jhameia | The Spoileriffic Pacific Rim Open Thread

From:

aurimae

the dinosaur theory, THE DINOSAUR THEORY

WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE DINOSAUR THEORY

From:

jhameia

THE DINOSAUR THEORY was lul-zy! Also I thought it didn't quite account for evolution theory in that case but maybe there wasn't enough time? But I guess they'd handwave it since apparently it's straight from the kaiju brain itself.

From:

horusporus

the best stupid thing about the dinosaur theory was in one sentence they just set up, boom! dinos vs kaijus. :D :D :D

From:

shoomlah

OMIGOD and also hearing a knowledgeable scientist talk about dinosaurs having a "second brain in their tail" which is just... nonsense. Has been nonsense for a while. XD CHARLIE YOU ARE A BIOLOGIST what is up with that.

From:

yifu

The women need to talk each other more.
White dudes need to angst much much less! We've seen that in too many movies already.

I spent Saturday thinking, "I want to be a kaijuu." (My mother would have said, "You already are one.")

What would you name a Malaysian Jaeger? I would've named an Indonesian Jaeger Satria Badai if fellow Indonesians wouldn't find it too lolarious.

"Apologize to her." Too bad Mako didn't punch Aussie-with-issues herself. Too too bad.

From:

jhameia

Srsly, like, how on earth do white dudes hold themselves up as functioning human beings when so much of their media portrays them as falling to pieces every goddamn time, my goodness.

And would it have been so hard to have had yet another major female character?? Made the scientists women? Given us some glimpse of an all-woman team? Made Raleigh a woman? There wasn't really any need for him to have been a white dude at all!

I think I would name a Malaysian Jaeger "Straits Echo". It's the name of a long-dead newspaper my grandpa used to edit for, plus, "Echo" I believe is one of those official military-talk words.

From:

nyarlathotep

Rempit Raya, with their rocket-assisted special move, "SUPERMAN!"

From:

oyceter

I totally wanted Mako to step in, tell Raleigh she appreciated it but wanted to clock the guy herself, and then proceed. Or something a bit more active.

From:

yifu

Unfortunately, the movie thinks the co-pilot test = nearly all the on-screen awesome she needs. Or something.

From:

jhameia

It seems to think that about a whole lot of people, sadly =( With such a great cast, they spent WAY too much time on the douchebro, angstbro, and nerdbros.

From:

jhameia

I don't understand how people can think Idris Elba's speech was bad? ;_; Someone help me understand?

From:

shoomlah

I feel biased because I would be happy listening to Idris Elba read the phone book, but yes, I'm also curious about the outrage.

From:

yifu

Divorced from Idris Elba's wonderful voice, or maybe even with it, the speech does sound a tad jingoistic.

From:

nyarlathotep

The one moment that irritates me still about Pacific Rim was that final scene where Mako swims towards an unconscious and apparently-dead Raleigh?

She's apparently in radio contact with Tendo and he's saying he ain't getting a pulse, and she's all omg pls don't leave me and and and...

Hello. Priorities sikit. Tendo, Hansen, get Mako to run the checklist please. They're clearly out of Danger, confirm got no Response? Okay, he really is out? Okay. Clear his Airway and confirm if he's Breathing? Not breathing? OK, do the Chest Compressions until someone can get to you, this is important, you're keeping his brain oxygenated until help can arrive...

What do you mean they weren't trained? You spend 14 hours a day on beating up each other with sticks and you can't spare the two days every year doing a refresher course on CPR? Come on. Come on!

Otherwise, great movie tho.

From:

jhameia

YYYYYYYYY! I really thought the script was gonna go with CPR, and I'm glad it didn't because it would've been all kissy-kissy eeww, but yah, she could've been doing a lot more.... I would like to say losing a parent AND potentially losing a partner in a short period of time can frazzle one's nerves but still.

