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I mean, I suppose the movie could be showing an "error" but given the production value and consistency of every other scene, that does not seem likely to me. I guess it is possible.
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Jul 29, 2013 20:52
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Astro Nut posted:Speaking of possible flaws and errors though, am I the only one who suspects that the number of Jaegers as imagined in the film's script, far exceeds that of the info we garnered prior to the film's release? I mean, there was definitely some changes, given Cherno Alpha was originally a Mark 4 and Coyote Tango a single pilot suit, but there's little details I saw too. Multiple copies of Horizon Brave are shown under construction, and Cherno Alpha is mentioned as being the last (surviving) of the T90s. Now I get that such is probably a reference to Russian military hardware, but unless a giant robot counts as being the same as a Russian tank, it implies there was a whole series of the things. And of course there's the HK Shatterdome being built to facilitate thirty Jaegers. Likely. I seem to recall that there were more than one Tacit Ronin (the blue Jaeger) but you have to remember that, after Gipsy Danger's tangle with Knifehead, they started losing Jaegers in almost every single battle over the next five years. They could have had a hundred or so, but with losing a Jaeger for every Kaiju means that the attrition caught up with them. If the Kaiju were appearing every two-four weeks, over five years, that a number from anywhere between 60 to 120 Kaijus battles. The PPDC could very well have been depleted to a handful of Jaegers.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:03
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euphronius posted:I mean, I suppose the movie could be showing an "error" but given the production value and consistency of every other scene, that does not seem likely to me. I guess it is possible. One of the most consistent criticisms of the movie from the very beginning has been "wow, what terrible acting! What a terrible script!" I thought a few other scenes were awkwardly edited as well, notably Idris Elba's big speech, which apparently lots of people in this thread found rousing but the way it was shot made me feel it was kinda... deflated. Less Henry V on Saint Crispin's Day than Richard III at Bosworth. Also Mako's ejection at the end was another skip -- in the theater it seemed like a very paternalistic action that sort of robbed her character a bit, letting the dude be the big hero, but as has been rightly pointed out in this thread, Riley (sp?) is doing it exactly because what he has to do takes no skill at all. It's an act of care and concern and love, but not an act of chauvinism although the way it's presented makes it easy to read like that.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:03
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The 30 Jaeger housing in just Hong Kong kind of got to me as well. I could understand they'd have many Jaegers for interception and to cover large ground but one Shatterdome housing that many does imply mass production and not all of them being unique. I would take it there wouldn't be that many Shatterdomes either, like maybe HK and the next one up in Tokyo and then up in Russia's Avacha Bay all the way across then to Alaska, B.C. and somewhere like Mexico? That's a ton of Jaegers. Things did seem to change as well, consulting the wiki site for Pacific Rim based on the movie, Coyote is a 1st, Cherno is a 1st, Gipsy a 3rd, Crimson is a 4th, Striker a 5th. Maybe they did try to go mass production for generations 1-3 but once category 3-4s come through it all goes to hell and what we are left with are the unique ones to distinguish them as characters. Perhaps the U.S. had a few Gipsy Dangers about.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:05
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Bonaventure posted:Also Mako's ejection at the end was another skip -- in the theater it seemed like a very paternalistic action that sort of robbed her character a bit, letting the dude be the big hero, but as has been rightly pointed out in this thread, Riley (sp?) is doing it exactly because what he has to do takes no skill at all. It's an act of care and concern and love, but not an act of chauvinism although the way it's presented makes it easy to read like that. That doesn't change what it is in the slightest though. A lot of the "remove a female character so a male character can do stuff" are framed as "he just... he cares so much" but it doesn't change the fact he is the guy who gets to do everything. (and even emerged unscathed at the end)
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Jul 29, 2013 21:05
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Bonaventure posted:edit: to anticipate objections to what I'm saying in this post as "dismissing contradictions" rather than resolving them: works of narrative art aren't the Septuagint and we are not theologians trying to resolve contradictions into a unified whole. This film in particular contains flaws and tonal errors that, if the rest of the narrative gave me reason reason to, would give pause in the consideration of them. The remainder of the narrative, however, does not. Which is the simpler explanation: this one brief scene is meant to contradict everything around it? Or that it's an example of 5 seconds of bad acting and poor editing? My reading acknowledges errors in tone for being errors; it does not call them jewels and stick them in its crown. What you're doing here is deciding which details are more important to your interpretation and which are less important, which is fine because that's a necessary part of interpreting anything. But now that you've admitted to choosing which details to focus on maybe try not to get so apoplectic when you see other people doing the same thing. The problem with deciding that something was an unintentional error and therefore not meaningful / not really part of the text is that a) not every contradiction or sudden swerve in tone is necessarily an unintentional mistake and b) something can originate as an error but then become an important part of the work, and/or intended after the fact. For an example of b), take the show Twin Peaks where an error caused one of the set grips to be caught in the background of a shot, but then he was made the main antagonist of the series. Either way, everything that ends up in the film was either put there or left there by the filmmakers and its all part of the text. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:06
