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They must have gone out of their way to have non-Australians playing the Australian characters. And the main guy's American accent was terrible.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:14
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turtlecrunch posted:-Striker Eureka is easily the most underwhelming jaeger despite being the newest (it has chest missiles, woo, I thought they weren't supposed to use missiles, or plasma cannons actually, because kaiju blue somethingsomethingsomething). Eureka's missiles were designed using knowledge gained from Newt's research on Kaiju bodies. What makes them effective is that they can penetrate a kaiju's thick carapace. They also simultaneously cauterize the wounds to make sure they don't bleed. The movie didn't explain any of this (presumably due to lack of time) but it's explained in the book. Panfilo posted:I'm gonna kind of disagree with you on this one. Striker Eureka is the only Jaeger that decisively kicks a Kaiju's rear end. Seriously, the Kaiju that attacked Sydney didn't have a chance (I assume it was designed solely to breach the walls, and not much else). According to the film's novelization (which is based on early versions of the script), Mutavore (the kaiju that attacks Sydney) also takes down two jaegers before breaching the Sydney wall: Echo Saber (a Japanese Mark-4) and Vulcan Spectre (an Australian Mark-3). Which makes Eureka's performance even more remarkable since it absolutely decimates Mutavore and does it very quickly. Habibi posted:Maybe presumptuous, but I think he meant it was just the sort of blah-est of the Jaegars. It was just an incredibly efficient war machine, to the point where the only real exploitable weakness it had was 'turn it off.' IIRC del Toro et al. originally planned for Striker to be the 'hero' robot, but ended up thinking it lacked personality - which I think is true. No, the reason he changed his mind is because Eureka is too cold and arrogant, i.e. not very "hero-like."
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Dec 12, 2013 07:10
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I'd like to see some crazy future Kaiju designs. Imagine a battle against something based off a bobbit worm, mantis shrimp or giant squid. Also they are all cyborgs.
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Dec 12, 2013 14:43
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Man, giant squid monsters are boring. A giant, cyborg vampire squid, on the other hand, would be rad as hell.
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Dec 12, 2013 18:19
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Mu Zeta posted:They must have gone out of their way to have non-Australians playing the Australian characters. And the main guy's American accent was terrible. Yeah, which is weird because he's been on Sons of Anarchy for five years and had plenty of practice by now.
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Dec 12, 2013 18:22
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enraged_camel posted:Eureka's missiles were designed using knowledge gained from Newt's research on Kaiju bodies. What makes them effective is that they can penetrate a kaiju's thick carapace. They also simultaneously cauterize the wounds to make sure they don't bleed. The movie didn't explain any of this (presumably due to lack of time) but it's explained in the book. quote:No, the reason he changed his mind is because Eureka is too cold and arrogant, i.e. not very "hero-like."
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Dec 14, 2013 03:39
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Don't get me wrong, I like Striker Eureka just as much as the rest. I think his cold, angular design actually works for his role though; Chuck is the aloof, rear end in a top hat star player who doesn't get along very well with anyone else, and his robot reflects that visually.
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Dec 14, 2013 04:46
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So uh, I just read all of SMG's posts in this thread, and I disagree with the reading that the jaegers pilots, proles, and kaiju fail to join together and rise up against their oppressors. But I'm jumping into the thread waaay after the relevant discussion, and I only really saw a slice of that. Would bringing the fascism/politics thing be an unwelcome retread?
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Dec 20, 2013 11:09
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Are you going to actually go by what's shown in the film? Sure, bring it up. If you're not going to, or you're going to wilfully misinterpret things (like say there's no shots of the Cherno Alpha pilots drowning) then you probably shouldn't.
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Dec 20, 2013 11:31
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Milky Moor posted:Are you going to actually go by what's shown in the film? Sure, bring it up. "In a better film, that image of Leatherback's massive palm fully eclipsing the field of vision as it forces Cherno's head underwater would linger for more than four seconds." Do you understand the difference between this actual quote and what you wrote it out to be?
