Tag: pacific rim

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[Movie] Pacific Rim: Uprising

Easiest review ever: If you liked the original Pacific Rim, you’re going to like Pacific Rim: Uprising. If giant robots punching things left you cold the first time around, this one isn’t going to change your mind.

Several years after the original Breach is closed in Pacific Rim, Jaegers are still around because thankfully humanity isn’t dumb enough to think its safe. We find out that Stacker Pentecost had a son named Jake (John Boyega), who is a sriracha and oreo-hoarding party boy rather than following in the footsteps of his father. Jake runs across Amara (Cailee Spaeny) while they’re both trying to steal the same junked Jaeger parts–only Amara wants them to finish her tiny Jaeger, Scrapper, who is small enough for a single person to pilot. Jake and Amara get caught and dragged to Ranger academy, where we find out that Jake was a full-blown Ranger and crapped out of the program for… daddy reasons. Then things get real when Liwen Shao’s company wants replace Jaegers with remote-controlled giant robot drones. Too bad that’s not the only existential threat facing the scrappy Jaeger pilots.

This movie is mostly special effects fun of giant robots throwing down in a way where you can actually tell what’s going on at all times. Unlike another giant robot franchise I could name (*coughcoughTransformerscoughcough*). Visually, it looks cleaner and more streamlined than the first Pacific Rim; you can tell that Guillermo del Toro wasn’t at the helm of this one.

I felt Uprising managed to leave a little more room for characters than the first movie, surprisingly. John Boyega seems to be having a ton of fun as Jake, bouncing off his even-more-generic-than-Charlie-Hunnam white boy foil, whose name is apparently Nate (okay) and is played by Scott Eastwood (sure). There were multiple female pilots, and they all got to talk and have little moments of their own. Newt and Gottlieb get to be quirky and interesting and consequential again. But the real show-stealer is Tian Jing playing Liwen Shao.

And I can’t really tell you why without getting into spoilers. Which follow below the fold. But anyway, enjoy this movie if it’s the kind of movie you like.

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Still in Love With the Sword Button

I saw Pacific Rim for the fourth time today. Shut up, I don’t have a problem. It’s still just my favorite movie of this year. It’s a love letter to my twelve or sixteen or even twenty-two-year-old self.

And the sword button is still my favorite moment in that movie, among a lot of really wonderful moments that fill me with marzipan-flavored glee.

I noticed that people keep ending up at my other Pacific Rim entries with google searches of things like, “why don’t they use the sword button earlier” and variations thereof. And of course, there is the fun question of how the heck did Raleigh not know about the sword button because even if the sword was something Mako added in during the refurbishment, he was quite literally in her head at that point. (The Punchline is Machismo has the best explanation ever, by the way.) Honestly, you could do a lot of arguing about why the pilots even speak out loud to each other at all while in the Jaegers, and I’m sure we could come up with some good excuses like okay Raleigh is the right hemisphere but maybe he’s got other things on his mind and and and…

But this is the thing about the sword button. This is why the movie is so precious to me as someone who grew up watching anime, sentai shows, and kaiju movies. The sword button has nothing to do with narrative logic and everything to do with the emotional language of the movie and its purposeful use of sentai show tropes. The sword didn’t come out until that moment quite literally because that was when it was most dramatic. Think of how many shounen anime (eg: Bleach, DBZ, Rurouni Kenshin) where there are battles that stretch over episode after episode (or issue after issue in manga) in which the hero and villain take turns being almost defeated and then suddenly oh wait did I forget to mention I have an even cooler power/weapon?

See also: Eleventh Hour Superpower, Heroic Second Wind, and Die or Fly. In this case, the eleventh hour power is I have a motherfucking sword button. Pacific Rim is at its heart a movie about teamwork and tropes. Sometimes it challenges the tropes, such as making Raleigh the most emotionally intelligent and open character in the film, and have Mako as the main character and not in a romance. But there are just as many tropes that the movie gleefully plays to the hilt because they are what defines its aesthetic.

The coolest weapon never shows up until the heroes are at the brink of total defeat. All is lost! They’re being dragged up into space by the most ridiculous kaiju ever invented! Raleigh thinks it’s hopeless! And then the biggest badass who has ever lived says no, we can still win this, we have a sword.

That is why the sword button was used then.

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Sword Button Redux (I See Pacific Rim Again)

I saw Pacific Rim again over the weekend. The movie was even better the second time around, because I wasn’t so focused on OH MY GOD SHINY SWORD BUTTON and paying more attention to the characters and what they were saying and doing.

Spoiler warnings for this whole thing since I am wibbling about the characters.

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Pacific Rim and the Bechdel Test

It has been noted by many (including myself) that Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel Test rather spectacularly. It has only two female characters of any note (Mako and half of the Russian Jaeger team, Lt. A Kaidonovsky) and they never have a conversation.

Thinking back on it, I desperately wish that had happened. That would have been amazing, maybe a conversation after Mako almost had her drift-induced disaster.

But I was thinking about it this morning, and the movie has something very few others have: two male characters talking about a woman and neither of them wants to fuck her. And it happens several times. And they talk about how competent she is, with the problem being Stacker is protective, not that she doesn’t have the chops.

That is refreshing. Even if I would have preferred a no bullshit female Jaeger pilot conversation and a little less Stacker and Raleigh butting heads.

I could go on about this movie forever. I need to see it again.

And a few more thoughts: [slight spoilers here]

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Pacific Rim: Your argument is invalid because Sword Button

Let me be clear: I was born to love this movie. I grew up watching Voltron, Power Rangers and other sentai shows, and kaiju movies. I was a giant Gundam weenie for years and years. (Evangelion not so much, but that’s a rant for a different time.) This movie was designed to hit every single nerd squee button I possess all at once and turn me into a shrieking explosion of popcorn and glitter. It’s GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING KAIJU HOW COOL IS THAT.

However, had it only been giant robots fighting monsters, I would have left the theater happy, but not been thrown into paroxysms of pure glee like I am now. Obviously, I’m capable of disliking movies that involve giant robots. I hated Transformers 2 and 3, after all.

But this movie was fun. And it was good. I’d even go so far as to call it groundbreaking, and let me explain why.

But there will be SPOILERS. [okay, I’m trying to use the “more” tag but I don’t know if it’s working, apologies if not.]

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Pacific Rim: Initial Reaction

NGEMIOJREFWOEF-9230IK2P34T8U3540KQFWPSDVLWG-W4TJ24POMFWS;F,PSDCMOEF8Q0912!!!!!!!0WEJPOWEMFW;EFM3-012-13JGIRMWGE[VQ-9R1POLMGRGRJJWEFJEJR[KOQR3[[EKR AND A SWORD BUTTON THERE IS A MOTHERFUCKING SWORD BUTTON IN THIS MOVIE TAKE ME NOW JESUS I AM READY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Okay, I’ll write a real review tomorrow, I promise. I am so ridiculously tired right now you wouldn’t believe. (I rode 67 miles today and didn’t take a nap, so that might have something to do with it.)

BUT THIS MOVIE. YOU SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE.