Pacific Rim films

[Requiem28]

I had so many ID4 vibes from this movie.

[SiL]

Spoiler

The other thing was the final battle and Slattern. I fully expected the Category 5 to be extremely huge and the final battle being a team effort of multiple Jaegers trying to kill it. As the Jaegers fell one by one, I realized this wasn't going to come to be as I envisioned. Slattern wasn't even that big, and it was all a bit anti-climatic. Maybe it's because the "nuke the enemy in the other side of the portal" has been seen recently in "The Avengers." It was kind of done back when "Independence Day" came out, too. Or maybe it was just me that wanted that big battle with multiple Jaegers against a giant Category 5. On solid land during day time, mind you.

[close]

Spoiler

I felt the same. The middle battle with Leatherback and ... Otachi, was it? Felt much more climactic and suspenseful. Not to mention longer.

[close]

[Aspie]

WHAT AN AWFUL THING TO GO THROUGH.   

troll harder, Aspie.

How you explain the escape pod lack-of-DNA scenario

What about it?

...how could it pass through the portal without DNA?

Alright.

So she did have to prove herself, but so did everybody else.

No. Everyone else had was already an established pilot of a robot. She wasn't. She had to prove she could fight.

So she was a new recruit and had to go through the same thing everyone else did?

What discrimination.

She already had an extensive record that made her"superior to the men.

Yeah, Aspie's really trying to drive a point that the film never once raises. She gets sidelined because she has emotional baggage which could be -- and turns out to be -- problematic while trying to drift. However, as the film explicitly points out, it's the guy who slips first and sets her off, which has more to do with her inexperience than "Dur girls have problems".

The brother pilots at the beginning left out the part where they also had a breakdown during their first go around. No, wait. They just had a talent for "drifting". The film also did not show how mentally and emotionally stricken they must've been, also.

[SiL]

She already had an extensive record that made her"superior to the men.

No she didn't; she had an extensive simulation record. Which, again, as the film pointed out, is very different to the real thing.

The brother pilots at the beginning left out the part where they also had a breakdown during their first go around. No, wait. They just had a talent for "drifting".

It was irrelevant at the start. Raleigh says later that the first Drift is rough.

The film also did not show how mentally and emotionally stricken they must've been, also.

Because it was showing two established pilots getting their asses kicked, not the first time they jumped in. Why would the movie waste time with that sort of exposition in the opening scenes?

You are really, really reaching to make this a gender issue. It's not there, as much as you might inexplicably want it to be.

[Gilfryd]

Well, then Brad Bird is wrong.

W R O N G

How are either methods listed -- suitmation or motion-capture -- cheap, easy, or fast? They all require skill and ingenuity to pull off properly.

I didn't mean it like that - just talking about the people saying CG is somehow less worthwhile than any of those.

[xeno-kaname]

Spoiler

The other thing was the final battle and Slattern. I fully expected the Category 5 to be extremely huge and the final battle being a team effort of multiple Jaegers trying to kill it. As the Jaegers fell one by one, I realized this wasn't going to come to be as I envisioned. Slattern wasn't even that big, and it was all a bit anti-climatic. Maybe it's because the "nuke the enemy in the other side of the portal" has been seen recently in "The Avengers." It was kind of done back when "Independence Day" came out, too. Or maybe it was just me that wanted that big battle with multiple Jaegers against a giant Category 5. On solid land during day time, mind you.

[close]

Spoiler

I felt the same. The middle battle with Leatherback and ... Otachi, was it? Felt much more climactic and suspenseful. Not to mention longer.

[close]

Yep. My favorite part of the movie.

[Aspie]

I'm not saying I didn't like it because of this gender issue, I'm saying I would've much preferred a main female character who was an established fighter that didn't have emotional baggage or a surrogate daddy preventing her from pursuing her ambitions.

I pointed out a lot more I had problems with. It was just one aspect of it.

It was irrelevant at the start. Raleigh says later that the first Drift is rough.

That doesn't make up for anything

Why would the movie waste time with that sort of exposition in the opening scenes?

To better showcase the struggles of all the candidates, period.

[Xenomorphine]

...no It was better than all of them

Not for me. I liked the first 'Transformers' (for what it was). It had some likeable characters. The action sequences were about equal, but the music was better during those of 'Transformers'. So, for me, the older film had two major advantages.

No. Everyone else had was already an established pilot of a robot. She wasn't. She had to prove she could fight.

I think Pentecost was fine with her combat skills. Just not her emotional maturity/capability to deal with the whole 'drifting' thing. Which, honestly, once you understand the reasoning behind that, makes you wonder why some kind of mock-up drifting thing wasn't tried before strapping her in the multi-million dollar's worth of cockpit.

Then again, the film never gave me a reason for why drifting (or a two-person crew) was even needed, in the first place, any more than it's ever been for fighter jets, tanks, ships, submarines or any other machines through history with a crew. It's a good plot device for a story, but there's no need for it to exist, beyond random technobabble. It's in the film because they want it to be. Like how drifting supposedly lets two pilots get access to all of one another's thoughts/memories.

Even though...