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Dec 20, 2013 21:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I wrote that: Avoiding cherry picking the quotes that don't make you look inept, you flat out misstated that - just as a small example - there's was no evidence of water getting into the cockpit, that the cockpit was significantly damaged by acid, that the interior of the conn room didn't react to the damage to the Jaegar, on top of that jumped to incredible conclusions about how the Jaegars operate, managed to somehow miss every scene that contradicted your interpretation, and ultimately back-pedaled most of your would be critiques of inconsistency into arguments of personal preference. I am not sure that you are in any position to demand of other posters whether they can tell the difference between reality and imagination. Hodgepodge posted:So uh, I just read all of SMG's posts in this thread I think I found the problem
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Dec 20, 2013 22:23
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Habibi posted:Avoiding cherry picking the quotes that don't make you look inept, you flat out misstated that - just as a small example - there's was no evidence of water getting into the cockpit, that the cockpit was significantly damaged by acid, that the interior of the conn room didn't react to the damage to the Jaegar, on top of that jumped to incredible conclusions about how the Jaegars operate, managed to somehow miss every scene that contradicted your interpretation, and ultimately back-pedaled most of your would be critiques of inconsistency into arguments of personal preference. You are a bad writer. As an example, I wrote that imagery established in earlier interface scenes should recur later in the film. Your response was that, as a "universal rule", "Jaegar pilots have varied ways of representing and interacting with the world." That had nothing to do with what I'd written, because I was not writing about the 'rules of the universe'. I'd even pre-emptively explained that my point had absolutely nothing to do with canonicity. You became extremely caught up in this, so that you would repeat even weeks later that I've 'jumped to incredible conclusions about how the Jaegars operate'. Bad interactions like this betray is that you don't know how to argument. As another example, here is how your summarized my overall point: "If [SuperMechagodzilla's] initial point was simply 'some things were confusing,' rather than 'these things that weren't absent from the movie were absent from the movie (even though they weren't)' I wouldn't have bothered [writing a lot]." The trouble is that I wasn't arguing either of these things. It's a total mischaracterization. I argued that the experience of the pilots is de-emphasized so that, even though exterior shots show acid eating away at their hull, very little is reflected in the interior shots. Specifically "you don't see the wind and water suddenly affecting [the pilots]". Perhaps I should have underlined the concept of 'suddenly affecting'. You then wrote a lot of stuff about the exterior shots and other unrelated shots from the later death sequence because you straight-up ignored what I was talking about (emotions expressed during interior shots during the acid scene). Clarification was dismissed as 'backpedaling'. And all the while you're doing this shameful thing where you write 'hahah i caught you' and 'i'm done here you're not worth my time' and generally gloating to people about how dumb SMG is and how you caught him. It's a bad look.
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Dec 21, 2013 00:18
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Habibi posted:I think I found the problem SMG is the most consistently entertaining poster anywhere in the parts of the forums that I read. To avoid a wall of  I think I'm just going to stick to the highlights of where my analysis differs from what I saw of SMG's. I'll test out the first chunk of the argument, which is the part that is about  I didn't read the PPDC as fascists (I'm sure SMG is shocked by this truly original deviation from his analysis). I think that reading is a bit overly grounded in Twentieth Century politics. The PPDC's politics are further back by a few centuries- they're warrior aristocrats. Their source of legitimacy isn't an organic vision of the mobilized community; Jaeger pilots are divinely ordained protectors of a passive flock. This is made explicit when Raleigh describes he and his brother as having been unextraordinary save for their drift compatibility. This gift allows them to be fitted with weapons and armor, the Jaegers, which allow them to participate in ritual combat against semi-divine/daemonic entities. Pentecost gives a speech at one point, but he isn't a charismatic leader of the masses. His power is strictly based on his ability to command the personal fealty of other Jaeger pilots, in no small part due to his former prowess in battle. Jaeger pilots themselves are, of course, families, making the PPDC an alliance between several warrior clans personally loyal to Pentecost. The character's name comes from this; Pentecost is a Christian religious feast on which King Arthur required his knights to join him on a quest before being allowed to eat. Oh, and Raeleigh requires his personal blessing to join in a familial alliance (e: and spiritual union) with his daughter. If Pentecost were a fascist, he would rally the masses to die for him fighting the kaiju. Instead, he and the pilots protect the masses and even the traitorous bourgeois out of noblesse oblige even when doing so is a tactical liability. Jaeger pilots seek popular adulation as validation, but their flock has little choice but to provide food and raw materials in return for protection. The sheep are neither a significant military threat nor a potential asset. Their approval is unnecessary, because the Jaeger pilots rule by divine right. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 00:36
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We're still spelling it "Jaegar" in this thread, then?
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Dec 21, 2013 01:01
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Hodgepodge posted:The PPDC's politics are further back by a few centuries- they're warrior aristocrats. That's a good read on the characters, but how do you incorporate the sci-fi trappings like the drift and the jaegers (with their nationalism)?
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Dec 21, 2013 03:35
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Of course warrior aristocrats would represent their fiefdoms with pride and decorate their armor with the famous symbols thereof.
