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Pacific Rim
Side note 'cause I forgot to mention it before: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
i_write_a_lot asked me to post a link to a community they started, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
weeklybookrec, on which they post weekly book recs. It's just starting up.
Also,jana_denardo did an interview with me (under my non-fannish name), in which I talk about writing and related things. That's here!
But mostly this is a post about Pacific Rim. Which ... I wasn't going to post about, because I seem to diverge very heavily from the fannish mainstream on this one. But then I got to thinking that I do actually have things to say, so ... if you're riding high on a squee wave, you might not want to read this! I really don't mind being argued with (hey, maybe you can change my mind!) but I don't want to harsh anyone's squee. And this is not a happy, fun-filled post. I want you to have all the joy with your fannish squee, so please don't read if it'd make you sad.
The thing is ... I can see a lot of what people are enthusiastic about. I even agree! Mako and Stacker are really great characters, and I like them a lot. The special effects were really gorgeous -- although I suffered from a similar sort of battle fatigue as I did in The Hobbit, where I found it hard to enjoy the fight sequences because they were SO huge and noisy and out of proportion to actual human experience that I just couldn't relate. But they were very beautifully done, and there was lots of gorgeous background detail; it was obvious that the set designers had put in a lot of work.
... which is really the thing about the movie that was most disappointing to me, all the work that obviously went into it, and the work the actors put in, which, for me, completely failed to come together into an enjoyable movie. It had moments and scenes that I liked, but on the whole, it fell completely flat.
And I also know how totally subjective this is. When you fall in fannish love with something, you just fall -- it doesn't matter if it's flawed, it just IS. And this movie failed to do that for me. Picking it apart is kind of useless for figuring out why, because on some level it's a sort of chemistry thing: you either love it or you don't. And I didn't.
It wasn't like there was one big thing; it was more like the aggregate of a bunch of smaller things that rubbed me the wrong way, which all went together into a big bundle of DO NOT WANT:
POINT ONE: The national stereotyping (ohgod, the stereotyping) and the way that the movie put white guys from English-speaking countries front and center of EVERYTHING.
The thing is, I think this aspect of the movie blindsided me horribly in a very unpleasant way, because ... it's not like this is unusual for an action movie! But I had seen SO much squee and joy over Mako and Stacker that I guess I was expecting this to be a movie that did really well at race and gender and ethnicity, and it is so, so, SO HORRENDOUSLY NOT.
Mako is great, but she's also the only woman in the WHOLE DAMN MOVIE with any lines. Of COURSE the Chinese team are interchangeable triplets and the Australians fight all the time; the Russians basically just glare wordlessly at people; the British scientist is fussy and fastidious and says "By Jove!" a lot.
Even Mako has aspects to her character that smack of "American stereotype of a Japanese woman". The thing is, I do think Mako is a pretty neat character; I just wish she was balanced against other characters of Asian background, or located in a movie that handled emotional subtlety a little better. In a way, it's sort of like how aspects of Katara's character grated on me in the first season of A:tLA -- her tendency to assume the "humorless killjoy" role in the group, her powers being mostly healing/non-combat-based, compared to the boys' abilities -- because it was very typical of the Only Girl In The Group type of character ... UNTIL the show pulled the double whammy of introducing multiple female characters in season two, and growing Katara's character and powers in a different direction, at which point I totally fell in love with her in a way I wasn't quite able to do when Katara was a rather stereotypical example of the Only Girl On A Boys' Fighting Team. I feel as if Mako suffers from some of these problems too, more to do with being the Only Asian Girl than to do with HER, if that makes any sense. (That said, I am wholeheartedly on Team Mako, FYI.)
