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SMG wanted something more connected, a tighter bond shown between the pilots and their robots. I don't think that's a bad thing to complain about. More connection between the two gives the fights a little more gravity. It gives the Jaegers more character by tying them in closer to who pilots them. Part of me wonders if that's what GDT wanted. Occasionally those moments happen. At the end when Gypsy is staring down the aliens before detonation it feels like the movie wants us to see it as Gypsy the character staring it down, not as a robot just floating there. I initially and still partially agree with that. I would have loved the robots getting more character, so that when they get hit the impact means more. But I've thought about it, and maybe that was never the intention. The movie is essentially a series of space battles. The robots are treated in much the same manner as star trek treats the enterprise. The Jaegers are not extensions of the characters, the Jaegers are battleships. When the enterprise gets hit, the bridge shakes and sparks might fly and everyone falls over, but rarely do the characters fell that impacted personally. Then someone will go " damage report" and we'll hear that a bunch of people died, or that the engine is hosed, etc. But it doesn't really hurt the characters on the bridge. The enterprise is not a character. Its treated with fondness and love and hate, but the ship itself is just a big hunk of metal. Its what the ship represents and the people onboard that matter. The jaegers are enterprises. In a way the kaiju are as well, revealed as clones and puppets of an alien race. The kaiju are battleships, drones. This kind of hurts them as characters and lessens the impact of them as monsters in the vein of a mothra or whoever. The beasts look cool but never really feel different from each other in any real way. When you look at the movie like this, treat the battles as two capital ships with two captains trying to outsmart each other, it makes it not a kaiju flick but more a sci fi war movie. And a drat fun one at that. The pilots being literally connected to the ship actually does make things more visceral. Its like captain kirk strapping into his chair and controlling the ship himself. So while a gypsy that isn't a hunk of metal would be cool, I'm fine with how GDT used the robots and pilots. It doesn't feel like a kaiju movie at all anymore though. More like a naval warfare sci fi flick Febreeze fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 02:46
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Febreeze posted:SMG wanted something more connected, a tighter bond shown between the pilots and their robots. quote:The Jaegers are not extensions of the characters, the Jaegers are battleships.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:18
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Habibi posted:Yeah and that's cool. Why do you think not emphasizing the connection between pilot and Jaeger makes for a better movie?
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Dec 22, 2013 04:51
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Reading is fun and cool.
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Dec 22, 2013 05:22
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I guess I found Gipsy to have a ton of character. But the character only exists through the combination of the two pilots. They meld together and create Gipsy Danger. One badass mother fucker. As for the whole acid thing...I thought the acid melted right through the hull to the cockpit. But there not being wind or anything didn't bother me, because well....it wasn't important. The hull was breached, and that caused them to kinda drown, until they were crushed to death. The point of the scene is Cherno isn't the best compared to these new Kaiju.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:35
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CelticPredator posted:I guess I found Gipsy to have a ton of character. But the character only exists through the combination of the two pilots. They meld together and create Gipsy Danger. One badass mother fucker. What are some character traits that Gipsy displays? quote:As for the whole acid thing...I thought the acid melted right through the hull to the cockpit. But there not being wind or anything didn't bother me, because well....it wasn't important. The hull was breached, and that caused them to kinda drown, until they were crushed to death. The point of the scene is Cherno isn't the best compared to these new Kaiju. This is all accurate. But, looking at it from a storytelling perspective, it gets weird. Why have drowning imagery when the pilots die by being crushed/exploding? Why have the acid imagery when the real damage is caused by smashing? The acid imagery and the drowning imagery are totally redundant on the level of sheer plotting. They don't need to be in the film for the plot to 'make sense.' So, they're only in the film to provide expressive metaphorical flourishes. 