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Dec 21, 2013 06:04
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quote:Of course warrior aristocrats would represent their fiefdoms with pride and decorate their armor with the famous symbols thereof. Robots that are some national stereotype are a common anime thing aren't they? quote:It's a bad look. I hope this new slapfight about your gimmick leads to us talking about dog balls again. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 07:07
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You are a bad writer. You are a bad poster. quote:because you straight-up ignored what I was talking about  vHodgepodge posted:SMG is the most consistently entertaining poster anywhere in the parts of the forums that I read. Well, yes, clowns can be entertaining. Habibi fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 07:26
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Line-by-line quotation is also bad writing. But in any case, you have successfully(?) refuted things that I either never wrote or no longer claim to be my stance at all, as of like a month ago. That means you have no reason to still be writing.
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Dec 21, 2013 07:49
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4p39ciSHKwo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded%26v%3D4p39ciSHKwo pacific rim theme as played by tesla coils.
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Dec 21, 2013 14:46
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Line-by-line quotation is also bad writing. Not being able to keep track of your own claims is also bad posting.
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Dec 21, 2013 17:21
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Here's my claim: The experience of Cherno's pilots is continually de-emphasized for some reason. When Cherno is hit with acid, the filmmakers (the director, editor, etc.) cut inside from the exterior shot, and the woman pilot says "Cherno Alpha has been hit with some type of acid!" In this interior shot - not the exterior shot - you don't see the acid actually melt away their windshield. The camera only pans up briefly to show some drips from somewhere vaguely above and in front of the pilots. There's otherwise no indication of how the exterior damage relates to the pilots in the interior shot. You don't see the wind and water suddenly affecting them, (in the interior shot, when Cherno is hit with acid). You don't see a hole where the wall used to be, (in the interior shot, when Cherno is hit with acid). Besides the small drips, the pilots and the acid-damage do not appear in the same shot. The filmmakers could have used special effects to 'melt' a large chunk of the interior set, but did not. Instead - besides the small drips - the pilots and the acid damage do not appear in the same shot. This is a problem with most of the film's fight scenes: you rarely or never see the pilots and the action in the same shot. When Cherno's arm is bitten through and explodes, what are the pilots feeling? You only see an exterior shot of the arm being bit. No animated reaction from the robot, and no cutaway to the pilot's arm being twisted or something. At some point in the fight, the entire front of the cockpit is torn off, but this occurs in one of the exterior shots. We do not see the pilots' reaction to that specific event (which seems like a fairly big deal, considering that previously established disconnect between inside and outside - totally different lighting, etc.). The puncturing of the cockpit either happens offscreen or is shot from extremely far away. Even when we watch the pilot characters drown, the most effective part of the scene, the shot of Leatherback's palm fully eclipsing the field of vision lasts under four seconds. Even the drowning is rapidly edited. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 18:25
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Thank you for restating that you would have personally preferred a three hour movie with a slightly different handling of action sequences and reconfirming that much of your view is based on bizarre assumptions not actually established in the movie (eg: why would the pilot's arm be twisted and broken when the same happened to Cherno? This literally never happened with any other damaged Jaegar but who cares about that right), I guess.
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Dec 21, 2013 18:42
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The acid doesn't hit Cherno's cockpit so there wouldn't be a hole in the cockpit to allow a sudden rush of wind and water. There's a lot of sparks, the cockpit is leaking from the roof and lots of alarms and warning lights are going off which conveyed the damage pretty clearly for me. Also, the pilots don't actually drown to death. Leatherback crushes the cockpit while it is underwater. You see an explosion under the kaiju's hand right after the brief scene of Cherno's pilots struggling underwater.
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Dec 21, 2013 18:56
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Tezcatlipoca posted:The acid doesn't hit Cherno's cockpit so there wouldn't be a hole in the cockpit to allow a sudden rush of wind and water. He actually lays this exact scenario out on his own argument and is then confused by the lack of wind/water. It's pretty strange.
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Dec 21, 2013 19:01
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It I remember right, Cherno's entire top hat reactor is a false head, and the cockpit is closer to his chest. The acid spray was shown splashing over the reactor, not the cockpit.