The stereotyping was annoying, but what was absolutely infuriating to me was the way that the movie EXPLICITLY AND BLATANTLY treated the non-westerners as disposable while giving us long action sequences in which we got to watch the English-speaking white guys having narrow escapes. The most egregious offender in this area was the sequence in which the Chinese and Russian pilots died (very nearly off-camera), while the Australians and Team Main Character were given the individual treatment. But we also had the white, American scientist being the obviously-meant-to-be-sympathetic focus of a chase scene while all of Hong Kong was getting destroyed (I was rooting more for the monsters, there), or Stacker heroically sacrificing himself while Raleigh got an escape pod. Which, in all honesty, didn't actually feel like a Black Guy Sacrifices Himself For the White Characters scene; Stacker was well-developed enough that his decision felt properly justified and not just there for white-guy angst, and his entire arc played out as Grizzled Mentor anyway, so his final sacrifice was very much in keeping with that. The lack of escape pods did, however, bother me HUGELY from the perspective of plotting stupidity, which brings us to ...
POINT TWO: The plot holes, help help.
I am willing to forgive a lot of plot!fail if I'm otherwise enjoying the movie. I also don't expect a lot of sophisticated plotting from a movie about large robots punching large monsters. But this movie so massively underwhelmed my expectations in that area ... look, my husband and I walked out of the movie with mutual ":/" expressions and then spent a couple hours at a restaurant afterwards trying to figure out how to salvage it. (Keep all the giant-monster fight footage and reshoot everything else?)
The problem is that it wasn't just minor plot issues here and there. It was huge, gaping, Kaiju-sized plot holes in the exact elements of the plot that the major action pieces hinged around. It was plot threads being signposted as VERY IMPORTANT and then completely dropped by the following scene.
It was a movie that read like it'd been rushed into production at the rough-draft stage when it desperately needed another few rewrites.
Some examples:
- The scientist's mind-link with the Kaiju. This is a hugely important sequence, on with a lot of plot stuff hinges. Among other things, we find out the link is two-way, the Kaiju learned a ton of stuff about human defenses that they can now exploit, AND they can track the scientist guy after being inside his mind.
... and then, after the fight in Hong Kong, it simply ceases to matter. What about the link being two-way? What about all the stuff that the Kaiju learned about human technology? It's completely dropped. The Kaiju who come through the Rift at the end don't seem to be any more high-powered than normal ones (just bigger), nor do they possess any of the special modifications like the EMP generator that were used so effectively by the ones at Hong Kong. The second monster mind-meld doesn't seem to result in any ill effects or any additional information being transmitted to the Kaiju. It's like the movie starts waving its arms going, "Giant monsters! Fighting! Over here! Pay no attention to the dangling plot thread!"
My husband also pointed out that an awesome way to use this in the plot would be for the Kaiju to gain some (limited) control over the scientist himself, so he might be a double agent, but no one is really sure, and they don't know if they can trust his information. But no.
- EVERYTHING about the training and implementation of the Jaeger pilot program. They don't do a test run or any training in the Drift before they hook up two pilots ... with all the weapons TURNED ON? SERIOUSLY? And they don't have backup pilots? THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING IN THE WORLD. You have these incredibly expensive fighting machines ... you should have test pilots and redundant systems and simulator dry runs out the wazoo. What if one of your pilots gets sick, or is hung over because he stayed up late drinking, or broke his arm brawling in the hall? TOO BAD, SYDNEY, CAN'T SAVE YOU TODAY, THE PILOT HAS THE FLU. I know it may be a small thing to fixate on, but when TWO pivotal scenes in the movie (Mako breaking down and almost blowing up the control room, and Stacker swapping in for Aussie Dad at the last minute) rely entirely upon this lack of simulators, backup pilots, or any other form of common-sense safety measure, my suspension of disbelief is hung by the neck until dead.
- And speaking of safety measures, WHERE ARE YOUR FUCKING ESCAPE PODS. Because they HAVE THEM! The point at which Raleigh deployed Mako's escape pod in the final sequence is the point at which my sympathy for all the dead pilots flew out the window because NONE OF THEM HAD TO DIE! Now, there are ways that the escape pods could've been bypassed or ruined or rendered unusable, and some of the pilots might have died anyway (Raleigh's brother, for example), but ... ESCAPE PODS. SERIOUSLY. OMG. At the very least, Stacker and his partner easily had time to push an eject button after they pushed the self-destruct.
