|
On July 22 2013 02:25 Feartheguru wrote:
Do you really think the Japanese didn't think of the tradeoff when they made their fighter planes fast and agile as opposed to more rugged like the American counterparts, this has to be a joke. The Zero was considered one of the best planes during the time and dominated when it was first introduced. Why do you think the Germans and Russian leaned towards heavier and heavier tanks as the war progressed and for the most part stopped production of light infantry support tanks? Because you're the only one smart enough to figure out that they were bad?
This just supports my point, you're constantly making ridiculous comparisons with no semblance of reality.
The Russians stopped making light support tanks because light support SP guns and armored cars were cheaper. Lend Lease M3s were cheaper still.
The heaviest Russian tank weighed just as much as...the Panther. And they made ten T-34s for every "heavy" tank they made. The Germans were idiots when it came to tank production, I don't see how you can think otherwise.
The Zero was the best plane in its timeframe because a) almost everything there was outdated junk and b) nobody had come up with effective tactics for anything that wasn't junk. The Japanese thought of the tradeoffs, sure. That doesn't mean that the tradeoffs were intelligent.
On July 22 2013 01:32 Feartheguru wrote:
The great wall of China wasn't finished when the mongols conquered China, after it was finished the mongols never came again, so....
Trying to suggest the Atlantic "wall" even fits into this comparison is pretty laughable.
I think you mentioned something about the Maginot line? See above.
The Berlin wall was pretty damn effective and without it most of the USSR satellite states would have fell apart.
The kaiju wall wasn't finished, either. And I wasn't aware that the Mongols were the only folks who invaded China relevant to the Great Wall...
|
I loved every bit of the movie. if i had money to spare i'd go see it again. thank you Guillermo del Toro.
On the merit of the vfx alone, I was already pleased with the film, everything else about it being an homage to the mecha and kaiju genres only served as cherries and icings on top of the main sundae cake.
|
On July 22 2013 07:37 fenrysk wrote:
I loved every bit of the movie. if i had money to spare i'd go see it again. thank you Guillermo del Toro.
On the merit of the vfx alone, I was already pleased with the film, everything else about it being an homage to the mecha and kaiju genres only served as cherries and icings on top of the main sundae cake.
Yeah, it was so pretty. I can't imagine really enjoying it the same way if I got it on Blu-Ray. I was expecting it to be really dumb and silly, but was pleasantly surprised!
|
On July 22 2013 09:49 tshi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 07:37 fenrysk wrote:
I loved every bit of the movie. if i had money to spare i'd go see it again. thank you Guillermo del Toro.
On the merit of the vfx alone, I was already pleased with the film, everything else about it being an homage to the mecha and kaiju genres only served as cherries and icings on top of the main sundae cake. Yeah, it was so pretty. I can't imagine really enjoying it the same way if I got it on Blu-Ray. I was expecting it to be really dumb and silly, but was pleasantly surprised!
It was really dumb and silly.
"Don't touch me"
|
Kaiju blue wasn't fully explained except that it was toxic. My guess is high ammonia maybe? Because the only "Extended" explanation we get was with the dialogue of Charlie Day and Ron Pearlman about the parasites being alive even with the host Kaiju killed. Charlie day mentions that he was surprised the creatures were alive because there is usually not enough ammonia to support their environment.
But other than that, I have no idea how it could possibly be "toxic".
anyway going back. I went into the movie and approached it like I do every movie. I just watch to allow it to bring me to that world away from this "Reality". So I just stop thinking about "here" so I can be "there".
I know about the plot holes you guys keep on talking about, but I did that after the movie not during the movie. At least that allowed me to enjoy it more.
It is kind of like this. When you watch Dragonball, especially the Frieza Arc, didn't you guys even bother to question why the author just simply did not let Frieza blow up Namek with the whole Z gang there, maybe with the exception of Goku? I mean, Saiyans haven't been shown to be able to breathe in Space but Frieza appear to have been able to by being able to shoot down Planet Vegeta in the flashbacks and legend of Bardock. So I treat it like that.
|
Movies don't need to always be sophisticated and if you really wanted to critique the movie, the script could have been improved upon but Pacific Rim was a fuck ton more fun to me than Iron Man 3 or Man of Steel was.
