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The more I think about, the more funny it is that my question "where is Germany in this conflict?" Got answered by several "Who cares? Germany's not on the pacific rim! Therefore you are an idiot for asking!" Even though there's a Gottlieb and if I'm reading the wikia correctly his dad canonically helped build the jaegers and get the entire program off the ground. So people were too busy presuming I had never seen a map of the pacific rim and jumping to defend the non-absence of Germany to point out the answer to my actual question. Just a little something to think about.Clipperton posted:Doesn't sound like he's all that ashamed of it. There's also this: Fair enough. I stand corrected. Del Toro is a cool dude and I appreciate his clearly authentic childishness far more than I appreciate false-sounding 'you're not SUPPOSED to think about it' childishness. There's a difference between embracing childhood dreams in a childish way and trying to justify them in an 'adult' (massive scarequotes) way. EDIT: penismightier posted:Like everything else you've posted, it's nothing worth thinking about. Thank you for taking the time to think about my posts 
Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 20:48
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Milky Moor posted:Sounds just like Evangelion to me. Not quite. Evangelion is about a bunch of children desperately trying to function as adults and failing, Pacific Rim (in that analysis) is a bunch of adults who are only comfortable acting as children. Which would make Shinji, hilariously, the less passive of the two.
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Feb 3, 2014 21:10
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Hbomberguy posted:Just a little something to think about. Like everything else you've posted, it's nothing worth thinking about.
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Feb 3, 2014 21:37
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Pretty sure both Hermann and Newt were supposed to be German before they cast a Brit and an American... v  v
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Feb 3, 2014 21:56
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DressCodeBlue posted:Pretty sure both Hermann and Newt were supposed to be German before they cast a Brit and an American... v It's okay, white guys all look the same.
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Feb 3, 2014 21:57
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DressCodeBlue posted:Pretty sure both Hermann and Newt were supposed to be German It gets fun when you remember that they're involved in vivisection experiments.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:21
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Hbomberguy posted:I agree, 'for all we know.' The film highlights Germany by naming the central object of the film in German and then says nothing else about it whatsoever. Their absence is palpable. You can justify it by saying Germany's not on the pacific rim, but neither is the UK and Stacker is, like, the head of the entire PPDC. I think I largely agree with you except for the labeling. If the same post-war movie would be the same if the victors were Soviet, American, or German, then by definition the ideology would not be exclusive to fascism. If I'm understanding SMG correctly he's right that the ideology is roughly the same as that of Anakin in the Star Wars prequels. The current government is inept, inefficient, and ultimately incapable of dealing with the outside threat. So a strong leader is needed. Someone who can make decisions and get things done. Yes, that leader could be Hitler. But it also could be Caesar, Stalin, Alexander, Mao or Hirohito, none of whom are Fascists. Simplex fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 22:49
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I like what you're saying, Hbomberguy, but it was perhaps a mistake to emphasize Anglo-American Raleigh Beckett as the character through whom Germany is symbolically redeemed when Teutonic (notwithstanding the accent) Hermann Gottlieb is right there.
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Feb 3, 2014 23:24
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Simplex posted:I think I largely agree with you except for the labeling. If the same post-war movie would be the same if the victors were Soviet, American, or German, then by definition the ideology would not be exclusive to fascism. Fascism is traditionally authoritarian and nationalistic - my point is that this worldview is present even in the films about the good guys and winners who supposedly rebelled against it. The ideology is not exclusive to fascism per se, but in honesty that's what makes it scarier. The Nazi party in my country frequently tries to invoke national pride with footage of Britain's efforts in the second world war against the Nazis. Nationalism/authoritarianism first, actual minutia of Nazi ethics second. It's the ideology that's problematic, not the ethics of whoever's being supported by it. Bongo Bill posted:I like what you're saying, Hbomberguy, but it was perhaps a mistake to emphasize Anglo-American Raleigh Beckett as the character through whom Germany is symbolically redeemed when Teutonic (notwithstanding the accent) Hermann Gottlieb is right there. Yeah my mistake. I completely forgot about Gottlieb. But then again so did everybody else, rushing to say "Germany isn't there because facile reason X" when Germany was there. EDIT: I must have missed that post. In any case I wasn't referring to that particular post. RBA Starblade did a far better job of responding to what I was saying than, for example, all of the posts you made on the subject Tez. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 23:32
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Hbomberguy posted:Yeah my mistake. I completely forgot about Gottlieb. But then again so did everybody else, rushing to say "Germany isn't there because facile reason X" when Germany was there. Nope RBA Starblade posted:How is "annihilation of humanity" and "global destabilization" not also Germany's problem? Also, and I looked, apparently Germans helped design and build the first Jaegers.