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ImpAtom posted:That doesn't change what it is in the slightest though. A lot of the "remove a female character so a male character can do stuff" are framed as "he just... he cares so much" but it doesn't change the fact he is the guy who gets to do everything. (and even emerged unscathed at the end) It's not that "he cares so much," it's that he sees himself as ultimately the less useful of the two. He says it at the beginning: he's nothing special outside of being good in a fight, whereas Mako's a genius. I still think it's a bad scene and it would have been stronger thematically to have them both Doing Stuff at the end. edit: in other words, I think it was not intended as a chauvinist scene, but it is received as one. I don't object to what you're saying, because it's that difference between the reality of how the scene plays out and how it was meant to be read that makes it a bad scene. Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:07
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Lord Krangdar posted:What you're doing here is deciding which details are more important to your interpretation and which are less important, which is fine because that's a necessary part of interpreting anything. But now that you've admitted to choosing which details to focus on maybe try not to get so apoplectic when you see other people doing the same thing. David Lynch in particular is idiosyncratic to the extent where his happy accidents are irrelevant. What I'm doing is using various contexts, most notably the film itself, to understand this scene. Other contexts I'm using? I've seen bad acting before, and I've seen directors get showy with the cgi designs they've come up with before. The tongue scene felt straight out of The Phantom Menace.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:10
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Bonaventure posted:David Lynch in particular is idiosyncratic to the extent where his happy accidents are irrelevant. I picked an extreme example for illustrative purposes. Another one: during the filming of the Lord of the Rings films Viggo Mortensen was reportedly actually injured, more than once, and those takes were kept in the film. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n0Uj41zlhU If you watch that film from now on are you going to mentally discard that part, since it was an unintentional error? The problem with this is if you take it too far you're no longer interpreting the actual film, instead you're interpreting your own imagined, idealized version of the film with all the supposed errors and mistakes discarded. Deciding which elements are important or unimportant is part of interpretation/"reading"; it's not an unrelated, neutral process to be carried out beforehand. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:30
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I probably have been reading CineD too long because honestly I don't even know what an "error" is in a movie. Visible boom mikes? Continuity errors? Ok maybe those are legit errors.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:32
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Question: did Viggo Mortenson breaking his foot on set impact the tone that the scene was meant to convey? How did it? Why do you find "Viggo broke his foot and gave a good performance" and "Charlie Day gave a lovely scared face and they went with it, and they also probably could have cut away from the tongue 3 seconds earlier" to be on the same level? What does anything have to do with anything?
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Jul 29, 2013 21:34
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Perhaps we can change the meaning like in software and call it a "feature" instead of error. EDIT: Can't the tongue thing be the whole menacing and looking for Charlie Day kind of thing alien movies do? Like whenever someone is in a cave from an animal it keeps try to claw in and reach them or like in Alien/Aliens menacing with the second retractable mouth? Like, it's a movie thing. Gatts fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:34
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^that's totally what it's supposed to be doing, yes. The way it's shot and Charlie's acting make for a confusing scene, though, is the thing.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:39
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I thought at the instant I watched it that it was / was intended to be / an ambiguous scene and later reflection has supported my instant reaction. Kind of a hole in the movie that let's you peak through to other things.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:41
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Gatts posted:EDIT: Can't the tongue thing be the whole menacing and looking for Charlie Day kind of thing alien movies do? Like whenever someone is in a cave from an animal it keeps try to claw in and reach them or like in Alien/Aliens menacing with the second retractable mouth? Like, it's a movie thing. Yeah, as someone already noted it's not like it just investigates Newt and leaves him be, for all we know it might have been just about to eat him before it's interrupted by Gipsy Danger dragging a fuckoff huge boat. As far as Charlie Day's expression, I saw it as fear fighting it out with awe - after all, he's a kaiju groupie who's probably closer than anyone's ever been to a kaiju and lived, it makes sense that it wouldn't be just terror he's feeling. Anyway, it didn't stand out as particularly bad acting.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:41
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http://entertainment.time.com/2013/07/01/exclusive-clip-a-mega-brawl-from-pacific-rim/ Here's the scene in question. I see it as scanning the room for Charlie, seeing with its tongue because its head doesn't fit.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:42
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Actually, seeing it again, it lingers on the tongue less than I thought. The real problem is how close it is to Day -- we're supposed to see it as searching for him, but instead it looks like it's caressing him!