How am I supposed to mourn for characters who are too dumb to push an eject button. ;_;
- Another example of a dangling/unused plot thread is Raleigh's connection with his dead brother. Or, rather, there was simply no point that I could see to have him be Drift-linked at the moment of his brother's death. He wasn't more messed up than just having his brother die in front of him would've made him. He didn't have any weird sci-fi after-effects like hearing his brother's voice or seeing him. His trauma presumably made Mako go cuckoopants in the Drift, but plain old garden-variety trauma could do that just as easily. And yet, it's signposted as a Big Deal ... and then not used.
- Nukes. Each of the robots essentially carries a nuke (its reactor core), and every time one of these is used against the monsters, it works. The only problem is, these nukes have a human being strapped to them, and you can't use them without killing the pilot, which seems inhumane. So why don't you remove the human being? And while you're at it, blowing up the Jaeger also destroys a multi-billion-dollar piece of equipment, so what if you remove that too, and just leave the reactor core part?
... oh wait. That is called a ballistic missile. WE HAVE THEM ALREADY.
POINT THREE: The physics.
Complaining about science/physics/engineering fail in a movie about giant robots punching monsters seems rather pointless, and it probably is. I just kept having these moments when common sense and logic would rear their heads at inopportune times. Like, for example, a robot the size of a 40-story building getting flung across half of Hong Kong. I know what happens when you drop a 747 from a great height. It doesn't end well for the 747. I guess it's easier for me to swallow this sort of cartoon physics in an anime than in a live-action movie.
Also, I was watching the movie with an engineer, which didn't help (and resulted in a lot of complaining from the seat next to me). A lot of the post-movie dinner discussion involved him coming up with alternate ways of killing the monsters that would be much cheaper and less destructive than BUILDING A 200-FOOT ROBOT TO PUNCH IT.
And yes, I am aware that the writers self-evidently started with "giant robot" and worked their way backwards from there. The movie is never NOT going to include giant robots and justify their existence somehow. I am down with that! I just ... wish it had been a better justification. ;_;
I need to quit because this is getting pretty long, but I haven't even gotten around to the fact that the movie, in some ways, was like the highly abridged version of the 26-episode anime that it wanted to be. Most of the emotional relationships were told rather than shown, because we never actually saw any scenes with the characters that weren't directly related to killing monsters. I think it might have gone a long way towards salvaging the movie for me if we'd gotten just a few scenes of, say, Mako and Stacker having dinner together, or the characters playing or having downtime or ... aargh. Okay, we did have that brief scene in the mess when Raleigh was getting the lay of the land. But that's the only example along those lines that I can think of. Even action movies occasionally take time to show the characters just being themselves. (Ideally.) I think half my trouble relating to the characters is that we were given so little to relate TO. Some of the actors (okay, two of the actors) managed to humanize their characters regardless. Others (*cough*Raleigh*cough*), let's say, didn't.
i_write_a_lot asked me to post a link to a community they started, weeklybookrec, on which they post weekly book recs. It's just starting up.Also,
jana_denardo did an interview with me (under my non-fannish name), in which I talk about writing and related things. That's here!But mostly this is a post about Pacific Rim. Which ... I wasn't going to post about, because I seem to diverge very heavily from the fannish mainstream on this one. But then I got to thinking that I do actually have things to say, so ... if you're riding high on a squee wave, you might not want to read this! I really don't mind being argued with (hey, maybe you can change my mind!) but I don't want to harsh anyone's squee. And this is not a happy, fun-filled post. I want you to have all the joy with your fannish squee, so please don't read if it'd make you sad.
The thing is ... I can see a lot of what people are enthusiastic about. I even agree! Mako and Stacker are really great characters, and I like them a lot. The special effects were really gorgeous -- although I suffered from a similar sort of battle fatigue as I did in The Hobbit, where I found it hard to enjoy the fight sequences because they were SO huge and noisy and out of proportion to actual human experience that I just couldn't relate. But they were very beautifully done, and there was lots of gorgeous background detail; it was obvious that the set designers had put in a lot of work.