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Feb 3, 2014 23:50
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I just watched this again today and realized that the boat that is saved in the beginning absolutely represents a love of the TV show Gilligan's Island. Discuss.
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Feb 4, 2014 06:57
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OldPueblo posted:I just watched this again today and realized that the boat that is saved in the beginning absolutely represents a love of the TV show Gilligan's Island. Discuss. Write multiple sentences while trying not to sound idiotic, and I'll allow you be my rival.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:25
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OldPueblo posted:I just watched this again today and realized that the boat that is saved in the beginning absolutely represents a love of the TV show Gilligan's Island. Discuss. Gilligan's Island is perhaps one of the ultimate pop-culture explorations of inevitable fate. Most of the episodes of Gilligans Island involve a lead on a way to get off the island. This are invariably failures. Even in the tv movie/finale, where they do get off the island, they end up hating the way that the world has changed in their absence and, in the end, inadvertently end up back on the island. Everyone who watches Gilligan's Island realized fairly quickly that the character's are never going to escape. While they may endure indefinite trials and tribulations, their fate is always known. The way that this ties into Pacific Rim is simple: attempting to save the boat was an inevitability. Raliegh and his brother set out to save it against orders, but in the end, Stacker Pentacost ordered them to save it anyway. This is because the "Heroes" of Pacific Rim are incapable of anything except unity and defiance. All of the characters in Pacific Rim are defined by the attachments. Just like the characters of Gilligan's Island, they may do many things, but in the end they will only ever be one thing: In the case of Gilligan's Island this is hilariously at odds and incompetent, but in the case of Pacific Rim, it is United and Defiant.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:55
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Gilligan's Island is purgatory. I don't mean the island, but the program - when you die, you will have to watch and understand one episode that symbolizes every sin you committed in life. There are innumerable seasons, far more than ever crept into the nightmares of the living, each exquisitely banal. And in each episode, the lapse of virtue that prevents the castaways' escape will be the same as the one that required you to watch. There will be reruns, of course, and the marathon will only end when you have repented to the uttermost. Horrifying visions of the afterlife ITT. I think the connection to this film, or any other you'd care to name, is obvious.
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Feb 4, 2014 09:27
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OldPueblo posted:I just watched this again today and realized that the boat that is saved in the beginning absolutely represents a love of the TV show Gilligan's Island. Discuss. The boat was built in Germany. By fascists.
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Feb 4, 2014 09:43
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Bongo Bill posted:Gilligan's Island is purgatory. I don't mean the island, but the program - when you die, you will have to watch and understand one episode that symbolizes every sin you committed in life. There are innumerable seasons, far more than ever crept into the nightmares of the living, each exquisitely banal. And in each episode, the lapse of virtue that prevents the castaways' escape will be the same as the one that required you to watch. There will be reruns, of course, and the marathon will only end when you have repented to the uttermost. 
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Feb 4, 2014 10:55
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The apocalyptic scenario depicted in Gilligan's Planet is what happens when Pacific Rim goes too far.
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Feb 4, 2014 12:26
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Awesome movie, though I don't know why they didn't just build a chainsaw grate over the breach and any future breaches that open. The thread went about as predicted  .
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Feb 4, 2014 13:37
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spikenigma posted:Awesome movie, though I don't know why they didn't just build a chainsaw grate over the breach and any future breaches that open. Spikenigma, random question because I've only seen your username on one other website and you don't have PMs, but did you ever claim that you could win a fight with an angry gorilla in the middle of the jungle?
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Feb 4, 2014 15:01
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Milky Moor posted:Spikenigma, random question because I've only seen your username on one other website and you don't have PMs, but did you ever claim that you could win a fight with an angry gorilla in the middle of the jungle? At the risk of derailing by asking for particulars of this battle, I'm going to say no. 
