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Pacific Rim Spoiler Thread: Today, We Are Cancelling the Use of Spoiler Tags!

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I was thinking the entire first half that a bladed weapon of some sorts would be really effective and then when they pulled it out I wondered why they hadn't thought of it before.

They have had bladed weapons since Mark-1s. But as they say, a Jaeger is only as good as its pilot. Typhoon had 3 spinning buzz-saw hands and gained a reputation of slicing Kaiju to bits. Alpha had defended the Russian Wall for 6 years with its top-tier armor and Piston Power Punches, so it was a "if it ain't broke dont fix it" kind of deal.
 
i dont want to think about the plot holes and bad parts of the movie, but i cant stop my brain.

-

the reveal of the sword weapon was fucking amazing, but then its like, they shoulda used that a long time ago. many points in the movie before that where it would have been useful.

why did they not use projectile weapons like missiles, it was all hand to hand combat.

the whole bit about the dinosaurs was confusing.

so the Kaiju can only take over planets that can support them, so, only planets like earth, seems rather limited.

somehow the mind drift with the Kaiju and the wacky scientist strengthened the portal... and made him a target... or something. i didnt really get that part.

why did they shut down the Jager program.

why did they think a giant wall would stop the Kaiju.

the part where the son and father shoot the Kaiju with flare guns was so stupid it was painful.

all the other robots sucked balls and were defeated in seconds. what a waste of effort and time.

the exposition dump at the start of the film felt rushed. a fuck ton of info was shoved in the audience's face before even knowing what the hell was going on. it could have been its own movie with the amount of info that was given.

the movie was good though, i would watch it again.
 
Really? I thought one of the best parts of Pacific Rim was that there wasn't a romantic relationship between the two. Her looking out at him wasn't really romantic, more curiosity and longing to be his partner in fighting.

I was super happy they didn't kiss at the end. They are two people who care about each other. That's enough
 
So if we assume for the moment that such robots with the mobility displayed are actually physically possible for us to construct then I think they actually make quite a bit of sense. They establish right away that missles and such are useless, so we're looking at blunt force trauma on a massive scale or piercing, as we see, as ways to kill the Kaiju. What's better then a humanoid robot at that, especially if we're working from the premise that the humanoid robot has human reflexes and speed that it wouldn't have if it was, say, a giant spider or something because of the attunement of the human operators? Everything else I can think of has huge problems with either manuverability or speed or both (basically all variations I can think of on battleships)

Well, the missiles Striker Eureka used seemed pretty effective. Just strap some launchers to some gunships and go nuts. Of course, the Kaiju would probably adapt. Although the most logical countermeasure would be to build a giant metal dome around the fissure.

I was super happy they didn't kiss at the end. They are two people who care about each other. That's enough

Yep, that was definitely the right call
 
They have had bladed weapons since Mark-1s. But as they say, a Jaeger is only as good as its pilot. Typhoon had 3 spinning buzz-saw hands and gained a reputation of slicing Kaiju to bits. Alpha had defended the Russian Wall for 6 years with its top-tier armor and Piston Power Punches, so it was a "if it ain't broke dont fix it" kind of deal.

Too bad you have to read a comic book beforehand to know how badass those two Jaegers were. If this wasn't the case people would have been able to care more about them when they got wrecked instantaneously.
 
Here's what I think would have been better:

Split this into a trilogy of movies: First movie is told from civilian experience from where the Kaiju first arrive. Second movie is about the rise of the Jaeger program. Third movie is Pacific Rim minus the background.

This would allow the suspense to kick in a bit more and care more about what's going on.

Dude, how are you going to get guarantee from the studios that they will fund ALL 3 movies before you start script writing on the first one to plan it as a trilogy...?

Too bad you have to read a comic book beforehand to know how badass those two Jaegers were. If this wasn't the case people would have been able to care more about them when they got wrecked instantaneously.

Yeah, in fighting movies like these hierarchy of badassness is what you should include. We knew the original Gipsy Danger capped out at a high Cat.3 Kaiju, and the Striker smashed a Cat.4 (?) Kaiju one day after it was decommissioned. Instead of just telling us, there should have been at least flashbacks of Typhoon and Alpha soloing a Kaiju each. 30 secs more of Striker smashing that Sydney Kaiju would have been better too.

Striker - Speed and Power
Typhoon - Crimson Formation (buzz-saw slice and dice)
Alpha - Armour and Brute Power.

Showcase their power first, then have them get tested and failed by the new big bad. Maybe they're in the deleted scenes. You never know.
 