... which is really the thing about the movie that was most disappointing to me, all the work that obviously went into it, and the work the actors put in, which, for me, completely failed to come together into an enjoyable movie. It had moments and scenes that I liked, but on the whole, it fell completely flat.
And I also know how totally subjective this is. When you fall in fannish love with something, you just fall -- it doesn't matter if it's flawed, it just IS. And this movie failed to do that for me. Picking it apart is kind of useless for figuring out why, because on some level it's a sort of chemistry thing: you either love it or you don't. And I didn't.
It wasn't like there was one big thing; it was more like the aggregate of a bunch of smaller things that rubbed me the wrong way, which all went together into a big bundle of DO NOT WANT:
POINT ONE: The national stereotyping (ohgod, the stereotyping) and the way that the movie put white guys from English-speaking countries front and center of EVERYTHING.
The thing is, I think this aspect of the movie blindsided me horribly in a very unpleasant way, because ... it's not like this is unusual for an action movie! But I had seen SO much squee and joy over Mako and Stacker that I guess I was expecting this to be a movie that did really well at race and gender and ethnicity, and it is so, so, SO HORRENDOUSLY NOT.
Mako is great, but she's also the only woman in the WHOLE DAMN MOVIE with any lines. Of COURSE the Chinese team are interchangeable triplets and the Australians fight all the time; the Russians basically just glare wordlessly at people; the British scientist is fussy and fastidious and says "By Jove!" a lot.
Even Mako has aspects to her character that smack of "American stereotype of a Japanese woman". The thing is, I do think Mako is a pretty neat character; I just wish she was balanced against other characters of Asian background, or located in a movie that handled emotional subtlety a little better. In a way, it's sort of like how aspects of Katara's character grated on me in the first season of A:tLA -- her tendency to assume the "humorless killjoy" role in the group, her powers being mostly healing/non-combat-based, compared to the boys' abilities -- because it was very typical of the Only Girl In The Group type of character ... UNTIL the show pulled the double whammy of introducing multiple female characters in season two, and growing Katara's character and powers in a different direction, at which point I totally fell in love with her in a way I wasn't quite able to do when Katara was a rather stereotypical example of the Only Girl On A Boys' Fighting Team. I feel as if Mako suffers from some of these problems too, more to do with being the Only Asian Girl than to do with HER, if that makes any sense. (That said, I am wholeheartedly on Team Mako, FYI.)
The stereotyping was annoying, but what was absolutely infuriating to me was the way that the movie EXPLICITLY AND BLATANTLY treated the non-westerners as disposable while giving us long action sequences in which we got to watch the English-speaking white guys having narrow escapes. The most egregious offender in this area was the sequence in which the Chinese and Russian pilots died (very nearly off-camera), while the Australians and Team Main Character were given the individual treatment. But we also had the white, American scientist being the obviously-meant-to-be-sympathetic focus of a chase scene while all of Hong Kong was getting destroyed (I was rooting more for the monsters, there), or Stacker heroically sacrificing himself while Raleigh got an escape pod. Which, in all honesty, didn't actually feel like a Black Guy Sacrifices Himself For the White Characters scene; Stacker was well-developed enough that his decision felt properly justified and not just there for white-guy angst, and his entire arc played out as Grizzled Mentor anyway, so his final sacrifice was very much in keeping with that. The lack of escape pods did, however, bother me HUGELY from the perspective of plotting stupidity, which brings us to ...
POINT TWO: The plot holes, help help.
I am willing to forgive a lot of plot!fail if I'm otherwise enjoying the movie. I also don't expect a lot of sophisticated plotting from a movie about large robots punching large monsters. But this movie so massively underwhelmed my expectations in that area ... look, my husband and I walked out of the movie with mutual ":/" expressions and then spent a couple hours at a restaurant afterwards trying to figure out how to salvage it. (Keep all the giant-monster fight footage and reshoot everything else?)
