A Wild Franchise: A Pacific Rim Video Essay

The little girl playing memory Mako is the best kid actor

The hug at the end (instead of a kiss) is one of my favorite decisions in cinema history.

Me: ah yes. Idris Elba. From Cats (2019) and presumably some other movies.

Me: oh, another Pacific Rim movie great movie kills Mako Me: there is no sequel, Mako and Raleigh are best buds retired and super happy

Hell yeah I've been hyped for this

Funny thing about the "extra" comment from Herman: I've met a few mathematicians and literally all of them would have agreed with the "Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of god" comment

the onslaught of gay at 56:20 is transcendant

One thing I love so much about Pacific rim is it's not just America saving the whole world, but the world teaming up to tackle a threat bigger than them. Most blockbusters are so "Americanised" it's nice to see this film have abit of diversity.

28:50 Also fun fact! Red is a symbol of good luck in Asian cultures, specifically in Chinese culture. (I know Mako is Japanese, but Japanese culture was once influenced by Chinese culture) Shoes are particularly seen as lucky when red. They’re meant to draw in good things and fortune. It’s tragic irony that her lucky shoes are so closely tied to the murder of her parents

Name a more iconic duo than John Boyega and the most painfully gay characters possible that never get to actually be gay

as an actual everyday cane user (who is also jewish and neurodivergent lolol) i personally love herman and i think the actor is one of the few ppl who really properly incorporated the cane into his character's physicality and like. actually uses it properly and in a way i recognize in my own life. i guess i mind an abled actor playing him a lot less since there was so much obvious effort and care in his portrayal. herman makes me feel seen in a way i haven't experienced with other characters.

The studios don’t deserve these films.

Real Talk: Mako should be a cyborg in the third. Have her brain survive the mess, have it be that she's been kept alive in secret because someone suspected interference from the Precursors, have her be a bit of a Ghost in the Shell omage but still firmly her own thing, and have her be the most terrifying Jager pilot possible due to the machinery now supporting her brain, and most importantly have her be functionally immortal unless she has a nuke directly dropped on her.

One thing not mentioned in this that I loved so much about this movie was how very obviously connected and intimate Mako and Raleigh are without it being overly sexual. Like, its obvious they like each other! but as someone on the ace spectrum to see in that final moment where there's no need for a kiss to know how much they love and care for one another really meant a lot to me! I just love so much that this series (at least the two movies I haven't watched the show) have more of an emphasis on love and connection without it needing to be overly romantic or sexual. I loved this video so much! but now need to go watch this movie again aha