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Feb 4, 2014 16:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Write multiple sentences while trying not to sound idiotic, and I'll allow you be my rival. Hey man I didn't mention you at all, did you see similarities to your posting in my post or something? I'll try I guess, I really want to be your rival. Gilligan is clumsy and oafish, like Newt. He shares a love/hate relationship with the Skipper, much like the official Pacific Rim German Representative who's name I don't recall. And in an amazing correlation I'm going to guess that many don't recall/know the Skipper's real name either. He's just called "Skipper". Mary Ann is Mako because both names start with M (obvious), and also they are both the obvious choice for sexing. The Professor is obviously Stacker Pentecost because he's the father figure. The boat itself is Gipsy Danger, who wrecked early on of course but then was rebuilt to get them "off the island" aka defeat the Kaiju. They did this by banding together three huts (Raleigh, Mako, and Ghost/Head Yancy) which were then swept off the island by a huge storm and they were rescued. Check mate, you finish the rest. 
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Feb 4, 2014 20:34
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The Skipper is actually his real name and ethical stance
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Feb 5, 2014 05:57
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OldPueblo posted:Hey man I didn't mention you at all, did you see similarities to your posting in my post or something? I'll try I guess, I really want to be your rival. Gilligan is clumsy and oafish, like Newt. He shares a love/hate relationship with the Skipper, much like the official Pacific Rim German Representative who's name I don't recall. And in an amazing correlation I'm going to guess that many don't recall/know the Skipper's real name either. He's just called "Skipper". Mary Ann is Mako because both names start with M (obvious), and also they are both the obvious choice for sexing. The Professor is obviously Stacker Pentecost because he's the father figure. The boat itself is Gipsy Danger, who wrecked early on of course but then was rebuilt to get them "off the island" aka defeat the Kaiju. They did this by banding together three huts (Raleigh, Mako, and Ghost/Head Yancy) which were then swept off the island by a huge storm and they were rescued. Your theory is clearly genius. The only omission I can see is that the huts clearly represent fascism. Lightanchor posted:The Skipper is actually his real name and ethical stance Does that make him a time lord?
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Feb 5, 2014 14:17
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Pacific Rim's tagline: To Destroy Monsters We Created Monsters CineD's Pacific Rim Thesis: We Are The Good Guys, Shut Up
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Feb 5, 2014 20:36
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The monsters are the good guys except for the monsters.
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Feb 5, 2014 20:38
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Hbomberguy posted:The apocalyptic scenario depicted in Gilligan's Planet is what happens when Pacific Rim goes too far.
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Feb 6, 2014 00:06
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Mustach posted:It's funny you bring this quote up, because earlier in the thread, people were complaining about the scene where the Russian jaeger is crushed and drowned simultaneously, and Jurassic Park has exactly the same situation when the kids' car is getting stomped by the T-rex. There are a lot of shots that feel unnecessary in that scene and a lot that feel like they should have gone on for longer or were underused. It's a little awkward. I think that comes from me watching a lot of mecha stuff and expecting more clear visuals but the scene is still good. Great movie over all, the film's very very good in a lot of ways you take for granted until you see it a second time. Seeing the tiny skin parasites on the kaiju's bodies and the tiny mopeds flying out of the cargo containers as they fought the monster was really fun.
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Feb 6, 2014 04:20
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One of my favorite shots is the one used in like every trailer, with the cargo container brass knuckles(as my dad put it), when Gipsy Danger smashes Leatherback in the face with them, it is the most "rubber suit"-looking effect in the entire movie, and it's fantastic. If you told me they actually used a rubber suit for that one shot, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.
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Feb 6, 2014 11:21
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I would've loved more rubbersuit. I think my favourite shot is the one where the Jaeger's fist stops just short of the newton cradle desk toy and sets it off before pulling out. It's I finished listening to Del Toro's commentary and the entire last hour of it is just touching. The guy and the rest of the crew had a really great time doing it, and he really believed in the idea.