Spoiler

The hero didn't realise Mako had added the sword, which contradicts the whole 'knowing-all-your-memories' thing.

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My problem with her, gender-wise, I wrote about in my review. She doesn't act like the veteran or even grown woman she is. She behaves like an emotionally fragile teenager. I wanted the female Russian pilot to have some kind of scene interaction (beyond just giving an attitude through body language), specifically for that reason, because Mako did not make for either a strong or even interesting female character. And, as SiL pointed out, her revenge motivation wasn't exactly... Novel, given her ethnicity.

[xeno-kaname]

Then again, the film never gave me a reason for why drifting (or a two-person crew) was even needed, in the first place, any more than it's ever been for fighter jets, tanks, ships, submarines or any other machines through history with a crew. It's a good plot device for a story, but there's no need for it to exist, beyond random technobabble. It's in the film because they want it to be. Like how drifting supposedly lets two pilots get access to all of one another's thoughts/memories.

Because in order for these giant robots to fight at their best, they wanted humans to actually fully control the robots as if they were their own bodies. With the same reflexes. Very different from just being in a jet or boat and you punch in commands. They are thinking the commands. And that probably is too much for just one brain to handle.

[SiL]

I'm not saying I didn't like it because of this gender issue, I'm saying I would've much preferred a main female character who was an established fighter that didn't have emotional baggage or a surrogate daddy preventing her from pursuing her ambitions.

I think everyone would've preferred a cast of characters not entirely populated by bottom-of-the-barrel clichés.

That doesn't make up for anything

Yes it does.  We don't need to see their first drift being hard, or the emotional strain, because we see them when they're established. Raleigh acknowledges later that the first time is hard, which tells us that this was precisely the case for him.

To better showcase the struggles of all the candidates, period.

We don't need that to open the movie.

Then again, the film never gave me a reason for why drifting (or a two-person crew) was even needed, in the first place, any more than it's ever been for fighter jets, tanks, ships, submarines or any other machines through history with a crew.

It's explicitly spelled out in the opening montage.

[Blacklabel]

and the drift doesnt give "access" to all of each other's memories. Not all of the time. (definitely didnt in the leaked draft, nor on the in-canon prequel comic book by the writer of the movie)

[shadowedge]

Just came back from it and I liked it a lot, that said there were some negatives.

Spoiler

The good:

The sense of scale.
The two scientists were great.
Idris Elba was fantastic.
The fights were truly epic.
I liked the good Australian pilot a lot.
Ron Pearlman's character was good too.
Mako Mori was interesting and was awesome when she got to do stuff...

The bad:

...unfortunately she doesn't get to help out in the final part much. She needed to be rescued. She has so much promise but the story really made her out to be #2. Also she was way too meek. I wanted her to stand up for herself more.

The other pilots got zero character development. We don't know much about them and they die in their first battle. They serve no purpose other than to die. They could have been so interesting.

The jerk Australian guy...

The neutral:

The main character was just kind of boring. Not bad but his character didn't really work with me emotionally.

WHY DID THEY NOT USE THE SWORDS FROM THE BEGINNING? The swords essentially one/two shot the Kaiju. Why were they not using these rather than:
Fists that do little damage
Guns that take 20 seconds to charge up and then like 20 more shots to kill the monster?
They could have saved so many more pilots and innocent civilians if they had just used their best weapons. They do a heck of a lot more damage that body slamming one does.

[close]

[Xenomorphine]

Because in order for these giant robots to fight at their best, they wanted humans to actually fully control the robots as if they were their own bodies. With the same reflexes. Very different from just being in a jet or boat and you punch in commands. They are thinking the commands. And that probably is too much for just one brain to handle.

That's exactly what they do, though. The rig tracks their physical movements. For everything else, they're literally keying in commands on a keyboard. We don't see them doing anything which couldn't have been achieved by one pilot. The mental link is pure plot device. One which could even have been serviced in the same way if it was a pilot/gunner set up, as per helicopter gunships (one controls navigation/limbs and the other controls weapons).

Even if there's a degree of thought control (and if there is, why the need for physically walking around), it's not conveyed on screen.

It's explicitly spelled out in the opening montage.

It's meaningless, though. They talk about the robots having too much 'power' for one pilot, but don't specify what that actually means. Processing power (although, technically, that should be too little)? For what? What's the machine doing which couldn't be taken care of by automated systems? This isn't elaborated on. Just that it's somehow 'bad' for one pilot to even try it.

[Dovahkiin]

Two of the biggest standout moments for me are when Gipsy Danger is dragging the oil ship toward Otachi, and when the pilots of Cherno Alpha say "Let's get this bastard!" And Cherno smashes it's fists together a few times. SO BADASS.

[DoomRulz]

It's meaningless, though. They talk about the robots having too much 'power' for one pilot, but don't specify what that actually means. Processing power (although, technically, that should be too little)? For what? What's the machine doing which couldn't be taken care of by automated systems? This isn't elaborated on. Just that it's somehow 'bad' for one pilot to even try it.

Likely because in a situation that calls for physical confrontation with a very violent opponent, human strategic thinking could prove more useful than a pre-programmed fight system and yeah, likely the processing power would simply overload a human's brain.