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Jul 29, 2013 21:46
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Bonaventure posted:Question: did Viggo Mortenson breaking his foot on set impact the tone that the scene was meant to convey? How did it? Why do you find "Viggo broke his foot and gave a good performance" and "Charlie Day gave a lovely scared face and they went with it, and they also probably could have cut away from the tongue 3 seconds earlier" to be on the same level? What does anything have to do with anything? We don't have access to the alternate versions of LoTR, or Twin Peaks, or Pacific Rim where the errors (or supposed errors) are excised so we don't know how big of an impact the changes would make on each final product. The point of bringing up those examples was to challenge your assumption that you are able to reliably identify errors and separate them from the rest of a film's text. Remember that earlier in the thread you angrily accused SMG of ignoring "poo poo about the movie" to serve his interpretation. You also said this: quote:That scene is the one scene I would be willing to grant to anyone who argues that sympathy with the kaiju on a textual level was something actually advanced in the narrative, since the CGI tongue lingers too long waving almost gently and Charles Day has trouble keeping his arms in front of his face, but I don't think it was meant to be read that way, because everything else contradicts reading it like that. Ultimately I think it was a poorly executed attempt at drawing out tension, and nothing more. So you already granted that, if not discarded as an error, the scene fits with the opposing argument. That's what I originally replied to. Don't try and downplay it as a mere 3 seconds now.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:48
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Thought I'd take a snippet for discussion purposes  It got a lot closer than I remembered. euphronius fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:50
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"Errors" are intrinsic elements of the text just as much as scripted lines are. They often contain the greatest meaning and any particular reading that ignores them does so at a loss. Continuity errors and 'plot holes' are especially important and it is reductive to dismiss films because of them. For instance, the supposed plot holes in The Dark Knight Rises contribute to the film itself as a type of 'holey space' in which the liberal space of the film is eroded both literally and metaphorically and is resolved through the state appropriation of those radical burrowing elements. To bring up another example from this thread, is the murky dripping chain aesthetic from Alien a technical error? Danger fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:52
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Lord Krangdar posted:We don't have access to the alternate versions of LoTR, or Twin Peaks, or Pacific Rim where the errors (or supposed errors) are excised so we don't know how big of an impact the changes would make on each final product. The point of bringing up those examples was to challenge your assumption that you are able to reliably identify errors and separate them from the rest of a film's text. Well, if that was your intent, you failed. I wish I could see the alternate version your post with the errors excised.  quote:Remember that earlier in the thread you accused SMG of ignoring "poo poo about the movie" to serve his interpretation. You also said this: I am not ignoring that scene. I am considering it, and evaluating it with the context of the bulk of the narrative behind it to understand the intent, in spite of the poor framing and Charlie Day's weird body language. Compare this to "the repeated hurricane metaphor is meant to be a bald-faced lie on the characters' part, obviously" or whatever weak deflection SMG used to discount it. The preponderance of evidence is that in this scene the tongue is trying to find Newt so it can do bad things to him, not to tell him about the wonders of Pandora.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:53
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euphronius posted:Thought I'd take a snippet for discussion purposes That is a lot closer than I remembered, too. I wonder if the intent was to be some sort of organic version of the drift equipment? It's not exactly "sniffing" all over him, it's going where the machine went. It also could've certainly killed him if it wanted to, since he was pretty exposed at that point. Perhaps the kaiju was attempting to force a second drift with him, on its own terms: with a live kaiju that had full brain functionality and a full hookup to the other kaiju. Just, it got interrupted before it could by the boat-bat.
