MORE PACIFIC RIM THOUGHTS ALWAYS
1. OKAY FIRST OF ALL, it clicked for me on IN-THEATER VIEWING #4 that it's actually really fucking gross that Newt has Kaiju tattoos all over him? LIKE, PICTURE THAT ELEVATOR SCENE WHERE HE AND RALEIGH TALK ABOUT HIS TATTOOS AND MAKO JUST ROLLS HER EYES.
Now imagine that one of those tattoos is of Knifehead, the kaiju that killed Yancy.
Or it's Onibaba, who killed Mako's parents.
Or it's Trespasser, who killed Pentecost's sister.
AND THAT SCENE TAKES ON A WHOLE NEW FUCKING TONE. It just feels like it'd be one thing to have a fondness for kaiju, especially as a scientist who studies them and is excited by all the mystery and possibility they represent, and it's another thing entirely to be walking around a Shatterdome with kaiju tattoos, going "oh yeah, this little guy?" given how up close and personal people in the PPDC are with the kaiju war and ALSO given that nearly every character in the PPDC that we know even a little bit about has lost a loved one in a kaiju attack - Mako, Raleigh, Stacker, Herc and Chuck (I thiiiiiiiink, anyway? Someone said something about this being in the novelization, which I still haven't read, but there's nothing on the wiki, so IDK), Tendo - they've all lost family members to kaiju. And it also just stands to reason that the PPDC would attract a huge number of recruits who have lost people/homes/livelihoods to Kaiju attacks - vengeance/justice aside, there's the fact that the economies of most coastal cities, especially those that were attacked, would basically collapse, and the PPDC would be the only ones doing any significant hiring. You'd see a FUCKLOAD of people whose cities were attacked - people who presumably would have moved inland already if they had any kind of financial means - who, in the aftermath of seeing their home or workplace destroyed, would have seen the PPDC as their best option.
AND NEWT WALKS AMONG THEM WITH KAIJU TATTOOED ALL OVER HIS BODY, GOING "THIS LITTLE GUY?" I'm not really trying to demonize him for it, it just struck me while I was watching that I have no idea how he doesn't end up in SUPER AWKWARD CONFRONTATIONS like every fifteen minutes!
2. PRE-MOVIE UNREQUITED CHUCK/MAKO WHERE HE WANTED HER AND SHE NEVER GAVE A FUCK ABOUT HIM IS MY WHOLE WORLD AS OF SIX HOURS AGO WHEN I STUMBLED ONTO IT IN CONVERSATION WITH disco_vendetta. Okay okay okay hear me out: I was reading Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, and Monsters today and for BOTH characters it's basically like "they were both too focused on becoming Jaeger pilots to have friends." THEY'RE BOTH ULTRA-FOCUSED, ULTRA-COMPETITIVE JAEGER BRATS. THEIR DADS KNOW EACH OTHER. I'm not saying that they grew up in each other's pockets, because I doubt their paths crossed enough for that, but I WOULD say that they would have been stuck with each other on the occasions that their dads were stationed in the same place, that they would have understood things about each other that normal kids wouldn't get, that on some level they would have respected each other's skills, that he would have been into her because she's Mako Mori and he's a carbon-based lifeform, but also, that he would have wanted her as his second and not his equal, and she would have known it, and that it would have fucking KILLED him when she got to go to Jaeger Academy a year before him even though they were the same age, and that when he became a pilot right out of the Academy and Pentecost [presumably] blocked her from doing the same, he would have been fucking insufferable about it. MAINLY, THOUGH: He grew up wanting her to be his and never once understood how fucked up it was that he had no intention of being hers! IT GIVES "WE CAN CLEAR A PATH FOR THE LADY" THIS WHOLE NEW SECONDARY LAYER BENEATH THE OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR PRIMARY ONE.