This movie embraces it's campiness without going too overboard on it. It's deliberately dumb and some of the robot designs looks as if they came out of an anime or a 5 year old (the Russian robot). There are better movies to watch if you're looking for a deep, complex narrative but this movie kicked ass.
|
Ok, I am genuinely surprised at the number of people here who are happy with how the movie turned out. Warning - spoilers ahead. I'm going to start with some generalities and responses to some of the arguments that have been brought forward to defend aspects of the plot, before digging in and tackling specific elements. Also, this will be a long post (should I use spoiler tags?).
1. General comments
Now, before the movie came out, pretty much everyone was saying that having Del Toro at the helm would mean he would do things properly - this would be a genuinely good Robots vs Monsters movie. Now that the movie's come out and it turns out after all that with a few exceptions pretty much everything but the fight scenes was bad (more on this later), I'm hearing that we're supposed to be embracing stupid plot elements and sub-par storytelling because "that's how the genre works". Uh, the entire reason we were happy Del Toro was directing was that we were hoping for more than a stupid cliché-filled movie with good-looking fights, remember? I understand some people might now be as critical as that, but let's face it, the non-fighting parts were severely lacking in quality.
I don't know about you, but to me "doing things properly" for a movie involves more than making good fight scenes. And not doing as bad as Transformers for the non-action scenes is not "doing things properly". Right now, the people defending this movie against Transformers are basically saying that it did not contain some of the ridiculous and childish stuff (i.e. robots with balls) that Transformers did - great, but not being as childish as Transformers is not exactly an achievement. When it comes to actually bringing something interesting to the table (as opposed to not having too many negative elements - and it still did have quite a number, see below), giant fights put aside, I'm sad to say that Pacific Rim failed miserably.
Also, I'm sorry but if it is common practice for a genre to feature an idiotic element that can be improved, keeping the idiotic element for no other reason than "it's always been done like that" is an absurd decision. When competent directors like Tarantino and the Coen brothers make a movie to pay homage to a classic genre, they do it with style and by trying to improve on classic plot points/distinctive features of the genre. Defending a stupid plot point because it's supposed to be stupid is absolutely ridiculous - how about putting in a non-stupid plot point that achieves the same thing? Some aspects of a genre can absolutely be improved without detracting in any way from the experience from the genre. One should be striving to produce the best story possible, not simply settle for mediocre-average because the genre's stories are usually mediocre-average. If you're happy with nonsensical elements because they are familiar to you, good for you, but it doesn't make the criticism aimed at these nonsensical elements any less valid.
Of course, again, you have every right to be happy with a completely generic but visually well-done Robots vs Monsters movies. To say that Pacific Rim was "supposed to be" like that because it's a Robot vs Monsters movie, however, is completely wrong. Matrix could have been a stupid movie entirely centered around humans fighting computer programs through martial arts. The original Star Wars trilogy could have been stupid movies entirely centered around the Rebels fighting the Empire through ground and space combat. The Lord of the Rings could have been stupid movies entirely centered around big armies destroying each other. Did these movies still feature the aforementioned fights and battles? Of course they did - and they did so brilliantly, stunning audiences with their visuals. But they were so much more than that, because the directors actually had ambitious visions for their movies and believed that they could make great movies without sacrificing anything with regards to the entertaining battles they would feature. The rest of the movie would not be sorry excuses to bring about the fighting - the fighting would be an integral part of something bigger.
This "something bigger" is very clearly lacking in Pacific Rim. And I'm disappointed in the movie because there was so much to work with (for example, one of the underlying themes is that working together is necessary to overcome great obstacles, but it's touched upon in a fragmented, piecemeal manner). There's really almost nothing to remember from the movie except for the fights. Now, I'm obviously not saying that Pacific Rim had to be as great a story as Matrix, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings for me to be satisfied, but you get my point - it should have aimed way higher than it did. It didn't need to start taking itself too seriously to achieve that either.