From:

shoomlah

Gotta admit, was really excited to see they didn't automatically go in for a kiss at the end at the least! Like there's enough tension in that film that you can read it however you want, but you could still buy Raleigh and Mako as just really close/soul-bonded buddies.

From:

nyarlathotep

Oh yes. It felt odd — mostly because it's been conditioned to me by other vastly inferior movies — but it felt right.

From:

jhameia

YESSSSSS! This is one of my favourite things about the movie! I LOVE that last shot where their foreheads are pressed together, rather than in a kiss. It's a really well-framed shot (they gave Mako a lot of well-framed shots in this movie, I thought). I also like that it's a buddy movie without the slapstick ridiculousness, and all the deepness that a friendship could have, esp given those circumstances.

From:

nyarlathotep

Fun fact: CPR doesn't need mouth-to-mouth — you can omit it, or use mouth-to-nose. Seriously — if memory serves me well the point is to get the circulation going.

Or, if you want, de-emphasize on the mouth-to-mouth part. The emotional tension will be at Mako, exhaustion and near tears, keeping up the chest compressions until Raleigh comes to, not when she has to pinch Raleigh's nostrils to blow air into his lungs.

And to be honest, I don't blame Mako at all. Or Hansen, who lost his son and has a new leadership role to take up.

I blame Tendo. Way to drop the ball, telemetry dude. What happened to providing support?

From:

blacksentai

N.K. Jemisin made a point earlier today about black men dying in these movies and that leaving a bad taste in her mouth and I entirely agree. Del Toro makes a lot of talk about a lot of stuff but only seems to follow through on a very cursory level. The cast is really really white. When you actually think about it there are two characters of color in the entire thing. The triplets only appear in a scene and a half.
While it was cool that Idris was in charge of saving the world, it kind of loses a good portion of it's impact when we realize that he's the only black person around. They didn't need to write it like that. They could have had him survive and still had a good movie. The movie doesn't hinge on his death. The decent Australian could've not hurt his arm and we could've been alright. They made a deliberate decision to kill him off and the more I think about it the worse that decision feels to me. If there were more black characters then it wouldn't feel as bad, but he's the ONLY ONE and he's gone.

From:

jhameia

Yes! I was thinking the same during the movie whereby there're a lot of Asians around but.... no black people? Really? All your best and brightest and none of them are black? OK. And I think black people would be a significant part of the resistance! The nerd-bromance was awesome and I loved the two characters, but they didn't have to be white dudes at all, either.

My problem with Idris and whatshisname dying was... like, didn't they have an opportunity to eject out of the Jaeger as it went nuclear? Did they say that the Jaeger was too damaged for them to eject? Which makes Stacker's death played really for the emotional high without thinking through carefully the statement about "the world saving the world". They still could have had that same emotional high with the tension of wondering whether he's still alive, but like you said, they made that decision to kill him off instead, which sucked.

The deaths of ALL THE OTHER PILOTS also just doesn't sit right.... sure it's a trope that the rookie and the vet working together will survive, but it sticks in my craw how we're supposed to buy how QUICKLY Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon are taken down (I didn't even get to see the Thundercloud Formation clearly??? I was very unhappy with how that scene was directed; they made it to be such a Big Thing and then we the audience barely get to see it).

From:

blacksentai

I totally agree about the other pilots dying as well. I understand that dangerous racism is a super cool robot and all, but how does it survive where people who've been fighting for a while now got just totally obliterated. I also thought their deaths were super obvious and there was little to no emotional impact because I think there were like six lines totals between the Russians and the Chinese triplets in the whole movie.
Yeah, I was also thinking that Stacker and young dumb Aussie should've been able to eject themselves. The idea was that they were going to deliver the bomb and come back alive, so escape should've been a possibility. Even if they wrote in that the Jaeger was too damaged to allow escape they didn't have to write that.
I really liked the movie. I just think there is so much that could've been better.

