out romance- that holds the key, as does science (the geeky scientists drifting together into the kaiju brain.) It's really like the first Star Wars and Indiana Jones in this regard.
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Jul 29, 2013 05:44
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Danger posted:The act of reform is itself a betrayal (for instance the supposed opposite Democrat of your example who would vote for a carbon tax) as it not only continues to rely on, but doubly ensures, an inherently exploitative and ultimately catastrophic structure. To truly ally with the abject would require an authentic rejection. And this is the position that we have to deal with anytime politics are made the issue of any film, that the only positive action is revolution. At the very least you have to admit that this is a specific ideology that not everyone on CineD follows. I'm not interested in holding off all problem solving and mitigation until the proletarian uprising has been accomplished. That's the fusion power of political movements, it'll be great if/when it happens but it's at least some years away.
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Jul 29, 2013 05:44
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