Pacific Rim (2013) (spoilers) – Why the Big Robots?

The obvious question in Pacific Rim is why do they use giant robots to fight kaiju?

Kaiju can be slain by conventional weaponry in the Pacific Rim-verse, even at the beginning of the Kaiju War when they were technologically on par with us. The problem was that even if the kaiju could be killed by conventional weaponry, it came with a huge cost in collateral damage. As it was seen in the movie, kaiju instinctively go to populated areas, and they are so huge that there’s really no conventional way available to stop them except for weapons of mass destruction. And obviously those kinds of weapons do not solve the problem of collateral damage.

So the Pacific Rim humans solved the problem with giant robots. The Pacific Rim Defense Force operation policy appeared to be to engage the kaiju outside of populated areas. The jaegers were big enough to physically intercept the kaiju and also the kaiju instinctively perceived jaegers as a threat so they could actually draw the aggro of the kaiju.

I suspect that the jaegers weren’t originally designed to kill the kaiju. I envision that the jaegers were supported by airplanes and warships, jaegers’ sole objective was to slow down the advance of the kaiju. What we see in the movie is that the jaegers were effective at actually killing kaiju on their own, which could explain why they aren’t heavily supported in the movies.

My point is, that you do have to suspend disbelief at some point, but I do think that Pacific Rim makes as much sense of its nonsensical world as possible.

(IMDB)

Pacific Rim (Spoilers): Raleigh

I think something great about Raleigh is the little indications of character growth throughout the movie. At the beginning it’s implied that Raleigh is more like Chuck. Raleigh comes off as cocky and careless. After being mauled by a kaiju, losing his brother, and spending five years exiled to wall construction, you actually get a sense that Raleigh is a very different person.

All of this happens very subtly for a blockbuster movie though. In the zenith of Raleigh’s angst, he hesitates before returning to the Pacific Rim Defense Force. That’s it. He has to think about it. But from that point on he’s in it to win it. He pushes for Mako to be his partner not out of ego, but because he seems to genuinely think she’s the best possible candidate. He really doesn’t display any of his old arrogance and, when faced with a sort of reflection of himself (Chuck), he basically beats himself up. But he does so with restraint for the most part because injuring Chuck would endanger the mission.

But for me, I love how Raleigh confirms his kill. When he stops and empties his clip into the kaiju it really said to me that Raleigh remembered the beginning of the movie and was intent on not repeating his mistakes. I pretty much missed it at first, but I think this movie should get more credit for its characters than I initially gave it.