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.