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Dec 21, 2013 19:12
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Habibi posted:Thank you for restating that you would have personally preferred a three hour movie with a slightly different handling of action sequences and reconfirming that much of your view is based on bizarre assumptions not actually established in the movie (eg: why would the pilot's arm be twisted and broken when the same happened to Cherno? This literally never happened with any other damaged Jaegar but who cares about that right), I guess. What SMG is saying is that the film would have been more effective by emphasizing the link between the pilots and the robots. Here's an example: In the first episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shinji has finally gotten into the giant Evangelion robot, Unit-01, and is facing down a monster, Sachiel. He's completely inept at piloting it, however, and Unit-01's left arm is quickly grabbed.  Sachiel flexes its muscles and begins to pull on Unit-01, trying to rip it apart, with a firm grip on both arms. We then cut away to the cockpit, where Shinji is grabbing onto his arm, which is in obvious pain, the veins bulging as Sachiel continues pulling. There's a voiceover here from Misato at Control telling him that his arm "isn't really being pulled," but, even without her exposition, it's fairly obvious to the audience what is happening.  Finally, Sachiel's pull is simply too much for Unit-01's structure, and its left arm snaps and crumples with a sickening sound and a spray of blood. There's some babble from Control in the background layered behind this image:  This sequence is effective because it repeatedly emphasizes the effect that the battle outside has on the people inside the vehicle. We don't really care about the Evangelion except as an extension of the pilot, Shinji. Shinji's experience inside the Evangelion is repeatedly emphasized through his connection with the events that are occurring outside. Imagine if this sequence was instead shot with images of the Evangelion being beaten up by Sachiel, cutting back to Control (where they exposit things like, "The left arm is damaged!" or whatever). The experience of Shinji thus becomes de-emphasized, because we're only really seeing the experience of the Evangelion, and not what he is feeling as he pilots it. What I think SMG is getting at is that it feels more like the pilots are remote drone operators piloting the robots rather than as "bodily" elements of the robot itself. In modern culture, we don't really think of drone pilots as "warriors" or "soldiers," but we certainly think of aircraft pilots as being such, despite them fulfilling functionally similar roles. It's not just what they do that matters, but also the physical space which they occupy. You need to emphasize this in a film like this one in order to properly express the stakes to the audience. The stakes in Evangelion are completely unambiguous from the second we see Shinji grasping at his arm. Vermain fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 19:14
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Vermain posted:What SMG is saying is What he is saying is entirely subjective mental wankery regarding the handling of the robot/pilot interface. There are different ways to do things. Perhaps in this universe, the creators of the robots found it prudent to implement an interface that did not completely translate robot damage into physical pain or injury. People will have their own wanky opinions about it. And that's fine. The difference is that he is trying to ground his wankery in aspects of the movie that he ignored, overlooked, or misinterpreted. And that's dumb. Habibi fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 20:00
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Tezcatlipoca posted:The acid doesn't hit Cherno's cockpit so there wouldn't be a hole in the cockpit to allow a sudden rush of wind and water. There's a lot of sparks, the cockpit is leaking from the roof and lots of alarms and warning lights are going off which conveyed the damage pretty clearly for me. "But Cherno Alpha only got acid on his hat." The acid should have hit the cockpit's interior, threatening the pilots, because that would be more visceral. "But Cherno Alpha only got acid on his hat???" and repeat ad nauseum. I understand that there are sparks and alarms, but those are generic signifiers from Star Trek, used as a serviceable cost-saving measure. They don't convey that, say, Cherno is losing power because its reactor is damaged. Why not show the pilots moving more sluggishly, fighting unresponsive controls, etc? You could then write that "in this universe, having your reactor damaged has no effect on the power. You don't know how a jaeger works! It could have dozens of backup generators!" e.g.: Habibi posted:Perhaps in this universe, the creators of the robots found it prudent to implement an interface that did not completely translate robot damage into physical pain or injury. This is inaccurate, because I do know how the jaeger works: it's fiction. It only exists insofar as it appears onscreen. There is no objective robot for me to be scientifically inaccurate about. ("Subjective mental wankery regarding the handling of the robot/pilot interface" <- huh?) However, there are, objectively, different filmmaking techniques. There's a fairly standardized vocabulary. Extreme wide shots are different from closeups, and so-forth. It's not a 'universal rule', but seeing the character's expression typically helps to create empathy for that character. This is why I can say with relative certainty that "the experience of Cherno's pilots is continually de-emphasized for some reason." Their faces are covered, they aren't shown closer than a medium shot, they are given only brief POV-alligned shots, they (can) barely move, their battle is portrayed mostly through wide exterior shots of the building they're in, damage to the interior is conveyed mostly through changes in the lighting (plus sparks and some water effects), and their dialogue is purely functional exposition. These are all things that de-emphasize the experiences of the characters. You can easily imagine alternatives: their faces are uncovered, closeups are frequent, we can get a good look of the view their POV, they could move around in the massive set, exterior shots could be employed less frequently (or allowed to go on much longer, allowing the robot itself to breathe as its own character), damage to the interior could be any cool visual from walls being missing to the characters being maimed and scarred, and they they could say something neat or interesting before they die.