From:

jhameia

I don't really get how Racist Danger is supposed to be BETTER.... AND I LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED when they were all like IT'S ANALOG NOT DIGITAL SO TOTALLY APPROPRIATE FOR THIS MISSION like what that didn't even make sense!!!! XDDDDDDDDDDD

The thing about the other pilots dying too is that it becomes LESS about "the world saving the world" as a result. I know Mako is supposed to be Japanese and there's the Aussie robot, but at the end of the day the American robot is still the victorious, heroic one.

I really enjoyed the movie too! It hit a lot of really great spots for me, but there were so many things that could have been better and I really appreciate having people to share these feels with.

From:

nyarlathotep

I found it annoying that the Russian couple (who I assumed were siblings, but then I later found out were actually spouses) and the triplets didn’t make it, but their fates were kind of sealed by the fight that kills them, because they didn’t even get a single line until that scene began. Dead giveway, there.

Even Stacker’s death was carefully choreographed and foreshadowed right from the beginning of the movie, with all that angsty pill-eating and random bleeding all over the place. Having him survive would have been a great plus with the movie, but knowing fucking Hollywood, they wouldn’t be happy with a black man character having all the lines and surviving. The beast needed to eat, so it had to eat the noble black guy and the asshole man-child who barely gets any redemption.

Actually, Hani suggested that the reason why the asshole man-child bit the dust was to balance out the emotional output of Stacker’s death. They didn’t want Stacker’s noble death to totally torpedo the victory feels you were supposed to get, so they tossed in the asshole-manchild, who gets a perfunctory redemption scene beforehand before they all bite it, just so you don’t feel too bad for cheering the death an asshole who’s supposed to be nominally a hero. Especially since the asshole is a white boy.

Looking at it this way, you have to admire the kind of work that goes into this, even if the end result is fuckery and more fuckery.

What struck me was

blacksentai’s observation that there were no other black or POC major characters other than Mako and Stacker — even Tendo, who is supposed to be Chinese-American, is played by someone with German and Mexican ancestry, who apparently finds work in portraying Latino parts. So, apart from the token POC presence, everyone in it were fucking hipsters. Even Hannibal Chau.

Actually this is probably one of the few roles from Ron Perelman that annoyed the crap out of me. Sure, the guy plays gruff asshole (something he’s used to playing, I am sure), but the fact that the dude had to appropriate an Azn name just… made me not care when the fetus-monster swallowed him whole.

Edited Date: 2013-07-15 01:58 am (UTC)

From:

nyarlathotep

I was going to shrug past the fact that [REDACTED] Danger being “analog” when I realized — hang on a minute, [REDACTED] Danger was also running GLaDOS, so technically the EMP should affect the Jaeger as well. What gives?

From:

jhameia

EXAAAAAACTLYYYYYYY there's NO real significant difference between the Mach 3 and Mach 4 models that was really that visible within the cockpit; so much of the tech was the same! Thaaaaaaat's not how analog tech worrrrkkkssss.....

From:

nyarlathotep

Maybe those HUD effects on [REDACTED] Danger were supposed to be hallucinations from being bathed by insane amounts of radiation and the neural bridge kot?

From:

blacksentai

How do people feel about him as a character. I'm inclined to dislike him, but it's mostly uneasy feeligns and a previous dislike of Ron Perlman that exist for almost no reason that I can think of.
I know that I was very uncomfy with the idea of a white dude rolling up, taking the last name Chau, and running a business off of Chinese labor that just kind of goes on unaddressed in any way. I know they're in Hong Kong, but I dunno.
On a related note, why was a half white half mexican man playing Tendo Choi. Why did they give him that name?
Am I just being a party pooper?

From:

jhameia

re: Tendo-- I couldn't even catch the guy's name half the time and he was white as white can be so it didn't quite matter to me, but yeah, yet another wasted character imo. Halfway thru the movie I was kind of wishing that was a more visible POC. I like the idea of all Stacker's immediate subordinates being lighter-skinned them him, but still.