Ok, now, before I get down to specifics of the various elements I think are worth commenting on, allow me to answer another argument that's been brought forward quite a lot, which is that since this is a movie about Robots vs Monsters it's allowed to have plenty of stuff that doesn't make sense. One thing that it's important to underline here is that unrealistic premises with regards to the environment/world/universe the characters evolve in are completely fine, and they're different from flawed internal logic, inconsistencies within the narrative, or nonsensical elements that are not derived from the premises. For example, in Star Wars, the fact that there is such a thing as the Force and that the Jedi can learn to use it is unrealistic with regards to our universe, but it is perfectly fine as a premise for the story that's being told. If, however, within that story, some Jedi suddenly cannot/doesn't use his powers in a situation where it would be helpful for them to be used, and there is no reason for this, it's going to be a problem. In the case of Pacific Rim, there is absolutely no problem with the premise that the world is being attacked by giant monsters. It's unrealistic but it's a premise we are presented with (in the form of the narration at the beginning of the movie) and accept (through what has been called suspension of disbelief or secondary belief). This doesn't mean that we have to accept other elements that do not make sense/are illogical in their relation to or beyond these premises, within the world that has been established as the world of the story.
2. Problematic elements of the movie (mostly: plot)
So, let's begin this list with the kaiju in the room (!) - the decision to both build walls on the shores to protect humanity from the kaijus and stop the jaeger program. This, right there, is a perfect example of a plot point that is both beyond retarded and unrealistic in itself and not logically derived from the premises in any way. This is supposed to be Earth as we know it in the near-future, not some alternate Earth where everyone's IQ points have fallen by 75%. There are so many things that are wrong about this decision that it's not even funny: there's no way it can be done around entire continents successfully, it requires more resources than a jaeger program that would be building hundreds of jaegers concurrently, and the walls are not going to stop the kaijus anyway (even if the walls could stand up to individual kaijus, having them progressively mass on the other side of the wall is without a doubt going to lead to them eventually going over/through the walls, even if only by stepping on each other). Not only this, but we are actually presented with a wall not preventing a kaiju from entering a city! What the hell? The only thing that prevented that kaiju from destroying Sidney was the jaeger that was still there, but the Australians still get rid of it and everyone continues building their walls and abandoning the jaegers. I mean, the movie itself shows us workers asking "why the hell are we still building this wall?!" when seeing this. I know it's popular to declare politicians to be idiots, but this was way beyond ridiculous.
Of course, you're going to tell me that there needs to be something putting pressure on the jaeger program, otherwise there'd be no tension in the movie. After all, since the program was initially looking to be effective and sufficient, something needs to change to put the protagonists in a threatening situation. Well, this element is already in the movie: the kaijus are coming out faster and faster, and will soon come out in groups - even with a fully-funded jaeger program, this would mean that they will eventually come out faster than we can produce jaegers (more on jaeger production later). Conclusion: we need to close the rift or we're dead. Another option that would in addition keep the number of jaegers low would be to say that we need some special material to build the jaegers (for example to build the technology that makes the mind meshing possible), like some kind of rare earth that's actually rare, and we're running out of that material, meaning we can't physically build new jaegers. Those are two options on the top of my head - there's no need for humans to have the decision-making skills of a five-year old for the story to work.
Beyond the ludicrous idea to build a wall, a lot of criticism can be addressed to how they shaped the threat and the response to it. First, the kaijus themselves - there really isn't any proper justification as to why jaegers would be needed to fight them in the first place. Jaeger pilots don't really seem to mind spilling kaiju blood in the movie, so it's not because of a concern for their toxic blood. If it's that military forces take too long to take kaijus down, one can genuinely wonder in what world military forces aren't equipped to do way more damage than a few punches by giant robots - and faster too, meaning the kaijus would hardly be able to reach cities. It's not that important, though, because the idea that conventional forces aren't efficient enough can still be bought regardless and taken as part of the premises, but I wish they'd have thought of something to better justify it. Even if we accept that jaegers do the job better, however, there's no reason why we shouldn't always have planes circling above the kaiju - you know, just in case the jaeger loses the fight or is in need of assistance. I feel details like that would have helped better "anchor" the story in reality.