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Dec 21, 2013 20:57
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The acid should have hit the cockpit's interior, threatening the pilots, because that would be more visceral.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:00
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Habibi posted:Don't you guys get it?? It should have been a different movie that appealed more to my own preferences! Come on! What's so hard here?? You could boil down literally any film criticism to "It should have been a different movie that appealed more to my own preferences", that doesn't mean you can just handwave it away.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:02
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computer parts posted:You could boil down literally any film criticism to "It should have been a different movie that appealed more to my own preferences", that doesn't mean you can just handwave it away. Yup, and as I noted already, it's not the wankery itself that I'm handwaving away.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:14
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What is your opinion on the film's editing and cinematography, then?
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Dec 21, 2013 22:10
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Anywho:Vermain posted:
That's exactly it. In fairness to Del Toro, I think that the total disconnect between the cockpit and outside world is deliberate. The pilots occupy different universes until the wall finally breaks open in that 4-second shot. The puncturing of their little sealed cocoon equals trauma and death. It goes back to the scene where Mako first pilots the robot, and hero Guy announces "this isn't a dream! This is reality!" or whatever. The film immediately cuts to an extremely wide tableau of the CG combatants posing. This weirdly implies that the extreme wide exterior shots are the POV shots - that the pilots 'normally' perceive themselves in a disconnected way, as spectators of their own battle. They only feel embodied, connected to the machine, when something is drastically wrong. Of course, this has implications. The goal of the heroes is to cut themselves off from the physical world and enter the 'virtual reality' of kaiju combat, to experience battle as an out-of-body experience. The film presents this as entirely positive - so it's not 'just' an aesthetic problem, but one that cuts right into the philosophical heart of the film.
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Dec 22, 2013 00:06
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Habibi posted:(eg: why would the pilot's arm be twisted and broken when the same happened to Cherno? This literally never happened with any other damaged Jaegar but who cares about that right) When Knifehead tears Gipsy Danger's left arm off, Raleigh (the left-side pilot) screams in agony and clutches his left arm. When he gets back in the cockpit with Mako, he tells her he'd prefer the right side because of his injured arm.
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Dec 22, 2013 00:24
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Carbolic posted:When Knifehead tears Gipsy Danger's left arm off, Raleigh (the left-side pilot) screams in agony and clutches his left arm. Perhaps in this universe, characters only 'feel things' under extremely rare circumstances. You don't know how a Jaeger works. Ergo, the film is well-made.
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Dec 22, 2013 00:37
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Carbolic posted:When Knifehead tears Gipsy Danger's left arm off, Raleigh (the left-side pilot) screams in agony and clutches his left arm. Sure, but you don't know why or how or what happened. Judging by what is seen, it appears his arm is injured by an electrical pulse / burn from the suit or pilot mechanism (perhaps an overload or short in the system?), not by direct pain stimulus as a result of the Jaegar's arm being damaged. Reason I say that is because, for example, you don't see similar responses when Knifehead impales Gipsy, when he tears half of Gipsy's head off, when her leg is mangled and left arm torn off in the final battle, etc... I haven't read the novelization, I don't know if the difference is explained or if it was simple visual expediency for that one scene. But it sure as hell isn't something to then base overarching assumptions about what should happen to Cherno's pilots on.
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Dec 22, 2013 00:53
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:What is your opinion on the film's editing and cinematography, then? It didn't make me feel the need to dissect it at length on the internet, so I guess it was alright. Personally, I am pretty happy overall with the balance of robot-to-pilot shots. I think trying to maintain a constant in-conn-room reflection of the robots actions and reactions would have bogged an already long movie down to a snail's pace and diluted an already thin story even further. I think the movie had plenty of flaws, I just don't think the way the interaction was handled was one of them (even if I would have liked to see more of how it all worked).
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Dec 22, 2013 01:05
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Habibi posted:It didn't make me feel the need to dissect it at length on the internet, so I guess it was alright. Personally, I am pretty happy overall with the balance of robot-to-pilot shots. I think trying to maintain a constant in-conn-room reflection of the robots actions and reactions would have bogged an already long movie down to a snail's pace and diluted an already thin story even further. Then why are all your rebuttals to editing and cinematography talk solely concerned with in-universe made up science and not with talk of cinematography/editing. You understand the difference, right?
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Dec 22, 2013 01:37
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Joe_Richter posted:Then why are all your rebuttals to editing and cinematography talk solely concerned with in-universe made up science and not with talk of cinematography/editing. Because, once again, the only things I'm really responding to in SMGs case are editing/cinematography comments that presume something from what we are shown onscreen.
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Dec 22, 2013 01:46
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