3. OKAY SO IN-THEATER VIEWING #3 WAS A LIFE-ALTERING EXPERIENCE FOR ME. I am...not the best at tracking action sequences, MAINLY because I don't care, but also I feel like this is partly an editing thing too, but Raleigh and Yancy's insubordination in the beginning wasn't clear to me the first two times I saw it - I thought they were just distracting themselves with the boat when they were supposed to ignore it, a decision that ultimately didn't contribute much (if anything) to the beating Gipsy Danger ended up taking. But then the novelization has references to Raleigh being grounded/disciplined for insubordination (PLUS references to Raleigh "crashing a Jaeger" like it didn't just happen in the course of regular duty), and it made zero sense to me that after losing his brother, singlehandedly taking down Knifehead, and then solo piloting Gipsy Danger to shore, Raleigh would still be disciplined for PICKING UP A BOAT. But the actual issue - AND SORRY IF THIS IS SUPER OBVIOUS? BUT IT WAS LIFE-CHANGING FOR ME - is that Raleigh and Yancy went MILES past where they were ordered, specifically so that they could rescue the people on the boat. And being miles away from the position that was chosen for them meant that they weren't fighting under the best possible conditions, and Knifehead got the upper hand, and Yancy died, and Gipsy Danger was so heavily damaged that she was basically discarded until five years later, when Pentecost got desperate for Jaegers and had Mako restore her.
So: Even though they made the decision jointly, Raleigh still knows that he said "you know what I'm thinking," and that was the start of a sequence of events that ended with Yancy getting killed. AND THE GUILT ASPECT OF THAT IS HUGE TO ME, because Raleigh left the PPDC after Knifehead and chose to refuse survivor benefits and go to work on the Wall of Life for rations instead, but what's way more compelling to me is, obviously, HOW THIS RELATES TO MAKO, DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay: So Raleigh's story, on a very shallow level, can read like your basic "you fall off the horse, you get back on" comeback kid kind of tale where he avenges his brother's death and regains his confidence or whatever. BUT ACTUALLY, if you factor in the Knifehead deployment being a COLOSSAL lapse in judgment that had unfathomable consequences for him, it's actually a story about him needing to FIX HIS SHIT in order to be a hero. Coming into the movie, PILOTS ARE ROCK STARS, Raleigh and Yancy are so LIKEABLE, they're such a good team, and Gipsy Danger's so awesome, and it all seems to work so well that I really just...assumed they were the best, you know? Then follow that up with Pentecost seeking Raleigh out, and I really assumed Raleigh was the best of the best, and that Chuck was full of shit when he went on about bad pilots like Raleigh being the ones who brought the program down...but I couldn't figure out WHAT was going on with this:
"I think you're unpredictable. You have a habit of deviating from standard combat techniques. You take risks that endanger yourself and your crew. I don't think you're the right man for this mission."
LIKE...........HOW COULD HE NOT BE THE RIGHT MAN FOR THIS MISSION? WHAT GIVES, MAKO? But it makes a lot of sense to me now - that Raleigh had a lot of raw talent, but not a lot of discipline, that he had a lot to teach Mako about piloting, but he still had a lot to learn from her about what it means to be a Ranger and how to be part of someone else's team. He wasn't up to her standard, and she told him so, and she was right, and on some level, he knew it:
"In combat, you make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences.
[SHE IMAGINED HIM DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT HE'D BE A DOUCHEBAG, because he deliberately disobeyed her mentor and she had to fix all the damage that was done to Gipsy Danger because of it.]
He learns restraint, and respect, and trust - he pushes the line with Pentecost and even oversteps it occasionally, but you never again see him make a call like he did in Anchorage. He challenges Pentecost, most significantly when it comes to wanting to copilot with Mako, but he works within Pentecost's framework and waits for his moments - "Gipsy's analog." Mako's "It's not obedience, it's respect" is something that actually carries as a theme for Raleigh, who goes from risking an entire city for a single boat to stopping in his tracks at the Breach because Pentecost said not to come to Striker's aid.