More important, however, is the matter of the portal the kaijus are coming through. This is a portal which doesn't actually change locations, and that the humans know about. Did it not cross anyone's mind that it may be a good idea to actually wait there, whether with jaegers or with a dozen nuclear submarines, and destroy any kaiju that comes out? I think I speak for every victim of spawn camping when I say it may have been pretty effective. They even seem to be able to predict when kaijus are going to come out, so the movie really does not provide any reason why this shouldn't have been one of the first things done by the military. It would have been easy for the writers to find a way to make it impossible - for example, by having a new portal open at a random location in the Pacific each time a kaiju is sent - there's obviously no way to surveil the entire Pacific, so they would have had no choice but to wait ashore (see below for how to tie-in this scenario with the final mission). Another option would have been to say that there's a huge forcefield around the portal, stretching like 100 miles and only allowing for the kaijus to go through it - again, we'd have no way of knowing in advance where the kaiju would go, so we'd have to wait ashore. If this reminds too much of battleship, we could replace the forcefield with a similar-sized "turbulence zone" around the portal, deactivating itself only when a kaiju comes out, and preventing submarines/technologies from reaching it the rest of the time. This all could easily tie in with the final mission featured in the movie, and they're again only a few random simplistic examples off the top of my head. There's no reason for the movie not to contain an explanation as to why a simple solution like waiting around the portal to beat kaijus up with numbers as soon as they come out isn't possible. The hole in which it is located could also be filled with concrete, or they could build a dome above it to better ambush each kaiju, etc. etc.
Globally, although there were some nice efforts to ground the premises (like the sequence where we see a game show and toys based on the jaeger vs kaiju fights, and the black market idea), I felt like they should have gone beyond that to work on the plausibility of the human response to the threat, in particular when it comes to the specifics of the portal.
With regards to the characters/character tropes and acting, I don't think I need to say much. Most of the characters were one-dimensional and cliché, and the acting pretty poor (and when it wasn't, the actors simply could not do much with the characters - see Idris Elba). There absolutely needed to be some tension between the human characters to make the movie interesting, but it was poorly handled and felt like something we've seen a thousand times (see the interactions between the Australian guy and Raleigh). Characters that could have been interesting were not exploited at all, like the Chinese and Russian pilots. Also, all of these pilots have had to go through drifting - why not build on this? Why not have them share their experiences, discussing moves, ways of approaching the monsters, psychological elements of drifting? Such a waste, frankly. And talking about the characters, I don't get why they felt they had to go the way they did with the two scientists. Is it really too hard to include comic relief without having two over-the-top caricatures on screen? I also cringed when the first scientist said something along the lines of "numbers are our closest thing to reading God's handwriting". REALLY? You had to have him mention God? I had to sit through Prometheus with a biologist calling evolution "Darwinism" (a term most found among creationists) and now this. Ugh.
What was very interesting, however, was the idea of the second scientist to try drifting with the brain of a kaiju. That was a genuinely good plot element, but I felt it fell pretty flat - all it did was conveniently provided them at the last second with the info needed to go through the portal (and you could see it coming from a mile away). Why not explain that it is the kaijus themselves which open the portal through mind commands (they're already all connected, so apparently there is telepathy in this world)? This would then require the two scientists to physically open the portal by linking to the kaiju brain and struggling to keep it open while Raleigh and Mako get in and out - far more interesting, engaging, and coherent than what we had. It would also have allowed all of the aforementioned plot possibilities for the portal (new place every time, forcefield, disturbances...) to work - and avoided having to provide additional explanations as to why the escape pod made it through the portal alone (if it was only to open the portal to go back that you needed DNA, why have this system at all when the kaijus weren't supposed to go back in the first place? etc.).