'Cherno Alpha is overpowered and explodes' is something that can be conveyed in a single shot. So again, the dozens of different 'extra' shots are also there to expand on that, providing little flourishes, telling a story: "Being punched by a kaiju is like drowning." But then, it's not as exactly as simple as that - the smashing is shot from extreme wide angle, and basically looks like a monkey jumping on top of a car, or King Kong climbing the empire state. It's violence against a ship, or building. It's all CGI, particle effects, etc. The drowning part, on the other hand, is shot relatively close. The camera goes underwater with the pilots, then shows their POV of a massive hand reaching down to them. Cut back to the wide exterior shot, and everything that was just shown disappears in a sad little poof. The effect is that the pilots are pulled out of the 'real world' - the CGI VR landscape of towering structures - and forced underwater, into the domain of the monsters. They were floating above the action, forgetting their bodies in a safe bubble - but now forced to feel the cold metal of their restraints, and the water around them. They lose a distance from the action - and when the finally see the enemy with their biological eyes, it's at the moment of death. "Being punched by a kaiju knocks you out of VR, makes you aware of your body again, makes you see in first-person. The physical world rushes in, overwhelming you, drowning you." The cut back to the exterior shot confirms this. In the VR, nothing really dramatic has happened. It was just a little poof of fire. An embodied human is nothing more than an ant. The overall narrative is of the characters trying not to feel, losing their identities - Mako and Hero Guy become Gipsy Danger, who has no real personality outside its 'football player' iconography. Hero Guy tells her this, the VR, is reality. The film is against bodily existence.
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Dec 22, 2013 09:28
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SuperMechagodzilla posted: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)? I've been putting off my answer to this because it also ties into other points I want to elaborate in detail, but I think I can answer it directly in relation to your post above. The jaegers are the suits of armor, "horses," and weapons which set the medieval knight/samurai on a physical and spiritual plane above mortal combatants. Their nationalism is basically heraldry: elaborate symbolism which embodies the feudal identity (the heritage and loyalties) of the knight on the battlefield. The movie prioritizes this above making the jaegers into actual characters, although in the case of Chernov Alpha and especially Crimson Typhoon the pilots themselves are little more than nationalistic ciphers as well. With regards to the drift, I think your point about Raleigh telling Mako that the CG world is 'real' misses something about the drift itself. The pilots experience three, rather than two, levels of reality: the mundane world of human flesh, the pure mental/spiritual world of the drift, and the transcendent or superhuman world of the jaegers/kaiju. The jaegers elevate their pilots physically and spiritually to the 'higher' plane of reality in which the kaiju exist. Defeat means being pulled fully into the ego by failing spiritually in the drift or back into the mundane by failing in combat against the kaiju. It is the moment of once again being reduced to a mortal, stripped of the shell which allows them to experience reality on the kaiju's level, which precedes death for the pilots. But you are correct that among these, the CG world of the kaiju is the "real world" of the movie. If anything, I'd say the movie's failing is that it is a reality of symbols rather than one of gods.
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Dec 22, 2013 20:26
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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?? The guy you're complaining about is making interesting comments on how the director could created a stronger emotional connection between the pilots and the audience. You're being a generic fanboy poster who is super aggressive and pedantic and seemingly fails to understand the most basic concepts of film criticism. Its honestly painful to read.
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Dec 22, 2013 22:22
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This is all accurate. But, looking at it from a storytelling perspective, it gets weird. Why have drowning imagery when the pilots die by being crushed/exploding? Because pushing someone underwater and crushing their skull while they are struggling is a lot more brutal than pushing someone underwater and simply holding them there until they drown. Maybe you didn't get the idea, but the entire Leatherback vs. Cherno scene was supposed to be about brutality. Did you miss the part where Leatherback slams on Cherno's head and then rips huge chunks out while Otachi is biting its arm off? That is what happens when a weakened Mark I jaeger is being gangbanged by two Cat 4 kaijus. It's not about "if the pilots were drowning why did Leatherback need to crush them." It's about conveying that Cherno had literally zero chance and was ripped apart and murdered in the most brutal way possible. quote:Why have the acid imagery when the real damage is caused by smashing? The acid was absolutely necessary for the plot to make sense. Cherno could not have been overwhelmed and killed in the manner shown if it was not weakened by acid first.