Wife and I watched it for anniversary date night. First time we've seen a movie opening weekend since The Dark Knight, and we both loved it.

Of course, being a Voltron fanboy, I was making all sorts of wisecracks.

At the beginning, when the brothers board Gypsy Danger: "... and I'll form the head!"
When Mako pushes the Sword button: "FORM! BLAZING! SWORD!"

Also loved the send-up of Independence Day at the end with the obligatory "oh shit" look on the aliens face right before Gypsy goes boom.

I was kinda disappointed that GlaDOS' role was played straight through the entire movie. I wanted to see at least one Portal reference, like when one of the fights just barely bumps a bird and startles it into flight: "AAAH! A bird! Kill it!" Ah well.
 
Wife and I watched it for anniversary date night. First time we've seen a movie opening weekend since The Dark Knight, and we both loved it.

Of course, being a Voltron fanboy, I was making all sorts of wisecracks.

At the beginning, when the brothers board Gypsy Danger: "... and I'll form the head!"
When Mako pushes the Sword button: "FORM! BLAZING! SWORD!"

Also loved the send-up of Independence Day at the end with the obligatory "oh shit" look on the aliens face right before Gypsy goes boom.

I was kinda disappointed that GlaDOS' role was played straight through the entire movie. I wanted to see at least one Portal reference, like when one of the fights just barely bumps a bird and startles it into flight: "AAAH! A bird! Kill it!" Ah well
.
Dear lord no. Sorry but that would have been horrible IMO
 
Dude, how are you going to get guarantee from the studios that they will fund ALL 3 movies before you start script writing on the first one to plan it as a trilogy...?

Well the first movie would essentially play off the success of movies like Cloverfield and Godzilla. If that does well, then you make the second movie.

I personally think the first movie in my sample trilogy will have done better than Pacific Rim will do in the box office, my theatre wasn't that full.
 
i just saw this movie. it was cool but not worth like years of hype. it was just cool

That's how I feel about it, though I didn't hype myself for this at all. I went in with almost no expectations and left satisfied. Beats leaving the theater in a confused daze after This Is The End, if anyone has seen that ending... Heh.
 
i dont want to think about the plot holes and bad parts of the movie, but i cant stop my brain.
why did they not use projectile weapons like missiles, it was all hand to hand combat.

If missiles alone were effective, they wouldn't have needed Jaegers at all because jets would have been sufficiently effective against them. When they tried to fight one conventionally, they ended up dropping a nuke on San Francisco.

the whole bit about the dinosaurs was confusing.

Dinosaurs = kaiju. There was no "extinction event." It was simply a failed invasion because the atmosphere was too oxygen-rich.

somehow the mind drift with the Kaiju and the wacky scientist strengthened the portal... and made him a target... or something. i didnt really get that part.

The kaiju are all psychically connected in a hive-mind (think Borg). The mind-drift is a two-way link, which basically means he inadvertently gave the kaiju access to everything in his brain. That's why the Jaegers got trounced so badly--they were prepared based on the intel that the scientist gave them.

why did they shut down the Jager program.

The Jaegers stopped being effective, so they got de-funded.

why did they think a giant wall would stop the Kaiju.

Because LOL politicians.

the part where the son and father shoot the Kaiju with flare guns was so stupid it was painful.

More like going down fighting instead of sitting inside their Jaeger waiting to be killed.

all the other robots sucked balls and were defeated in seconds. what a waste of effort and time.

See above. They were defeated in seconds because dumbass scientist leaked the plans to the kaiju.
 
Dinosaurs = kaiju. There was no "extinction event." It was simply a failed invasion because the atmosphere was too oxygen-rich.

.

I've seen this said a few times in the thread. This is not the case.

At least, that's not what I gleaned from it. Seems to be a point of contention. We need straight answers.

I don't remember his word for word explanation, but I took it to mean that they tried to invade during the Dino period but couldn't handle the environment so they left. That wouldn't make sense at all if they were Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were here for a loooong time.
 
I've seen this said a few times in the thread. This is not the case.

At least, that's not what I gleaned from it. Seems to be a point of contention. We need straight answers.

"They already tried man, the dinosaurs!" "We practically did the terraforming for them!"

Paraphrasing...
 
It would have been much better as say an HBO mini-series so they could have given us all of the character development and plot information that the movie really needed.

The battles really didn't live up to my expectations either. Everything was too "close up" and "quick cut" for my taste.
 
"They already tried man, the dinosaurs!" "We practically did the terraforming for them!"