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Jul 29, 2013 21:57
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It has three probes that circle around his head, I think to echo that the drift headset had three lobes on it, lobes that look like long protrusions with bulbs at the ends, kind of like Otachi's probes. The drift headset glows red, in contrast to Otachi's probe glowing blue.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:03
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It looks like in the screenshot, the tongue does find him and doesn't instantly devour him. Similar to the bit I mentioned before, where the kaiju does not immediately destroy the deactivated jaeger (though I realise this is also supposed to have parallels with whats-his-name not checking the kaiju was dead). In both cases, even though they're apparently vicious war machines (and in that case, presumably know about the humans' error with the not-quite-dead kaiju and would not be eager to emulate it), they do not go straight to aggression. And in both cases, before the ambiguity can be resolved one way or the other - is it aggressive, or will we get some kind of communicative signal or mercy here? - another robot appears to bash the kaiju's face in. This is why, I think, people keep coming up with the same "why didn't they communicate properly with the kaiju, why do they destroy them?" military-industral concerns rather than some toss about climate change. There is ambiguity in the film. Not in some hidden metaphorical subtext, but on the very surface of the film.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:04
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If only one of those glowing . . .prongs. . . had gone in his mouth. Then we would have had the perfect Prometheus/Pacific Rim nexus.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:04
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Chronojam posted:That is a lot closer than I remembered, too. I wonder if the intent was to be some sort of organic version of the drift equipment? It's not exactly "sniffing" all over him, it's going where the machine went. It also could've certainly killed him if it wanted to, since he was pretty exposed at that point. Perhaps the kaiju was attempting to force a second drift with him, on its own terms: with a live kaiju that had full brain functionality and a full hookup to the other kaiju. Just, it got interrupted before it could by the boat-bat. If you accept it was an attempt to drift with him, the question then becomes why? since it seems to have been visually demonstrated that they knew how to easily dispatch Jaegers in light of the first drifting experience and know about the plan to launch the nuclear weapon(Jaeger numbers too possibly), what would be the purpose of a Kaiju trying to drift with a human at that stage in light of the upcoming triple event. Not that anyone needs to answer it, just it may illustrate where the divergent opinions are coming from. e:The political readings of military industrial complex failing and climate change aren't mutually exclusive, in the sense it's about the nature of the response not the nature of the threat. brawleh fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:05
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Chronojam posted:That is a lot closer than I remembered, too. I wonder if the intent was to be some sort of organic version of the drift equipment? It's not exactly "sniffing" all over him, it's going where the machine went. It also could've certainly killed him if it wanted to, since he was pretty exposed at that point. Perhaps the kaiju was attempting to force a second drift with him, on its own terms: with a live kaiju that had full brain functionality and a full hookup to the other kaiju. Just, it got interrupted before it could by the boat-bat. I think someone posted that the novelization says it's kaiju drift equipment. But if that is the case the movie really didn't get that across well.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:05
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euphronius posted:If only one of those glowing . . .prongs. . . had gone in his mouth. Then we would have had the perfect Prometheus/Pacific Rim nexus. Imagine the hentai... I'm so sorry.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:06
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:This is why, I think, people keep coming up with the same "why didn't they communicate properly with the kaiju, why do they destroy them?" military-industral concerns rather than some toss about climate change. There is ambiguity in the film. Not in some hidden metaphorical subtext, but on the very surface of the film. Hm, yes, some "toss" about climate change which is completely backed up by the film and is completely on the surface of the film, up to and including the Kaiju being classified like weather. Once again we're back to "one true reading." You're unwilling and unable to accept any other readings of the film and then proceed to launch insulting comments on people who disagree with your reading. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:06
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Peruser posted:I think someone posted that the novelization says it's kaiju drift equipment. But if that is the case the movie really didn't get that across well. Really? Because just a few minutes ago I pointed out that there's a visual parallel between the drift headset and Otachi's probes, even without having read the book. I think it communicated a parallel sufficiently, just using visuals. euphronius posted:If only one of those glowing . . .prongs. . . had gone in his mouth. Then we would have had the perfect Prometheus/Pacific Rim nexus.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:12