On the matter of Elba's original final plan, can somebody explain to me how it was supposed to work? From what I understand, they were simply planning on getting the Aussie jaeger to put a nuke inside of the portal, correct? And this is supposed to be his new revolutionary idea? They mention earlier in the movie that they tried nuking the portal but it didn't work, and we're supposed to believe they never thought about putting a nuke inside the portal? What? Am I the only one who facepalmed at that?
3. Other, less important, elements I found annoying
- without a plot element like the one I imagined earlier, namely the scarcity of a specific resource needed to build jaegers, that there have been only a total of nineteen jaegers ever constructed is also extremely unlikely. The movie tells us that humanity pooled its resources together, and over the course of around a decade (not too sure about the timeline) only nineteen jaegers have been produced?... I get that jaegers initially had the upper-hand and the sense of urgency decreased, but five years after "the moment it all changed" (humanity realizing the kaijus were becoming a serious threat again), it's absurd that humanity wouldn't have built more.
- with regards to the jaeger program, still, I found the entire "compatible pilots are hard to find" plot element very contrived, especially since Idris Elba's character apparently had no trouble whatsoever filling in for the Australian dad. Piloting a jaeger apparently requires both piloting skills (which can be learned like for any real-world driving/piloting skills) and being compatible with your partner. How about training the thousands (if not tens of thousands) of competent people who would volunteer to drive jaegers, while cross-referencing their profiles to find a match for a good number of them even if the initial partner they came in with didn't suit them (if they came with a partner at all)? At no point in the movie are we shown that there needs to be any particularly unique pre-existing bond between two pilots - yes, we see a few pilots who are from the same family, but we're shown others who aren't.
- is Idris Elba the worst field commander ever? You have four remaining jaegers, and you think that three will actually be used because you think there is no suitable pair of pilots for the fourth one. Two kaijus show up, and you deploy your three jaegers - two in front, the third one way behind. Why the hell would you still refuse to use the third one in combat when the first two are getting wrecked? I understand you don't want the third one to be damaged for the mission, but what exactly is going to happen once the first two are completely dead and the two kaijus are still there? The third jaeger is either going to have to let Hong Kong be destroyed and flee with its tail behind its legs or fight two kaijus alone, resulting in a higher chance of getting destroyed than if it had fought when one or two of the other jaegers still had some fight in them. Really, it was so obvious he needed to go help the Russians and Chinese given the damage their were taking - and Elba's character could clearly see what the situation was on his screens.
- Why the hell was the HK kaiju pregnant?!?! Seriously, it was a clone (and btw I've rarely seen clones with a 100% DNA match look so different, but I guess it can be attributed to how the alien building process works)... This made zero sense - it's like they wanted to surprise the audience but didn't believe the audience was intelligent enough to think beyond the surprise.
- How long was that kaiju planning to circle around the out-of-power jaeger (Striker Eureka, if I remember correctly)?! The latter gets hit by the EMP, then the Australians have the time to get out of the drifting, react to the father's injury, discuss what to do, think of the flare, go up on the roof, and the kaiju is still there like it has nothing else to do than wait for them. Then, in a moment very painfully similar to Transformers 3's labeouf shooting Starscream in the eye with a grapple, they shoot the kaiju in the eye with a flare... Only to be saved by Gipsy Danger. Don't tell me they got the Raleigh/Mako and Gipsy Danger deployed in any less than five minutes, so that kaiju had been circling the jaeger without doing anything for at least five minutes. I understand that the writers needed it intact for the final mission, but they could simply have shown it pushed over by the kaiju which would no longer have been interested in it once it had been shut down. Having the kaiju do absolutely nothing to Striker Eureka while circling around it for what amounted to five minutes was, again, poor writing.
- as it's been pointed out, a nuclear reactor can't physically explode like a nuclear bomb would. Oh well.
- like it's also been mentioned, suddenly remembering they had a sword was also poor writing. Even if Raleigh did not know about it (and you'd think he'd have been thoroughly briefed on the repaired jaeger even before doing the simulation), Mako did, and being inexperienced does not make you forget the thing you should be using as you enter the battlefield. Claiming they didn't want the creatures to evolve also does not answer this criticism, since it's going to be the next round of creatures that is going to be better equipped, regardless of the point in the fight when you draw out your sword.