Paraphrasing...

I think he meant that's how the Dinosaurs went extinct, not why they were here.

If the Kaiju are Dinosaurs, they successfully lived here longer than humans and lived many many thousands (more like millions) of years here without ill effect. That's feels contradictory to what he said about the environment being unsuitable for them.
 
If missiles alone were effective, they wouldn't have needed Jaegers at all because jets would have been sufficiently effective against them. When they tried to fight one conventionally, they ended up dropping a nuke on San Francisco.



Dinosaurs = kaiju. There was no "extinction event." It was simply a failed invasion because the atmosphere was too oxygen-rich.



The kaiju are all psychically connected in a hive-mind (think Borg). The mind-drift is a two-way link, which basically means he inadvertently gave the kaiju access to everything in his brain. That's why the Jaegers got trounced so badly--they were prepared based on the intel that the scientist gave them.



The Jaegers stopped being effective, so they got de-funded.



Because LOL politicians.



More like going down fighting instead of sitting inside their Jaeger waiting to be killed.



See above. They were defeated in seconds because dumbass scientist leaked the plans to the kaiju.

lots of small plot details i missed.

i dont remember the nuke on San Fran thing. if it was in the beginning super fast montage part, then thats prolly why i dont remember.

im p sure they said the dinosaurs were a trial run, and they died/left or something until they came back later. lots of dialog was rushed in this movie.

i knew they said it was a '2 way path' thing, but it wasnt clear what the Kaiju learned from him or what impact it had. its still lame the other robots got owned in seconds though, even if it was explained plot wise.

the Jaegers were all we had to fight them though, the back up plan was a big wall. seemed like a really dumb thing to do. the Jaeger program became 'the resistance' and went underground or something, it was confusing.

the son and father shot the flare guns, and then kinda just looked at each other and were like, welp, were fucked. like what was a flare gun gonna do. stay inside the giant metal robot, at least its some form of protection.
 
It would have been much better as say an HBO mini-series so they could have given us all of the character development and plot information that the movie really needed.

The battles really didn't live up to my expectations either. Everything was too "close up" and "quick cut" for my taste.
And they couldn't have afforded any of the CG. The one Blackwater explosion took a huge chunk of GoT VFX budget. That was one damn explosion.

The battle scenes were pretty coherent in my eyes - except when they dove into the cockpit. Far more coherent than Transformers but not quite as clear as Cameron's work (although, apples and oranges). Del Toro really tried to show off the scale for all of the battles, especially the Hong Kong one. In fact, I really loved when they were chasing the Kaiju through the alleys, and you really got the sense of paranoia when they panned tight on the head of Gipsy Danger.

I realized after the fact that all but one of the battles were done at night/with rain because the day light Striker Eureka scene looked a bit farcical. If all the fights were done in broad daylight, I'm sure the audience would've unintentionally thought of it through the lens of Power Rangers.
lots of small plot details i missed.
Yup.
i dont remember the nuke on San Fran thing. if it was in the beginning super fast montage part, then thats prolly why i dont remember.
"Six days and countless lives later..." a long with b-roll footage of planes and tanks fighting in vain.
im p sure they said the dinosaurs were a trial run, and they died/left or something until they came back later. lots of dialog was rushed in this movie.
It was clear enough for most people in this thread.
i knew they said it was a '2 way path' thing, but it wasnt clear what the Kaiju learned from him or what impact it had. its still lame the other robots got owned in seconds though, even if it was explained plot wise.
This was addressed directly in the dialog by Ron Perlman. "The mind link goes two ways, you moron." as he slapped Charlie Day.
the Jaegers were all we had to fight them though, the back up plan was a big wall. seemed like a really dumb thing to do. the Jaeger program became 'the resistance' and went underground or something, it was confusing.
What? There was an entire scene dedicated to this. "You have eight months of funding then we pull the plug." then the Australian father goes, "We don't need them."
the son and father shot the flare guns, and then kinda just looked at each other and were like, welp, were fucked. like what was a flare gun gonna do. stay inside the giant metal robot, at least its some form of protection.
...the whole point was to get its attention. They couldn't do dick from inside the dead jaeger.
 
"They already tried man, the dinosaurs!" "We practically did the terraforming for them!"

Paraphrasing...

They're telling me these aliens unleashed Dinosaurs which ruled the world for 135 million year, but something failed there. Ok, let's leave that alone, the dinosaur went extinct 65 million year ago, they came back after those millions of years. Man, these aliens are immortals or their species can really hold some grudge. I really couldn't buy it.
 