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Dec 22, 2013 23:10
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Magnus Condomus posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4p39ciSHKwo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded%26v%3D4p39ciSHKwo Normally I find Tesla coil music really grating but for some reason this was awesome. Probably helps that the PR soundtrack is so loving great.
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Dec 23, 2013 04:26
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enraged_camel posted:Because pushing someone underwater and crushing their skull while they are struggling is a lot more brutal than pushing someone underwater and simply holding them there until they drown. Even if Cherno were canonically invulnerable, the filmmakers could easily say that the monsters are more invulnerable times infinity and have anti-invulnerability claws. This is because the whole thing is make-believe. You don't 'need' an explanation for how a fantasy monster can kill a robot. The explanation given (the melting of Cherno's reactor-hat implicitly weakening him) is pure metaphor. So is the cutting between the various settings, viewpoints and levels of reality. Anyways, I know the 'supposed-to-bes' very well. The scene is supposed to be brutal, so, why does it pale in comparison to the violence in other films? For example, there's a scene in Elysium where a dude in a robot exoskeleton has his power cut. He crumples to the ground and can barely move. When a similar thing happens to Cherno, the next scene/shot shows him with Otachi in a headlock, delivering a 'piston punch'. It looks like a struggle, but Cherno does not look significantly crippled. I mean, you can compare it the common scene in superhero films where the hero loses his powers and gets the poo poo beat out of them. Hancock is an especially good example of the kind of techniques you can deploy to make the violence more brutal, even though it's much smaller in scale. In fact, the intimacy of the violence in Hancock is what makes it brutal, and it's an intimacy that's lacking for reasons gone over already.
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Dec 23, 2013 07:32
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Anyways, I know the 'supposed-to-bes' very well. The scene is supposed to be brutal, so, why does it pale in comparison to the violence in other films? I think it's silly to compare it to other movies, since context matters. In a movie that features giant robots, the brutality was as effective as it could be. The way the pilots go from feeling overly confident and secure (due to the massive armor plating around them) to first surprised ("we're disabled!") and then panicked ("water's reaching the reactor!") and finally screaming in fear (drowning) was very, very well done. And of course, what made it stand out was that they weren't even given the chance to drown, as they were crushed.
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Dec 23, 2013 10:36
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Even if Cherno were canonically invulnerable, the filmmakers could easily say that the monsters are more invulnerable times infinity and have anti-invulnerability claws. This is because the whole thing is make-believe. Most of the time when people don't like a movie they say they didn't care for it and move on. It's really cool that you've made hundreds of posts explaining why the giant robot movie isn't good in order to justify your Media Studies degree from the University of Phoenix.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:33
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James Hardon posted:Most of the time when people don't like a movie they say they didn't care for it and move on. It's really cool that you've made hundreds of posts explaining why the giant robot movie isn't good in order to justify your Media Studies degree from the University of Phoenix. It's Cinema Discusso, it's the forums MO. Also who cares if he makes a lot of posts about it, it's discussion. You don't have to agree with him, but telling him he talks too much in a thread about a movie already on Blu-ray is pointless. It's a fun but flawed movie and if people want to talk about it let them.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:40
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James Hardon posted:Most of the time when people don't like a movie they say they didn't care for it and move on. It's really cool that you've made hundreds of posts explaining why the giant robot movie isn't good in order to justify your Media Studies degree from the University of Phoenix. Thing is, he makes interesting points. And there's no way in hell SMG isn't doing this for fun. Also, see above.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:41