The problem is that it wasn't just minor plot issues here and there. It was huge, gaping, Kaiju-sized plot holes in the exact elements of the plot that the major action pieces hinged around. It was plot threads being signposted as VERY IMPORTANT and then completely dropped by the following scene.
It was a movie that read like it'd been rushed into production at the rough-draft stage when it desperately needed another few rewrites.
Some examples:
- The scientist's mind-link with the Kaiju. This is a hugely important sequence, on with a lot of plot stuff hinges. Among other things, we find out the link is two-way, the Kaiju learned a ton of stuff about human defenses that they can now exploit, AND they can track the scientist guy after being inside his mind.
... and then, after the fight in Hong Kong, it simply ceases to matter. What about the link being two-way? What about all the stuff that the Kaiju learned about human technology? It's completely dropped. The Kaiju who come through the Rift at the end don't seem to be any more high-powered than normal ones (just bigger), nor do they possess any of the special modifications like the EMP generator that were used so effectively by the ones at Hong Kong. The second monster mind-meld doesn't seem to result in any ill effects or any additional information being transmitted to the Kaiju. It's like the movie starts waving its arms going, "Giant monsters! Fighting! Over here! Pay no attention to the dangling plot thread!"
My husband also pointed out that an awesome way to use this in the plot would be for the Kaiju to gain some (limited) control over the scientist himself, so he might be a double agent, but no one is really sure, and they don't know if they can trust his information. But no.
- EVERYTHING about the training and implementation of the Jaeger pilot program. They don't do a test run or any training in the Drift before they hook up two pilots ... with all the weapons TURNED ON? SERIOUSLY? And they don't have backup pilots? THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING IN THE WORLD. You have these incredibly expensive fighting machines ... you should have test pilots and redundant systems and simulator dry runs out the wazoo. What if one of your pilots gets sick, or is hung over because he stayed up late drinking, or broke his arm brawling in the hall? TOO BAD, SYDNEY, CAN'T SAVE YOU TODAY, THE PILOT HAS THE FLU. I know it may be a small thing to fixate on, but when TWO pivotal scenes in the movie (Mako breaking down and almost blowing up the control room, and Stacker swapping in for Aussie Dad at the last minute) rely entirely upon this lack of simulators, backup pilots, or any other form of common-sense safety measure, my suspension of disbelief is hung by the neck until dead.
- And speaking of safety measures, WHERE ARE YOUR FUCKING ESCAPE PODS. Because they HAVE THEM! The point at which Raleigh deployed Mako's escape pod in the final sequence is the point at which my sympathy for all the dead pilots flew out the window because NONE OF THEM HAD TO DIE! Now, there are ways that the escape pods could've been bypassed or ruined or rendered unusable, and some of the pilots might have died anyway (Raleigh's brother, for example), but ... ESCAPE PODS. SERIOUSLY. OMG. At the very least, Stacker and his partner easily had time to push an eject button after they pushed the self-destruct.
How am I supposed to mourn for characters who are too dumb to push an eject button. ;_;
- Another example of a dangling/unused plot thread is Raleigh's connection with his dead brother. Or, rather, there was simply no point that I could see to have him be Drift-linked at the moment of his brother's death. He wasn't more messed up than just having his brother die in front of him would've made him. He didn't have any weird sci-fi after-effects like hearing his brother's voice or seeing him. His trauma presumably made Mako go cuckoopants in the Drift, but plain old garden-variety trauma could do that just as easily. And yet, it's signposted as a Big Deal ... and then not used.
- Nukes. Each of the robots essentially carries a nuke (its reactor core), and every time one of these is used against the monsters, it works. The only problem is, these nukes have a human being strapped to them, and you can't use them without killing the pilot, which seems inhumane. So why don't you remove the human being? And while you're at it, blowing up the Jaeger also destroys a multi-billion-dollar piece of equipment, so what if you remove that too, and just leave the reactor core part?