Anyways, I fucking loved this movie. Just exactly the fun, huge robot romp that I dreamed of seeing as a kid.

That said, I don't think anyone jumping in this thread should conflate "I really enjoyed this movie" with "This movie is the pinnacle of filmmaking."

Keep Calm and Carry On.
They're telling me these aliens unleashed Dinosaurs which ruled the world for 135 million year, but something failed there. Ok, let's leave that alone, the dinosaur went extinct 65 million year ago, they came back after those millions of years. Man, these aliens are immortals or their species can really hold some grudge. I really couldn't buy it.
"They colonize entire worlds and sap resources." [Show footage of another planet with a sun on the horizon]

I mean, shit, if this is the one thing you "don't buy" in a movie about gigantic robots being built to repel an alien-reptilian monster threat across the Pacific Rim...
 
ill post the things i did like.

the color. so much color. dark backgrounds with everything glowing bright colors. it was beautiful.

the fight scenes where creative and fun.

the creatures and robots had weight to them, and moved like giant objects should. they impacted the environment around them in a realistic manner.

i liked all the human characters.

the movie found the right tone, a balance of drama and comedy. it was fun and kinda campy, but you could also take it serious, and the dark moments were dark but not super gritty and grim.

the minor plot holes and complaints do not stop this movie from being just a really fucking fun movie. it was gorgeous, creative and awesome.

i really want a sequel.
 
I think he meant that's how the Dinosaurs went extinct, not why they were here.

If the Kaiju are Dinosaurs, they successfully lived here longer than humans and lived many many thousands (more like millions) of years here without ill effect. That's feels contradictory to what he said about the environment being unsuitable for them.

Agreed. Dinosaurs have lived for about 135 million years on Earth while mankind has only lived for about 2 million years.

Im thinking the Aliens preferred less oxygenated environment and a colder climate, supported with the fact that the Kaiju they're sending have no problem with the low oxygenated and coldness of the sea depths.
 
What? There was an entire scene dedicated to this. "You have eight months of funding then we pull the plug." then the Australian father goes, "We don't need them."

Stacker also made a point afterwards about how the Russians were the ones doing some funding on the side as well.

the son and father shot the flare guns, and then kinda just looked at each other and were like, welp, were fucked. like what was a flare gun gonna do. stay inside the giant metal robot, at least its some form of protection.

Their specific mission was to be a second line of defense and protect the city. They disobeyed to get close to the fight and try to save the others, but the EMP shut them down. When the Jaeger died they went out of the mech and tried to get the kaijus attention, probably to make some time while the Shatterdome figured something out. They were aware Gipsy was still in there.

They knew it was stupid, they even said so explicitly. It wasn't like they were trying to take the monster down with flare guns.
 
They're telling me these aliens unleashed Dinosaurs which ruled the world for 135 million year, but something failed there. Ok, let's leave that alone, the dinosaur went extinct 65 million year ago, they came back after those millions of years. Man, these aliens are immortals or their species can really hold some grudge. I really couldn't buy it.

They might have meant that the aliens caused dino extinction, but the line is ambiguous.
 
I was personally disappointed with how the aliens looked. When Charlie Day had his first little mind link/meld, it looked like these guys were going to be little fairies (a la those guys in the first Hellboy) that were piloting the Kaiju, and I was like "whoa, that's weird but potentially neat."

And then when Gipsy first dives into their side of the rift, you see some pretty weird almost Lovecraftian visuals.

Then it turns out they're ID4 dudes.
 
The movie was so disappointing.
If popular characters such as spiderman and superman spent so much time telling us the origin story. Why didn't they do that here to establish a lore?
All of the characters was paper thin and the plot was totally by the numbers. Action was good though, which makes it even worse because of the potential that it had.
 
Here's what I think would have been better:

Split this into a trilogy of movies: First movie is told from civilian experience from where the Kaiju first arrive. Second movie is about the rise of the Jaeger program. Third movie is Pacific Rim minus the background.

This would allow the suspense to kick in a bit more and care more about what's going on.

Also get better actors and be less campy.

Otherwise, the movie was extremely fun to watch, just wasn't that good.

Reasoning like this is why we get forced trilogies. I'm glad that PR skipped the origin story and condensed it to a 1min title sequence and throws you into what would be 2nd and 3rd movies of a trilogy.

Also, I loved the campiness.
 
The movie was so disappointing.
If popular characters such as spiderman and superman spent so much time telling us the origin story. Why didn't they do that here to establish a lore?
All of the characters was paper thin and the plot was totally by the numbers. Action was good though, which makes it even worse because of the potential that it had.