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Bonaventure posted:Well, if that was your intent, you failed. I wish I could see the alternate version your post with the errors excised. So what then, you can reliably identify errors and separate them from the rest of a film's text? You can know what the final products of LoTR, Twin Peaks, and Pacific Rim would look like with the errors excised? So, assuming you've seen Lord of the Rings, when you watched those films you knew that scene originated as an error but you also somehow knew what that part of the film would have been like without that error taking place? You seem pretty sure that you can know the filmmakers' real intentions just by watching the film, even when you admit their intentions are not perfectly reflected in the final product itself, but it seems to me what you're doing is imagining their intentions and assuming what you imagine is accurate. Now if you look up, for example, Del Toro's stated ideas behind this film they may very well match your assumptions to some extent. However, trying to determine the full picture gets messier when you consider that a) anything a director said to the press was intended for the press, and does not necessarily reflect the full extent of everything they were thinking over the course of production, b) any given film had many, many people working on it who each had their own intentions and interpretations which may have changed over time and/or contradicted each other, c) errors can be both intentional and unintentional (like the LoTR and Twin Peaks examples, which were unintended at first but intentionally left in). Focusing mainly on the final text itself and not an imagined, overly simplistic "one true intention" avoids these problems. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:18
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brawleh posted:If you accept it was an attempt to drift with him, the question then becomes why? since it seems to have been visually demonstrated that they knew how to easily dispatch Jaegers in light of the first drifting experience and know about the plan to launch the nuclear weapon(Jaeger numbers too possibly), what would be the purpose of a Kaiju trying to drift with a human at that stage in light of the upcoming triple event. Not that anyone needs to answer it, just it may illustrate where the divergent opinions are coming from. To find out more. It never hurts to have more intelligence, and to find out what Newt knew about them, too. Maybe some sort of do-they-know investigation about the triple event, for example. It doesn't seem like Newt came across as terrified, probably more vindicated/confident, after his first drift. Surely after seeing that, it could have made them think twice about their plans.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:18
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Steve Yun posted:Really? Because just a few minutes ago I pointed out that there's a visual parallel between the drift headset and Otachi's probes, even without having read the book. I think it communicated a parallel sufficiently, just using visuals. Hrm. Then the second movie better address it if so. The first movie was just a mis-understanding, the aliens were using the Kaiju like probes to explore the sights and sounds and they just accidentally started bumping into things because the pilots were drunk. Kaiju-Jaeger team up. One's a by the book too old for this poo poo Jaeger, the other's a hotshot on the edge Kaiju, and together they have to solve a murder mystery in India. Herc Hansen can yell at those two that they're off the case and for the Jaeger to hand in his gun and badge the Kaiju its cuticles (knifehead) and badge.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:22
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Chronojam posted:To find out more. It never hurts to have more intelligence, and to find out what Newt knew about them, too. Maybe some sort of do-they-know investigation about the triple event, for example. It doesn't seem like Newt came across as terrified, probably more vindicated/confident, after his first drift. Surely after seeing that, it could have made them think twice about their plans. That's a strong possibility, but they would have known also about Gottlieb's predictions of the triple event as well. Newt being terrified when making actual contact with the Kaiju, like you said on their terms, just punches home that his only intentions towards the Kaiju were to vindicate his work and thus vindicate himself among his peers(note his mocking of Gottlieb) in my eyes anyway. e:Also, when that interaction finally happens with the Kaiju it made him a pariah when in the bunker "It's after the little dude!" or something close to that. brawleh fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:23
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Newton drifted with the Kaiju back-brain and got a ton of useful info, so why wouldn't the precursors try the same thing with him? He's seen the ins and outs of the Hong Kong Shatterdome for years and probably has all sorts of juicy info on the Jaeger program. Presumably a living Kaiju with two fully functional brains gives a better signal back to their dimension? .efb
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Jul 29, 2013 22:24
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brawleh posted:punches home that his only intentions towards the Kaiju were to vindicate his work and thus vindicate himself among his peers(note his mocking of Gottlieb) in my eyes anyway. He says that himself right before he first drifts with the Kaiju "If you're listening to this I'm either dead, in which case, this is all your fault Gottlieb. Or I survived, in which case, Ha, I was right!" It's why I'm having trouble with people trying to paint Newt as this traitor to the Kaiju cause, he can't be a traitor because he was never on their side to begin with.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:29