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Feb 6, 2014 12:01
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Even Our Glorious Fascim Interpretation Führer SMG pointed out that it's kind of bizarre for Del Toro, whose entire shtick is loving monsters and hating fascism, to make a movie where monsters are the irredeemably evil other that seemingly "proves" fascism right. That doesn't mean it's not doing those things anyway, but it's a pretty weird context to do so. My take on it after thinking about it a while is slightly different. I feel like what it was aiming for was populism. The day is saved by a heroic welder who was being paid in food stamps as part of a scheme cooked up by a ruling elite (represented by a friggn' Mitt Romney impersonator!) to buy the 1% time to retreat inland and build kaiju-proof mansions while the masses are eaten by monsters, who were enticed to enter our dimension by the environmental effects of industrial pollution created by the same ruling elites. The movie spends a lot of time establishing this that could have been used for punching monsters or monsters punching, so clearly it's important that we know in no uncertain terms that a crime lord trafficking in literal poo poo is of more benefit to humanity than the not-Mitt Romneys of the world. Not Mitt Romney isn't personally killing the poor, but his creation is killing them while he schemes to avoid the consequences. The movie pretty much comes out and says this, and we have no reason to doubt it. Of course, fascism likes to appropriate populist (and hell, communist) rhetoric, and doesn't like existing power structures because it wants to replace them. However, I think the populist overtones in Pacific Rim are presented sincerely - I think the drift  into fascistic undertones is a common problem with real populism that's made its way into the film. Real-life populism has had a depressing tendency to be appropriated by messianic leaders cultivating blind faith and hero-worship, not to mention racism. At its worst it's just fascism with better target selection - and the kaiju really are remorselessly destructive, after all. A giant robot stepping on not-Romney's kaiju-proof mansion at the end might have been "better," but was probably a fantasy too far.
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Feb 6, 2014 14:36
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sean10mm posted:-See above- I agree. It's a very common theme in films nowadays that the bad guys can be our friends if we all come to a compromise of some kind, or agree to tolerate one another a little more - Avatar comes to mind as a good example. What Pacific Rim seems to be doing is saying 'yes, but sometimes you actually do have to kill monsters trying to destroy your way of life'. This is a point missing from a lot of progressive agendas. Yeah, we need more solidarity with the Middle East and to come to mutual agreements instead of demonising one another, but there are actually people who want to see the entire West burn to the ground, and won't compromise or change their minds. It might be a good idea to kill those people. Yeah maybe they're reacting to a deeper cultural problem and they're just a symptom, but they are trying to kill us!
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Feb 6, 2014 17:18
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Hbomberguy posted:I agree. It's a very common theme in films nowadays that the bad guys can be our friends if we all come to a compromise of some kind, or agree to tolerate one another a little more - Avatar comes to mind as a good example. This is not very well thought-out, given that the film has the kaiju surviving precisely because of 'our way of life' (pollution caused by industrialisation), but the characters reject any possibility of changing it in favour of just saying "kill them all". Literally in the film they'd rather spend millions of dollars on building death machines and ineffectual barriers, than curtail the root cause; yet your post places the blame (for refusal to compromise or change their minds!) squarely on your Middle Eastern kaiju. Does this really sound like 'a good idea'?
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Feb 6, 2014 17:40
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:This is not very well thought-out, given that the film has the kaiju surviving precisely because of 'our way of life' (pollution caused by industrialisation), but the characters reject any possibility of changing it in favour of just saying "kill them all". Literally in the film they'd rather spend millions of dollars on building death machines and ineffectual barriers, than curtail the root cause; yet your post places the blame (for refusal to compromise or change their minds!) squarely on your Middle Eastern kaiju. Does this really sound like 'a good idea'? I agree that there is a lot of depth there, I was broad-stroking it, but the Kaiju are killing humanity. They will not go away if you start saving the whales. Kill the kaiju and then fix the world.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:41
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Here is a good post from way back in the yonic bowels of the threadLt. Danger posted:It's a fascist movie, not a movie about fascism. The world and setting are constructed along a fascist paradigm, but that doesn't necessitate jackboots and pogroms.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:46
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The funniest part though is that they set it up so that yes, the kaiju would literally all go away if we reduced pollution. There's a quick bit where they explicitly say the kaiju can only survive in the polluted environs we've created, leading to the conclusion that if we were to put the world's resources towards cleaning up the planet, we could eliminate all the kaiju at once, forever, instead of fighting each one individually with no guarantee that they won't ever come back because the environment is still perfectly hospitable to them. Instead they leave numerous nuclear robot corpses in the ocean, throw a bomb through a hole (destroying someone else's planet - one hosed up world is not enough!) and are like "I dunno, that probably killed them all. Whatever. I can't really tell."