Because we wanted to see power rangers on acid. Not the origin of engineering schematics.
 
I'm sure an entire origin story for Pacific Rim about conventional military tactics failing to battle big old monsters would've done gangbusters and justified a sequel.

Real fucking sure.
 
And they couldn't have afforded any of the CG. The one Blackwater explosion took a huge chunk of GoT VFX budget. That was one damn explosion.

The battle scenes were pretty coherent in my eyes - except when they dove into the cockpit. Far more coherent than Transformers but not quite as clear as Cameron's work (although, apples and oranges). Del Toro really tried to show off the scale for all of the battles, especially the Hong Kong one. In fact, I really loved when they were chasing the Kaiju through the alleys, and you really got the sense of paranoia when they panned tight on the head of Gipsy Danger.

I realized after the fact that all but one of the battles were done at night/with rain because the day light Striker Eureka scene looked a bit farcical. If all the fights were done in broad daylight, I'm sure the audience would've unintentionally thought of it through the lens of Power Rangers.

Yup.

"Six days and countless lives later..." a long with b-roll footage of planes and tanks fighting in vain.

It was clear enough for most people in this thread.

This was addressed directly in the dialog by Ron Perlman. "The mind link goes two ways, you moron." as he slapped Charlie Day.

What? There was an entire scene dedicated to this. "You have eight months of funding then we pull the plug." then the Australian father goes, "We don't need them."

...the whole point was to get its attention. They couldn't do dick from inside the dead jaeger.

like i said, if it was in that long montage at the start i porlly missed it.

uh, i see some people confused about the dinosaur thing as well, i dont think its just me.

ok, i get that it goes both ways, so im supposed to realize the Kaiju now know how to dissect the Jaegers and win really easily. did the scientist read and memorize the blue prints for all the robots? he studied the Kaiju not the robots.

ok, im just saying, like the back up plan was a giant wall. lets stop funding the giant robots and build a wall, that will work better. i thought that part was dumb.

i dont remember why they wanted to get the monsters attention, if that was the intent i guess it wasnt dumb.
 
I'm sure an entire origin story for Pacific Rim about conventional military tactics failing to battle big old monsters would've done gangbusters and justified a sequel.

Real fucking sure.

Why not? It'd be cheaper at least. I'd pay to see a fleet of jet fighters doing macross missile massacre on the kaiju. It'd be interesting kind of military drama.
 
Because we wanted to see power rangers on acid. Not the origin of engineering schematics.
You. Not me.

I think it would work so much better as a 2 part movie.
First movie deals with the origin story and first few kaiju attack ending with the first jagger victory with more kaijus attack looming.
2nd movie deals with the subsequent attack leading to the first battle.
 
You. Not me.

I think it would work so much better as a 2 part movie.
First movie deals with the origin story and first few kaiju attack ending with the first jagger victory with more kaijus attack looming.
2nd movie deals with the subsequent attack leading to the first battle.

i agree that a fuck ton of shit was rushed in the first part to set up the movie.

it was like watching a whole seperate movie on fast forward.

but as it was, Pacific Rim was really long, and if this was part 1 and it bombed, then it would end on a cliffhanger, which would suck. so, i dont know what they could have done really.
 
You. Not me.

I think it would work so much better as a 2 part movie.
First movie deals with the origin story and first few kaiju attack ending with the first jagger victory with more kaijus attack looming.
2nd movie deals with the subsequent attack leading to the first battle.
You can always read the comic book which serves as a prequel to the movie.
 
is this movie doing good at the box office i hope so - seems alot of people on the net love it so word of mouth might bring it up some?

The positives word of mouth helps for sure, unfortunately we live in an age where ppl want something to fail just because. And this trollish nature are spreading all over.
 
Too many recent blockbusters, particular DC superhero films, are afraid to embrace who they are. Nobody goes to see Superman because they want to see Krypton explode again. I'm glad we got an earnest, fun, and occasionally silly Giant Robot movie.

But I do understand that it isn't for everyone. I grew up loving mecha anime, so this was absolutely perfect for me.
 
The positives word of mouth helps for sure, unfortunately we live in an age where ppl want something to fail just because. And this trollish nature are spreading all over.

i dont think thats gonna kill it.

i think Grown Ups 2 is.

people fuckin love these new Adam Sandler movies, its weird.

i have a feeling Grown Ups 2 is gonna stomp all over Pacific Rim, which is just sad.
 
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