- what was the point of saying the aliens considered colonizing Earth millions of years ago, but decided to wait until the atmosphere was sufficiently changed for them? So they've been waiting for millions of years, but somehow they're going to need ten more years to be efficient enough to send several kaijus at the same time? It's impressive how poorly the different plot points work together.
- what was the need of having Raleigh and Mako try their first drifting together in the actual jaeger? Why not do it in a simulation room first? Does everyone need to pray nothing goes wrong every time two pilots are tested together?
- why would you send the scientist completely alone on his errand to find a kaiju brain? He's just made one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of studying kaiju and you don't even give him someone to accompany him when meeting with a black market smuggler you don't trust?
- last but not least, am I the only one who was frustrated at pretty much all of the fights happening either at night or in the dark under water? Having battles at night makes the job of VFX artists much easier, but it reduces the experience of the spectator - less details are visible and it's harder to fully appreciate the movements and the entities on screen. Avengers actually had their entire last battle in the sun, and the same goes for the fight on the SHIELD carrier - here, it was the exact opposite (I think the only jaeger vs kaiju scene in daylight was the very short sequence displaying Striker Eureka punching the Sidney kaiju). I echo one of the other posters' sentiment that the fights themselves could have been slightly more exciting, without being Transformers over-the-top shaky camera madness (well, the first Transformers was actually quite good in terms of fight sequences).
I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. To sum up, this movie could have been much more than it was (without needing to take itself too seriously either), but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more.
ps: did the bunker scene remind anyone else of the one in Slaughterhouse-Five? 
|
5003 Posts
I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more.
Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters
|
On July 22 2013 11:08 Kuroeeah wrote:
Movies don't need to always be sophisticated and if you really wanted to critique the movie, the script could have been improved upon but Pacific Rim was a fuck ton more fun to me than Iron Man 3 or Man of Steel was.
This movie embraces it's campiness without going too overboard on it. It's deliberately dumb and some of the robot designs looks as if they came out of an anime or a 5 year old (the Russian robot). There are better movies to watch if you're looking for a deep, complex narrative but this movie kicked ass.
Yo, if you are gonna talk shit about Cherno Alpha, we are gonna have a problem! That thing was awesome. Shame it went out like it did, but don't knock the big fatass badass!
|
On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:Show nested quote +I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters
I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes
|
I'm pretty sure the reason why they saved the sword until they did was to have something in their back pocket for when they needed it. So that the monster wouldn't just adapt to it and make it not worth anything. this way they could have finished the mission they needed to with a kickass weapon still with them.
If you have to complain about the story and characters you obviously didn't see the posters taht had the robots and monsters on them instead of the characters on the posters. Its really not hard to figure out where the focus is and what the point of the movie is.
|
On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes
Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military.
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it.
On July 22 2013 11:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm pretty sure the reason why they saved the sword until they did was to have something in their back pocket for when they needed it. So that the monster wouldn't just adapt to it and make it not worth anything. this way they could have finished the mission they needed to with a kickass weapon still with them.
If you have to complain about the story and characters you obviously didn't see the posters taht had the robots and monsters on them instead of the characters on the posters. Its really not hard to figure out where the focus is and what the point of the movie is.
This is true, there is no reason to break out your new weapon if you can beat your enemy with the same weapons you have been using the whole time.
|
On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too.
There is. See the first part of my original post.
On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military.
Again, see the first part of my original post.
On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it.
Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and it is a decision taken by every single world leader (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add) and upon which hinges the survival of the entirety of humanity. In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium a few months before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that in the meantime the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line.
|
On July 22 2013 12:22 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. There is. See the first part of my original post. Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military. Again, see the first part of my original post. Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it. Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and the decision to build it is taken by the entirety of humanity together in a life-or-death situation (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add). In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line.