HE LEARNED RESPECT THE HARD WAY, I GUESS I'M SAYING, and I'm super into the idea that he couldn't fulfill his potential as a Ranger until he did.
Now imagine that one of those tattoos is of Knifehead, the kaiju that killed Yancy.
Or it's Onibaba, who killed Mako's parents.
Or it's Trespasser, who killed Pentecost's sister.
AND THAT SCENE TAKES ON A WHOLE NEW FUCKING TONE. It just feels like it'd be one thing to have a fondness for kaiju, especially as a scientist who studies them and is excited by all the mystery and possibility they represent, and it's another thing entirely to be walking around a Shatterdome with kaiju tattoos, going "oh yeah, this little guy?" given how up close and personal people in the PPDC are with the kaiju war and ALSO given that nearly every character in the PPDC that we know even a little bit about has lost a loved one in a kaiju attack - Mako, Raleigh, Stacker, Herc and Chuck (I thiiiiiiiink, anyway? Someone said something about this being in the novelization, which I still haven't read, but there's nothing on the wiki, so IDK), Tendo - they've all lost family members to kaiju. And it also just stands to reason that the PPDC would attract a huge number of recruits who have lost people/homes/livelihoods to Kaiju attacks - vengeance/justice aside, there's the fact that the economies of most coastal cities, especially those that were attacked, would basically collapse, and the PPDC would be the only ones doing any significant hiring. You'd see a FUCKLOAD of people whose cities were attacked - people who presumably would have moved inland already if they had any kind of financial means - who, in the aftermath of seeing their home or workplace destroyed, would have seen the PPDC as their best option.
AND NEWT WALKS AMONG THEM WITH KAIJU TATTOOED ALL OVER HIS BODY, GOING "THIS LITTLE GUY?" I'm not really trying to demonize him for it, it just struck me while I was watching that I have no idea how he doesn't end up in SUPER AWKWARD CONFRONTATIONS like every fifteen minutes!
2. PRE-MOVIE UNREQUITED CHUCK/MAKO WHERE HE WANTED HER AND SHE NEVER GAVE A FUCK ABOUT HIM IS MY WHOLE WORLD AS OF SIX HOURS AGO WHEN I STUMBLED ONTO IT IN CONVERSATION WITH disco_vendetta. Okay okay okay hear me out: I was reading Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, and Monsters today and for BOTH characters it's basically like "they were both too focused on becoming Jaeger pilots to have friends." THEY'RE BOTH ULTRA-FOCUSED, ULTRA-COMPETITIVE JAEGER BRATS. THEIR DADS KNOW EACH OTHER. I'm not saying that they grew up in each other's pockets, because I doubt their paths crossed enough for that, but I WOULD say that they would have been stuck with each other on the occasions that their dads were stationed in the same place, that they would have understood things about each other that normal kids wouldn't get, that on some level they would have respected each other's skills, that he would have been into her because she's Mako Mori and he's a carbon-based lifeform, but also, that he would have wanted her as his second and not his equal, and she would have known it, and that it would have fucking KILLED him when she got to go to Jaeger Academy a year before him even though they were the same age, and that when he became a pilot right out of the Academy and Pentecost [presumably] blocked her from doing the same, he would have been fucking insufferable about it. MAINLY, THOUGH: He grew up wanting her to be his and never once understood how fucked up it was that he had no intention of being hers! IT GIVES "WE CAN CLEAR A PATH FOR THE LADY" THIS WHOLE NEW SECONDARY LAYER BENEATH THE OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR PRIMARY ONE.