Re: Hannibal Chau-- His character is a right bastard and I can see that kind of appropriation being exactly the kind of thing he would do for coolness points (taking on a Chinese surname would make sense for doing business where he is, imo). I couldn't pin down where I'd seen Perlman before, but I did like him and his character (altho there was the moment of dislike where I thought he was going to break up my nerd-romance OTP).

From:

horusporus

they only explained in the prequel comic and other assorted canon than Tendo Choi is Peruvian-Chinese, fwiw.

From:

jhameia

I can't seem to find a good torrent of the comic T_T

From:

horusporus

*koff*

From:

jhameia

I did download that and also the Soda PDF reader but still can't open it T_T

From:

horusporus

eh? i had no problems, but i did google for the unzippers for that comic book extension. in the end i went for CDisplayEx, but anything for that extension specifically should work.

From:

jhameia

I'll try CDisplayEx and see!

From:

jhameia

It didn't work T_T I don't know what I'm doing wrong!

From:

horusporus

o.0 omgosh really?? i just unzipped as usual, then I opened the file via CDEx. Memang cannot? um... you can google it, but i think you can extract manually using winrar or 7zip to get the jpegs.

From:

jhameia

See, the weird thing is: when I extracted using the CDEx thing, I got an EXE file (which takes me to a Media Finder Setup), but when I extracted using cut-and-paste it gives me a CBR file. Which I SHOULD be able to open in the Soda Reader but the program is just not working. So.... AM CONFUSE

From:

horusporus

did you try opening the .cbr file with CDEx? That's how I did it. I extracted using window's native unzipper and i just opened the .cbr file once i installed CDEx and sorted the file associations to open comic book container formats automatically.

good luck, sorry this is giving you the runaround!

From:

nyarlathotep

Where did that name come from though? Isn’t “Tendo” a Japanese name?

From:

horusporus

sure? it's fanwankable whatever the provenance.

From:

nyarlathotep

Meh. I’m still more pissed off with him with his piss-poor performance as telemetry dude during that last scene. The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get.

From:

jhameia

OK I just read the comic and I think I'm even more upset that Choi wasn't more visibly POC now....

From:

nyarlathotep

I personally didn’t care for Hannibal. When he got swallowed I didn’t care, when he cut himself out in the stinger, I didn’t care. For one thing, Ron Perelman does play assholes, but he tends to shine when he plays noble gruff assholes, and Chau was definitely not noble. So when he went, I didn’t give a shit.

I found Tendo Choi a little iffy, because… what ethnicity was he supposed to be? Japanese? Chinese? Did he just pick that name out just to be cool? Plus, if I was a telemetry guy, I’d be more professional than he would be (re: upthread, where I get annoyed with the final scene, most of my annoyance is with Tendo, because Mako and Marshall Hansen have good reasons to be upset; they just lost family. Tendo just lost an employer — granted, a pretty awesome one, but still, employer, and worse he was possibly going to lose another dude he worked with and built a rapport, possibly devastating said employer’s adopted daughter even further, how the hell are you going to live up to your boss’ legacy, man? Mumbling about a possible equipment sensor malfunction is not the way to go, man. Step the fuck up).

From:

jhameia

Hannibal is def not a character we should care about tho; they set him up to be an untrustworthy asshole from the start, which would've been resolved only by a twist whereby he proves himself trustworthy and thus redeemed, therefore someone we can respect, OR he meets his comeuppance, and we def got the latter. He was a "just for gags" type character except without the emotional investment one might have in the NerdBros.

From:

nyarlathotep

Perelman actually said that he was playing the character as a larger-than-life — even the stinger scene (during the credits) of him slicing himself out of the kaiju was supposed to indicate that he was supposed to be a Magnificent Bastard.

Perelman couldn’t pull it off. He just seemed small and petty and more than a little annoying.

From:

jhameia

Haha yeah, he doesn't really seem larger-than-life to me either, but he was a lot of laughs.

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