I think comparing the magnitude of stupid in a general idea is a fool errand. Yes the wall was a bad idea, but they had no good ideas left. That is what happens when you are losing, you have no good options.
|
On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 11:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm pretty sure the reason why they saved the sword until they did was to have something in their back pocket for when they needed it. So that the monster wouldn't just adapt to it and make it not worth anything. this way they could have finished the mission they needed to with a kickass weapon still with them.
If you have to complain about the story and characters you obviously didn't see the posters taht had the robots and monsters on them instead of the characters on the posters. Its really not hard to figure out where the focus is and what the point of the movie is. This is true, there is no reason to break out your new weapon if you can beat your enemy with the same weapons you have been using the whole time.
You seem to be about as logical as the pilots. The world is on the line. 2 robots are already down (one had already deployed spinning blades) and the key robot to your 'save the world plan' is disabled and in imminent danger. The 2 initial kaiju are also relatively unharmed. It's clearly time to bring out the sword.
I'm fine with ridiculous premises but when the people in the imagined world behave like retards in their field of expertise it ruins the immersion. It's just frustrating that the script/narrative detracted from the amazing visuals when a lot of it could've been easily fixed by competent writing.
|
On July 22 2013 12:49 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:22 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. There is. See the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military. Again, see the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it. Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and the decision to build it is taken by the entirety of humanity together in a life-or-death situation (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add). In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line. I think comparing the magnitude of stupid in a general idea is a fool errand. Yes the wall was a bad idea, but they had no good ideas left. That is what happens when you are losing, you have no good options.
I'm pretty sure I explained well enough why your comparison was off the mark.
They had better options left than an idea that could not possibly work and was actually empirically proven not to work.
|
On July 22 2013 12:52 Scarecrow wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:30 Sermokala wrote:
I'm pretty sure the reason why they saved the sword until they did was to have something in their back pocket for when they needed it. So that the monster wouldn't just adapt to it and make it not worth anything. this way they could have finished the mission they needed to with a kickass weapon still with them.
If you have to complain about the story and characters you obviously didn't see the posters taht had the robots and monsters on them instead of the characters on the posters. Its really not hard to figure out where the focus is and what the point of the movie is. This is true, there is no reason to break out your new weapon if you can beat your enemy with the same weapons you have been using the whole time. You seem to be about as logical as the pilots. The world is on the line. 2 robots are already down (one had already deployed spinning blades) and the key robot to your 'save the world plan' is disabled and in imminent danger. The 2 initial kaiju are also relatively unharmed. It's clearly time to bring out the sword. I'm fine with ridiculous premises but when the people in the imagined world behave like retards in their field of expertise it ruins the immersion. It's just frustrating that the script/narrative detracted from the amazing visuals when a lot of it could've been easily fixed by competent writing.
It must be really rough to let tiny stuff like that ruin your fun. I personally see right through that stuff, laugh and go "That's so dumb, god damn it! Why wouldn't he know about the sword? Why can't everything be this awesome."
Sometimes you just need to embrace the stupid with open arms, rather than rage against it. As Ryan Davis said "Always dumb, never lame"
|
On July 22 2013 12:55 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:49 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 12:22 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. There is. See the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military. Again, see the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it. Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and the decision to build it is taken by the entirety of humanity together in a life-or-death situation (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add). In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line. I think comparing the magnitude of stupid in a general idea is a fool errand. Yes the wall was a bad idea, but they had no good ideas left. That is what happens when you are losing, you have no good options. I'm pretty sure I explained well enough why your comparison was off the mark. They had better options left than an idea that could not possibly work and was actually empirically proven not to work.
Yeah, well they had two options that that seemed to be failing. One that was failing and the other that had failed. No option was winning. They said, "We can't build the jaegers fast enough in the opening of the movie". They were losing.
|
On July 22 2013 12:59 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:55 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:49 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 12:22 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. There is. See the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military. Again, see the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it. Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and the decision to build it is taken by the entirety of humanity together in a life-or-death situation (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add). In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line. I think comparing the magnitude of stupid in a general idea is a fool errand. Yes the wall was a bad idea, but they had no good ideas left. That is what happens when you are losing, you have no good options. I'm pretty sure I explained well enough why your comparison was off the mark. They had better options left than an idea that could not possibly work and was actually empirically proven not to work. Yeah, well they had two options that that seemed to be failing. One that was failing and the other that had failed. No option was winning. They said, "We can't build the jaegers fast enough in the opening of the movie". They were losing.