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Feb 6, 2014 17:48
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So Pacific Rim is fascist not because it shares the political goals of Nazi Germany, but because its basic premises are the basic premises of fascist culture and its visual styles are the ones of fascist visual style. There is a strong cultural similarity, the political similarity not being as important.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:51
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I think it'd be pretty hard to solve global warming and pollution in the week or so it'd apparently take for all the kaiju to show up at once.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:52
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Hbomberguy posted:I agree that there is a lot of depth there, I was broad-stroking it, but the Kaiju are killing humanity. They will not go away if you start saving the whales. Kill the kaiju and then fix the world. Closing the rift by saving the whales would be awesome. And then a giant whale-kaiju like the unused Cloverfield Design could arise to fight for humanity.
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Feb 6, 2014 17:52
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Hodgepodge posted:Closing the rift by saving the whales would be awesome. And then a giant whale-kaiju like the unused Cloverfield Design could arise to fight for humanity. Having that be the solution would be a genuinely good twist, if a little weird that the kaiju currently tearing apart the city as we saved the whales would probably still kill a load of people. The 'right answer' from a I Don't Want People To Get Killed perspective, would be to close the portal and then save the whales. My point isn't even that literal, it's just more that the notion 'there really are bad guys trying to kill' us isn't entirely universally unfounded or ideological. It's pretty much Fact. There really were Nazis trying to kill us once. Was it wrong to unite against them too, even though socioeconomically we might have had a hand in their origins? I say this as a card-carrying radical egalitarian: gently caress those guys.
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Feb 6, 2014 18:32
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Hbomberguy posted:I agree. It's a very common theme in films nowadays that the bad guys can be our friends if we all come to a compromise of some kind, or agree to tolerate one another a little more - Avatar comes to mind as a good example. I would describe it as being even less politically specific. The trend is to view existence itself, or at least the kind of existence that the audience finds itself in, as regrettable; it romanticizes the return to a more innocent state. In that kind of existential conflict, the antagonist is either an agent of justice, or at best beset by an equivalent corruption, and in either case the protagonist must unite with the other in order to end the story triumphantly. The story is about sin, shame, adharma, etc., and the punishment, repudiation, or redemption that follows. It's less common in contemporary cinema to see the implication that it's okay to want to exist, or that it can be justified in this lovely world run by humans to believe that nothing is so wrong with one's life or society that it must become something radically different*. And when such a theme does appear, it is usually the big epiphany the protagonist encounters at the end, taking the form of something like learning how to love oneself - it is rarely, as it is in Pacific Rim, simply taken for granted as true. Pacific Rim addresses the will to exist through Newt. He's the one who hears about the belief that kaiju are divine retribution, and he learns that the kaiju-worshippers are correct in that humanity brought the kaiju invasion on itself by polluting, the standard contemporary metaphor for original sin. But if anything this only strengthens his resolve. (But then, perhaps it's appropriate for the "kaiju groupie" to be all for any course of action that leads to humans being more like kaiju?) Per Nietzsche (yes, again), the more you understand about what existence actually entails, the more difficult (and the more meaningful) it is to affirm that you want it. Raleigh experiences a bit of this. From Yancy's death he learned about the pain of existing in a way that none of the other rangers had. "Who wants to eat?" asks the foreman on the wall, with the obvious answer implied. Near the end, he has "found something to live for" - the bond of trust he shares with Mako gives him the strength to continue affirming his existence just as much as it gives him the strength to punch giant monsters in the face. * In unpleasantly reductive political terms, this is the conservative liberalism of Edmund Burke, counterpart to the progressive liberalism of Thomas Paine. I don't think either has much but the vaguest of insights in light of this film, however.
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Feb 6, 2014 18:34
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