3. OKAY SO IN-THEATER VIEWING #3 WAS A LIFE-ALTERING EXPERIENCE FOR ME. I am...not the best at tracking action sequences, MAINLY because I don't care, but also I feel like this is partly an editing thing too, but Raleigh and Yancy's insubordination in the beginning wasn't clear to me the first two times I saw it - I thought they were just distracting themselves with the boat when they were supposed to ignore it, a decision that ultimately didn't contribute much (if anything) to the beating Gipsy Danger ended up taking. But then the novelization has references to Raleigh being grounded/disciplined for insubordination (PLUS references to Raleigh "crashing a Jaeger" like it didn't just happen in the course of regular duty), and it made zero sense to me that after losing his brother, singlehandedly taking down Knifehead, and then solo piloting Gipsy Danger to shore, Raleigh would still be disciplined for PICKING UP A BOAT. But the actual issue - AND SORRY IF THIS IS SUPER OBVIOUS? BUT IT WAS LIFE-CHANGING FOR ME - is that Raleigh and Yancy went MILES past where they were ordered, specifically so that they could rescue the people on the boat. And being miles away from the position that was chosen for them meant that they weren't fighting under the best possible conditions, and Knifehead got the upper hand, and Yancy died, and Gipsy Danger was so heavily damaged that she was basically discarded until five years later, when Pentecost got desperate for Jaegers and had Mako restore her.
So: Even though they made the decision jointly, Raleigh still knows that he said "you know what I'm thinking," and that was the start of a sequence of events that ended with Yancy getting killed. AND THE GUILT ASPECT OF THAT IS HUGE TO ME, because Raleigh left the PPDC after Knifehead and chose to refuse survivor benefits and go to work on the Wall of Life for rations instead, but what's way more compelling to me is, obviously, HOW THIS RELATES TO MAKO, DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay: So Raleigh's story, on a very shallow level, can read like your basic "you fall off the horse, you get back on" comeback kid kind of tale where he avenges his brother's death and regains his confidence or whatever. BUT ACTUALLY, if you factor in the Knifehead deployment being a COLOSSAL lapse in judgment that had unfathomable consequences for him, it's actually a story about him needing to FIX HIS SHIT in order to be a hero. Coming into the movie, PILOTS ARE ROCK STARS, Raleigh and Yancy are so LIKEABLE, they're such a good team, and Gipsy Danger's so awesome, and it all seems to work so well that I really just...assumed they were the best, you know? Then follow that up with Pentecost seeking Raleigh out, and I really assumed Raleigh was the best of the best, and that Chuck was full of shit when he went on about bad pilots like Raleigh being the ones who brought the program down...but I couldn't figure out WHAT was going on with this:
"I think you're unpredictable. You have a habit of deviating from standard combat techniques. You take risks that endanger yourself and your crew. I don't think you're the right man for this mission."
LIKE...........HOW COULD HE NOT BE THE RIGHT MAN FOR THIS MISSION? WHAT GIVES, MAKO? But it makes a lot of sense to me now - that Raleigh had a lot of raw talent, but not a lot of discipline, that he had a lot to teach Mako about piloting, but he still had a lot to learn from her about what it means to be a Ranger and how to be part of someone else's team. He wasn't up to her standard, and she told him so, and she was right, and on some level, he knew it:
"In combat, you make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences.
[SHE IMAGINED HIM DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT HE'D BE A DOUCHEBAG, because he deliberately disobeyed her mentor and she had to fix all the damage that was done to Gipsy Danger because of it.]
He learns restraint, and respect, and trust - he pushes the line with Pentecost and even oversteps it occasionally, but you never again see him make a call like he did in Anchorage. He challenges Pentecost, most significantly when it comes to wanting to copilot with Mako, but he works within Pentecost's framework and waits for his moments - "Gipsy's analog." Mako's "It's not obedience, it's respect" is something that actually carries as a theme for Raleigh, who goes from risking an entire city for a single boat to stopping in his tracks at the Breach because Pentecost said not to come to Striker's aid.
HE LEARNED RESPECT THE HARD WAY, I GUESS I'M SAYING, and I'm super into the idea that he couldn't fulfill his potential as a Ranger until he did.