As someone with ASD the thing that got me about the original pacific rim that none of the rest of it (that I have seen) behind all the cool designs and action was the let's call it logic, behind the first film. I remember just after the film came out and some uni friends and I were bantering about it and one said "why not just booby trap the breach" and another said "why not just pummel it with guns from far away before it got to land" and it started to click that the film had already gone into why that was never a solution. The kaiju learn and adapt that's the whole point of the hive mind, what one kaiju dies fighting the next is ready for. Every defense we have only works until the kaiju find its weakness. And that logic runs through the entire film. The original kaiju come equipped with tools to deal with typical earth weapons. They are big, armored and their blood is a bio-hazard. You can't just shoot them to death. So as silly a premise as Jaegers are, they make lots of sense in context. What's better is that until the end of the end of the prologue they jaegers are perfectly designed to confuse and confound the kaiju. The last line of the intro is "everything changed". Then we get the fight against Knifehead, the pilots go out expecting a typical fight, but knifehead fight's smart, really smart, it fakes its own death halfway through the fight but more importantly it learns two things. 1. It's first attacks are aimed at the jaeger's chest and torso, the or mortal wounds to any living creature and I'm sure the kaiju have done this many times before, but then, after its shot by a plasma cannon it hides. It's next attack is two fold, it needs that plasma cannon gone and so it goes after the arm. which it destroys but then it goes for the head. This is crucial, every jaeger seen destroyed, all of them, have had their heads damaged in some catastrophic way. No kaiju destroys a jaeger in the film without getting the head. That is what changed. After Knifehead the jaegers start losing and its because knifehead learned that the head is the weak spot and suddenly all the advantages of the jaeger are gone. Up until that point the kaiju were losing, from then on, it's a slaughter. That brings us to the bulk of the film. The kaiju wall is seen to be ineffective, and given our premise, of course it is. The moment the kaiju first encounter it they get its baring and the next kaiju comes equipped to go right through it, in less than an hour. The wall is a static unchanging thing, it is hopeless against the adaptable and custom made kaiju. I'll get back to this. For now let me just cover the next part of this logic. The last four jaegers, but specifically the other three. Crimson Typhoon, Cherno Alpha and Striker Eureka. Why these three? Because they all subvert the typical jaeger, they can all protect their heads. Cherno has a head that isn't where it should be, it's in the middle of the chest and heavily armoured, it even has a fake head atop it's shoulders, any kaiju aiming for it's head will miss the pilots and attack an armored tower with a light atop it, leaving it vulnerable to cherno's brutal pummeling assault. Typhoon is another anomaly; it has three pilots and three arms, it's also shown to be extremely mobile, not swift like Striker but flexible, able to do some extreme maneuvers. With three brains and three arms it's weird enough that the kaiju cannot effectively fight it solo. Striker, a kaiju killing machine, not only is it the most modern jaeger, it's fast, mobile, and is equipped with state of the art long range weapons that end fights fast. Danger is the last one, but she's a curveball and to explain that we have to get to... Newt drifts with a kaiju, and the connection goes both ways. Sure he learns all about the kaiju but they learn everything he knows, and suddenly two kaiju turn up with weapons and knowledge of the three active jaegers (gypsy is benched for all newt knows). So let's talk about Otachi and Leatherback the two best design kaiju in the film. Combined this deadly duo were going to win no matter what the three jaeger's did, and really, those three jaegers were doomed. Otachi, the swiss army knife: she has acid for cherno and the tail of a jaeger assassin, perfectly designed to grab and crush jaeger heads. Leatherback brawn with brains. Equipped with an EMP to take out any jaeger newer than a Mark III (Striker and Typhoon) and with the muscle to rip a slow jaeger like Cherno to bits. There is no combination of those three jaegers that can handle these to kaiju. No matter who goes to bad first they are doomed, as we see in the film. But those two kaiju are even more brilliant than just that, they also come with wall nullifying abilities just in case, see Mutivore, (the kaiju that attacks Sydney on TV) learnt all about the wall, so the next two kaiju come with ways of getting over it in minutes if not seconds. Leatherback is built like a Gorrila, and is seen to be creative and dexterous (it's the only kaiju to ever use tools) it can simply climb over the wall and Otachi, that girl has wings, she can just fly over it. So what about Danger. She was rebuilt by Macho. Firstly the kaiju thought she was dead, gone a none issue. Leatherback is surprised when she turns up. Second she's been upgraded with new tech and new weapons. That's why she handles Leatherback and Otachi so well, they weren't designed to fight her, they have to fight fair again. And coupled with the pilots skill and adaptability none of their gimmicks work. The EMP is disabled, the acid gets dodged, the tail frozen and smashed. Only teh wings pose a threat but then the sword completely blindsides Otachi. Danger was the right jaeger at the right time. The final fight is similar. The next two jaiju aren't attackers this time, they are defenders and they are ready to take on the last to jaegers. No secrets this time, they are ready. Scunner is big and hard to kill, seriously it takes a nuke to take out this guy. His job is to slow down the jaegers. Raiju is fast, a sniper, it's job is to take out gypsy by being too fast to deal with. They're job though is to hold their ground till the big guns, Slattern, arrive. Slattern's job is to stop Striker. We see again, the kaiju using their knowledge of the jaegers again. Raiju and Scunner tag team Danger, even using the jaegers own tactics against them. Raiju snipes danger's sword (the one they know of) but the second sword catches it off guard, again a secret kept from the Kaiju is what kills them, they didn't know about the second sword. Slattern too uses gained knowledge, it's first attack specifically takes out striker's chest cannons and disables the nuke. Slattern's tactics even force striker to detonate the nuke, when it adapted to striker's near fatal assault. It's Raleigh unpredictability and Stacker's strategic forethought that win in the end. I genuinely believe the Kaiju didn't believe that a crippled Danger would decide to jump Slattern and ride it into the breach. It's what keeps bringing me back to this movie. That logic, that depth, you can see it over and over throughout the film. It truly shows how much effort was put into that movie, despite it being on the surface a cheese monster flick. I'm just a bit of a fan.

The frustration I have at Uprising giving those kids RANGER suits and it never occurred to them to you know, make them different colors to help differentiate them. Like a certain other tokusatstu property that refer to themselves as RANGERS and are known for wearing various colored suits. Such a missed opportunity at a very pointed reference left over from the first movie.

Uprising lacked the self-confidence that the original movie had, so it was constantly undermining its own sincerity with jokey-jokes. Plot and pacing and cinematography and everything else aside, the confidence to be sincere is what made the first movie resonate with people.

The aggressively romantic tension between Mako and Raleigh is EVERYTHING and without that, there was and is no reason for me to ever watch the sequel since the removal/sidelining of them means the most magical part of why I love the first film is gone. Thank you for including me in this giant Pacific Rim project. Guillermo Del Toro is extremely underrated by the industry and I'm so glad you put in an entire section hyping him up. I'm commenting as I'm still watching this but I'm sure I will love everything left for me to watch. 🌸✨

IMHO, John Boyega's total commitment to whatever was happening in his scenes, reaching back to his "Attack the Block" character, carried this movie.

Why is Guillermo hating cows so upsetting to me 😭