Movie with Robots, hurrah

[healingmirth]

1. Pacific Rim was really good!

2. But wow, that was a lot of dudes.

3. Seriously, that's a lot of dudes.


If I'm remembering correctly, the first fight is in year 7 of the war. And then we have "5 years later" which equals 12. I don't know whether to count the "14 months" of Jaeger development during the 7 or before it, but I'm guessing during.

So if Mako can't possibly be more than 8 in that flashback, then she's what, 20? And she's in charge of the restoration of Gipsy Danger? Suuuuure.

(ETA - though I will admit I see an argument for her having grown up in the program, and maybe in light of the funding cuts and consolidation, she was the one who stuck it out. But still.)



And my own admission that this is even more armchair amateur science than I'm accusing them of invoking...

So, Gipsy is "analog. nuclear." what does that even mean? They've replaced her (diesel? or was that a different Jaeger) engines with some sort of nuclear-heated steam powered hilarity? No idea why that makes her less susceptible, but I'll accept that you're telling me she doesn't run on batteries. Sure, I'll buy that there's some magical desalination going on. Or they're just constantly flushing the systems. I can't imagine where you'd store fuel, or anything, in there anyway, and they do fight in the water a lot.

But analog? Because I don't think those displays work without computers that'd be disrupted by an EMP, even if she's got plain old pistons powering her joints.

Comments

[muccamukk]

That was A LOT of dudes. It had what I'm calling Default Dudes. Where characters were only women because the writer/director remembered that they were A Thing We Should Have, and added a few.

I refuse to have a problem with a 20 year old in a management position, especially since she was put there to keep her out of combat, in a movie about giant robots fighting alien sea monsters. You can't do almost anything that happened in this movie, so why not? Why is an extraordinary woman getting to be the hero (and narrator aside, she really was the one that got the main story arc) the thing in all of this that's difficult to believe?

Sorry. I'm ranting, and I'm not mad at you. I've been seeing this go around a lot, and it's starting to annoy me. Pac Rim is a super hero movie, and I really find it frustrating that it always seems to be the women who get it in the neck in these things. Somehow women keep getting held to a higher standard of "realism" than anything else in the genre.

[healingmirth]

Oh, I'm not mad at all that she got to be the hero, and extraordinary, etc. and I may have left that out or coded it badly in my abbreviated reaction. I'm thrilled that she was important, I just feel that she got more than a little shafted by being, at least to my perception, "magically" important by adoption, adorableness, proximity to an "original" hero, etc.

I'm still on a bit of a Bechdel rant about it, in my head and skipped right over the "two named women in an action movie wheeeeeee" part that I hate having to cheer for being greater than zero.

(And I hope no apologies are necessary even if we turn out we don't agree, honestly.)

[muccamukk]

I guess so?

I thought the movie made it pretty clear that she'd grown up in the program, dedicated her life too it, and while she had certainly been sponsored by her father, her importance was due to working really, really hard. Obviously it's a matter of perception, but she really felt like a female Inigo Montoya to me. Which was a nice role to see a woman get, especially unsexualised.

As to the management position, it was a ragetag group of semi-outlaws by then. As you say in your ETA: she grew up in the program, knew her shit, and who else was going to do it? Plus her dad wanted her not piloting the damn thing.

The Bechdel rant I can certainly get behind. I really wish the older Australian, the comm traffic guy and one of the scientists (at least) had been women.

[healingmirth]

And the shorter version of that is I wish she'd been saved as a terrified, adorable, 14-year-old.

[muccamukk]

I've been thinking about this, and I can see why that might be an advantage, mostly by ageing up her character generally.

However, I kind of like the iconic aspect of deciding what she wants to do at age eight (which lines up with the actresses age, though Rinko Kikuchi is in her 30s), then dedicating her life to it. At fourteen, she would have already had something of a life, and it would be less like growing up in a battlefield.

I liked that beat.

[healingmirth]

Sorry for the extended pause, was afk longer than expected.

On further reflection, I'm pretty sure I'm just miffed enough about there being at least five different types of male characters to one-and-a-quarter female ones that I'm just putting way too much on Mako, and would likely have been grumpy whichever facets had been written in, for the ones that would necessarily have to have been excluded.

You're absolutely right that the script put her forward as the expert, and I thought she was right there through the sparring scene, but I felt like it walked her competence and agency back with pretty much every step after that. Still brave and committed, though, absolutely.

I'm using "rage" very lightly here, but I've definitely got some rage blinders on that are getting in the way of my cheering what did make it onto the screen.

[muccamukk]

I guess I can see what you're saying. And it's not like there weren't flaws in the movie, but from my perspective, Mako wasn't one of them. She was my favourite, and I cheered for her every step of the way.

Different blinders, I guess.