Even if you only take into account the jaeger program vs the wall, one of these two options had so far resulted in the death of every single kaiju since its launch, while the other one had proven to be a failure after the first kaiju attack against it. There were other options too, including some involving jaegers, for example centered around action against the portal (beyond bombing it with nukes), as the protagonists decide to do in the movie. I genuinely don't understand why you're so bent on defending a plot point that is so stupid it hurts, something you even admitted yourself earlier on in the thread.
|
On July 22 2013 13:04 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2013 12:59 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 12:55 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:49 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 12:22 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:On July 22 2013 11:26 kwizach wrote:On July 22 2013 11:23 Milkis wrote:I'll leave this for now because it's getting late and I think I've made my point. This movie could have been much more than it was, but the writers/director apparently felt there was no need for anything else than cliché tropes and nonsensical storytelling as long as the action sequences were good. Such a waste. This was worth a 5.5 or a 6/10 for me, not more. Sometimes, in order to highlight something beautiful, you make everything else everything tongue-in-cheek. You know for a fact that the movie isn't taking itself seriously -- there's in fact, big giveaways of this. IMO, the bad-acting and the cheesy lines and the very awkward drama is only there to highlight what matters -- Robots fighting monsters I edited the conclusion to include something I mentioned earlier in the post, which is that it didn't need to take itself seriously to be way better than it was when it comes to the non-fighting scenes Yes, but there is also no reason to obey logic or physics too. There is. See the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
People freaking out about the Wall is just silly. The portal at the bottom of the ocean and giant monsters is way sillier than dumb choices by the military. Again, see the first part of my original post. On July 22 2013 12:00 Plansix wrote:
As I said before, dumb ideas are part of war and people have them all the time. The french built this wall to keep the Germans out. The Germans drove around it. Come on, you can't be serious with that comparison. The Maginot line could actually have been fully completed, didn't require way more resources than another way of shutting down the Germans, and would actually have made it way harder for the Germans to go through had it been completed where they attacked. It's too easy to call them both "bad ideas" without actually looking a little further and noticing that the PR wall is a way, way more stupid idea - and the decision to build it is taken by the entirety of humanity together in a life-or-death situation (with the experience of the Maginot line, I might add). In the movie, there is also a direct demonstration that it doesn't work when a kaiju goes through the Australian wall, yet the humans still proceed with their plans. If the Germans had happily rolled into France with a few tanks through Belgium before attacking with the rest of their army, you can bet that the French would have fortified the border with Belgian better and not simply kept their faith in the Maginot line. I think comparing the magnitude of stupid in a general idea is a fool errand. Yes the wall was a bad idea, but they had no good ideas left. That is what happens when you are losing, you have no good options. I'm pretty sure I explained well enough why your comparison was off the mark. They had better options left than an idea that could not possibly work and was actually empirically proven not to work. Yeah, well they had two options that that seemed to be failing. One that was failing and the other that had failed. No option was winning. They said, "We can't build the jaegers fast enough in the opening of the movie". They were losing. Even if you only take into account the jaeger program vs the wall, one of these two options had so far resulted in the death of every single kaiju since its launch, while the other one had proven to be a failure after the first kaiju attack against it. I genuinely don't understand why you're so bent on defending a plot point that is so stupid it hurts, something you even admitted yourself earlier on in the thread.
Its all stupid, that is for sure. I totally agree in that line. I just don't think it hurt the movie in any way. The wall is dumb, but it was on a long list of dumb plans. The wall was a product of them losing. If look at the movie, they had 4 robots left. They lost two of them in a single fight and the two remaining robots also get destroyed. Nothing was going to work except for the crazy plan at the end of the movie.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