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enraged_camel posted:I think it's silly to compare it to other movies, since context matters. In a movie that features giant robots, the brutality was as effective as it could be. The way the pilots go from feeling overly confident and secure (due to the massive armor plating around them) to first surprised ("we're disabled!") and then panicked ("water's reaching the reactor!") and finally screaming in fear (drowning) was very, very well done. And of course, what made it stand out was that they weren't even given the chance to drown, as they were crushed. That's more a description of the content than the form. The violence in the exterior shots is better described as 'awesome' and 'spectacular'. Leatherback leaps out of the water and flings chunks of the robot into the air. Water sprays everywhere, and there are little fireball explosions throughout. The cutting to the interiors underline that that the pilots are basically spectators. They sit there, immobile, and watch this stuff, offering commentary. The shot with the sparks is a Star Trek bridge shot, and what is that if not people watching a giant television? Brutal violence is what happens to Leatherback: Gipsy just mechanically fires its cannon into the dead/debilitated monster - not stopping even as its guts bubble up, not stopping until the clip runs out. The piston-like repetition of the act is what makes it brutal. The goal isn't just to win but to desecrate, to grind the thing into dust. It's very literally a crippled animal being fed into a machine. This is the sort of violence employed by Michael Myers in the Halloween remake, and Rorschach in Watchmen. Just a mechanical stabbing motion. Leatherback's attack on Cherno is a different sort of excessive. Instead of repeating a single act beyond the point of necessity, Leatherback goes through a variety of stategies. He tears parts off, crushes other parts, tries to push them underwater... It's the sensory overload. No single action is very excessive; it's the overwhelming number of things happening at once.
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Dec 23, 2013 23:29
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:What are some character traits that Gipsy displays? Being really, really cool. Like Rocky, the old robot fighter. Which is perfectly serviceable to a goofy fun film.
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Dec 23, 2013 23:33
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CelticPredator posted:Being really, really cool. What are some really cool character traits that Gipsy displays?
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Dec 23, 2013 23:52
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It's visual design, for one. It's a striking, classic image of a mech-robot warrior. Not a busy design, but a very visually pleasing design. Everything else comes from the two characters. But watching the evolution of Mako and Becket through the movement of Gipsy made that robot character work. It went from a cocky brawler, to a more elegant fighter. Until it finally made it's way to a full blown heroic character. It's an interesting way to have character development for a lifeless piece of machinery. But it works. For those who are willing to let it, of course.
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Dec 24, 2013 00:00
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quote:And there's no way in hell SMG isn't doing this for fun. I feel like his gimmick is more interesting when he's trying to explain why lovely movies are really amazing, like Skyline and Battle: Los Angeles though, or that time he did it without actually watching the movie. For most of this thread he was clutching at straws. quote:Leatherback's attack on Cherno is a different sort of excessive. Instead of repeating a single act beyond the point of necessity, Leatherback goes through a variety of stategies. He tears parts off, crushes other parts, tries to push them underwater... It's the sensory overload. No single action is very excessive; it's the overwhelming number of things happening at once. I didn't even realize that the cockpit is crushed and destroyed instead of the pilots being left to drown the first time I saw the film.
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Dec 24, 2013 07:10
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It's quick so you can probably miss it if you blink, but in the last second of the "pilots drowning" shot you see a big scaly palm impact the glass, then you see a shot from above Leatherback as he twists his arm and an explosion goes off under his hand. It's fairly direct but it's fast enough that I can't blame someone for missing it like, say, the big, awful twist at the end of Old Boy that involves a photo album.
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Dec 25, 2013 05:30
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In the spirit of Christmas, here's the Pacific Rim theme as played by two dueling Tesla coils and a robot with a plasma-ball brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p39ciSHKwo 
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Dec 25, 2013 19:41
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I rewatched this today as one of my friends got the Blu-Ray for Christmas. It's still a hell of a lot of fun, but I'm really glad I saw it in IMAX as the massive sense of scale the film has doesn't hold up nearly as well on a regular TV.
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Dec 26, 2013 00:38
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:You don't know how a Jaeger works. Ergo, the film is well-made. Habibi posted:Sure, but you don't know why or how or what happened. SuperMechagodzilla posted:Perhaps in this universe, characters only 'feel things' under extremely rare circumstances. Habibi posted: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. Beautiful.