... oh wait. That is called a ballistic missile. WE HAVE THEM ALREADY.
POINT THREE: The physics.
Complaining about science/physics/engineering fail in a movie about giant robots punching monsters seems rather pointless, and it probably is. I just kept having these moments when common sense and logic would rear their heads at inopportune times. Like, for example, a robot the size of a 40-story building getting flung across half of Hong Kong. I know what happens when you drop a 747 from a great height. It doesn't end well for the 747. I guess it's easier for me to swallow this sort of cartoon physics in an anime than in a live-action movie.
Also, I was watching the movie with an engineer, which didn't help (and resulted in a lot of complaining from the seat next to me). A lot of the post-movie dinner discussion involved him coming up with alternate ways of killing the monsters that would be much cheaper and less destructive than BUILDING A 200-FOOT ROBOT TO PUNCH IT.
And yes, I am aware that the writers self-evidently started with "giant robot" and worked their way backwards from there. The movie is never NOT going to include giant robots and justify their existence somehow. I am down with that! I just ... wish it had been a better justification. ;_;
I need to quit because this is getting pretty long, but I haven't even gotten around to the fact that the movie, in some ways, was like the highly abridged version of the 26-episode anime that it wanted to be. Most of the emotional relationships were told rather than shown, because we never actually saw any scenes with the characters that weren't directly related to killing monsters. I think it might have gone a long way towards salvaging the movie for me if we'd gotten just a few scenes of, say, Mako and Stacker having dinner together, or the characters playing or having downtime or ... aargh. Okay, we did have that brief scene in the mess when Raleigh was getting the lay of the land. But that's the only example along those lines that I can think of. Even action movies occasionally take time to show the characters just being themselves. (Ideally.) I think half my trouble relating to the characters is that we were given so little to relate TO. Some of the actors (okay, two of the actors) managed to humanize their characters regardless. Others (*cough*Raleigh*cough*), let's say, didn't.
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It really bugged me that the Jaegers weren't remote-controlled drones. WE HAVE THAT TECHNOLOGY NOW.
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I liked certain aspects of the worldbuilding and Mako and Stacker, I just wish they had been in a better movie.
... is pretty much 100% of my reaction. (That said, I don't begrudge anyone their squee! I'm glad they liked it! And I totally understand fanning on flawed canons; I have been guilty of that many times myself. I just wish I was able to share in the general "wheee" over the movie rather than being the wet blanket in the corner.)
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Because I felt like she did have a really nuanced and interesting story, and it's not at all her fault the movie involved a lot of Dudes Tell Mako What To Do.
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#3 didn't bother me very much, some of #2 I could ignore (I was sort of glad that the two-way link wasn't more important because I didn't want more scientist scenes; by now I'm almost more surprised if a movie remembers escape pods; testing the Drift in the actual Jaeger was the one that seemed most inexplicably stupid especially since iirc we already saw a Drifting scene not in a full Jaeger.) #1 was SO ANNOYING argh. Okay, having pilots from all different corners of the world makes a lot of sense, but then they kill the Russians and the Chinese without any interaction with the main characters AND the two scientists that survive until the end and become Unlikely Heroes are white male arrogant jerks? So unnecessary :(
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I think the thing that really blindsided me is #1, because I was seeing a lot of squee from people who are very thinky about those aspects, and ... I don't know, I guess I thought the movie would be much better about that stuff. Ohhhh well. At least the movie gave us Mako and Stacker, who were awesome. :)
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And also, while I'm not high on squee about the movie, pretty much anything with giant robots and Idris Elba is going to make my hit list. #1 was the source of much grumbling during the movie, though, most definitely. Plot holes I'm perfectly willing to admit I usually am too enthralled to see (one of the reasons I am able to watch crappy canons and enjoy them so easily). But anyway, totally understand your rant, and am nodding along, despite my own love of the movie, the robots, Stacker, and especially Mako.
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no subject