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Lord Krangdar posted:So what then, you can reliably identify errors and separate them from the rest of a film's text? You can know what the final products of LoTR, Twin Peaks, and Pacific Rim would look like with the errors excised? So, assuming you've seen Lord of the Rings, when you watched those films you knew that scene originated as an error but you also somehow knew what that part of the film would have been like without that error taking place? You seem really caught up with the word 'error.' Would fault or flaw be better? I'm talking about tone and about craft. Viggo breaks his foot, and what's reflected on screen brilliantly communicates his frustration, rage, and pain. The tongue is searching for Newt to either eat him or mindfuck intel out of him, it gets so, so close to him but at the last moment the Kaiju is distracted by a bigger problem -- but between Charlie's ambiguous acting and the choice to have the tongue so close to him, the visual language is muddled and easily confused. There is a difference between what you're referring to as an 'error' and what I have been talking about. quote:You seem pretty sure that you can know the filmmakers' real intentions just by watching the film, even when you admit their intentions are not perfectly reflected in the final product itself, I'm pretty good at it, yeah.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:34
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Bonaventure posted:The problem with the phallocractic-fascistoliberal pro-Winkie-slavery betrayal-of-the-Revolution reading of the film isn't that SMG and his dogsbody of the moment need to "turn their brains off" or whatever, it's that they engage with it in ways that are based on absolutely fraudulent intellectual artifice (the Kaiju are the poor! The baby-trap is Christ! etc.) and logical leaps that do not represent the actual experience of the audience or culture at large in its reception of the film. Looking for how the film reflects or comments on issues that exist in our reality is fine, but like I’ve said, the ‘meaning’ in this film is so obvious as to make its articulation feel redundant (and it is almost totally contrary to Fascist ideology which makes that particular reading so hilarious). This is from a while back, but it's extremely telling that you define an 'absolutely fraudulent' reading as one concerning issues that fall outside the purview of the 'actual reality' experienced by 'culture at large'. Clearly, then, there's no actual disagreement here. I've explained all along that the film is about a symbolic/virtual reality of liberal capitalism plagued by irruptions from the Real reality of 'third-world' exploitation and whatnot. Since I have openly taken the side of the monstrous exploited and ignored, it's no surprise that my opinion does fall outside the mainstream. I'm endorsing communism. Of course it does. It's honestly rather baffling that you put that forward as a hilarious revelation. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 22:38
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Okay, here's an alternate reading... The kaiju/masters represent colonialism as an abstract concept. Everything about them is a dark mirror of humans. They have war machines, they drift, etc. And like Earth's history, the kaiju masters have a history of colonizing other worlds. With international cooperation and the breaking of barriers between people, we are fighting against colonialism, we are fighting the sins of our own history.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:40
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ImpAtom posted:Hm, yes, some "toss" about climate change which is completely backed up by the film and is completely on the surface of the film, up to and including the Kaiju being classified like weather. I didn't find climate change discussion satisfying because I don't think it properly incorporates a lot of very important elements of the film: the colonialist controllers of the kaiju, Newt's fetishistic appreciation of the kaiju (would this make any sense if the kaiju are equivalent to man-made weather patterns?), the fact that the film explicitly offers up environmental change as the only reason for the kaiju's survival and this is then never deal with (so the 'climate change' kaiju are eliminated without dealing with ACTUAL climate change... again, what does this mean) or any of the elements I put in my last post which I interpret as being steps towards making the kaiju more sympathetic and undermining the hurricane/machine analogies that the explicit text of the film offers. What could it mean to be able to mentally connect with a piece of weather? A reading like one about climate change should be able to 'explain' the entire film, every scene, through the lens of that reading. OK, you can disagree with my or SMG's or whoever's interpretation of the film - I'm not actually trying to claim some 'true meaning' - but at least they manage to encompass all the elements of the film, even if you don't agree with how those elements are interpreted. If someone can post a climate change denial reading or link me to one that I missed in this thread which incorporates everything above then great, I'd really like to read it! As for being insulting, mate, you can play along and insult me as much as you like as long as you also post your own interpretation alongside complaining about how mine is wrong!
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Jul 29, 2013 22:44
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