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Dec 26, 2013 04:38
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Sir Kodiak posted:Beautiful. Pretty much this thread in a nutshell. Pacific Rim - My interpretation is valid because it has more words than yours.
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Dec 26, 2013 06:14
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What can we take from the fact the battles take place mostly in the water and what this says about global warming?
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Dec 26, 2013 16:05
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WastedJoker posted:What can we take from the fact the battles take place mostly in the water and what this says about global warming? There's a really obvious global warming theme in the movie, but it's so obvious I'm not sure how to find anything interesting to say about it. 'The kaiju are explicitly described as storms and the Jaegers are great because they allow you to punch a hurricane with the force of international cooperation' is, well...pretty much straight from Pacific Rim's dialogue.
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Dec 26, 2013 18:26
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So does anyone know if they were actually singing something in Russian during the Shatterdome theme or was it some choral mishmash rigged to sound like Russian?
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Jan 13, 2014 00:39
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I just recently got this Blu-Ray and I'm excited to watch it again--especially if the extras are worth a drat. As a side note: if you find yourself getting upset at SMG, look inward for a second and ask yourself why someone making interesting observations about a movie is so upsetting to you. People can think whatever they want about a thing without it having any effect on your like of the thing.
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Jan 13, 2014 02:43
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This is not remotely exclusive or even directed at SMG, whose posts in this thread I haven't been following too closely, but I do believe it's a general rule of life that people who claim to be smart shouldn't say really dumb things instead.
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Jan 13, 2014 03:09
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The counterpoint there is that SMG never makes the direct claim to be smart, don't project.
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Jan 13, 2014 13:11
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Let's listen to this rockin' remix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhE42Noj1Lw
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Jan 13, 2014 15:42
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Kaiju Cage Match posted:Let's listen to this rockin' remix I'll never get tired of gross looking metalheads doing bizarre 'remixes' of the Pacific Rim theme which already, y'know, sounds like that.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:50
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Wade Wilson posted:The counterpoint there is that SMG never makes the direct claim to be smart, don't project. Yeah, I've never read him make this claim. I could have missed it though. He also seems to be the most amazing troll at times. I love it. vvvvv See?! I just don't know! Tommy 2.0 fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 20:14
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People always worry whether I 'actually believe' what I write, instead whether it's true of not. Truth should be your main concern. Example: the characters in the film believe themselves to be the saviors of humanity, but are - in truth - just fascists.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:35
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Never stop SMG.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:43
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I loved the hell out of this movie but I think I'd love it even more if there was an actual fascist undercurrent to it. Unfortunately all we have is SMG pushing the idea with his boring trolling.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:55
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What does an actual fascist undercurrent look like?
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Jan 13, 2014 22:56
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Yaws posted:I loved the hell out of this movie but I think I'd love it even more if there was an actual fascist undercurrent to it. Unfortunately all we have is SMG pushing the idea with his boring trolling. I think PR's suspicion of civilian authority (as much of a dramatic stock device as it might be) and the fact that it takes place in a fascist's wet dream world where the enemy actually is alien and uncompromisingly, unreachably hostile provides that undercurrent. These are all choices that also work towards the movie's goals of being fun and simple, but I admit it's a little surprising coming from a director who's always been so empathetic towards the monsters.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:01
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General Battuta posted:I think PR's suspicion of civilian authority (as much of a dramatic stock device as it might be) and the fact that it takes place in a fascist's wet dream world where the enemy actually is alien and uncompromisingly, unreachably hostile provides that undercurrent. These are all choices that also work towards the movie's goals of being fun and simple, but I admit it's a little surprising coming from a director who's always been so empathetic towards the monsters. The inefficiency of civilian authority could also be interpreted as leftist, to be honest - it's almost identical to current leftist critique of liberal capitalist establishment, especially in Europe. To me it read as anti-liberalist, but same critique, almost word for word, is also often used by european right-wingers.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:18
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