"Pacific Rim" was marketed as the wrong kind of movie

by Doctor Science

Pacific Rim hasn't done as well in the US as had been hoped (for a nearly-$200-million movie), though it's racking up enough bucks internationally that there will be a sequel. I think its comparative failure here was because the marketing was wrong.

The marketing, and the reviews, said that Pacific Rim is "by fanboys, for fanboys". But let me tell you, I know a LOT of fangirls, and we have fallen for this movie hook, line and sinker.

At least in the US, the marketing tagline for Pacific Rim was "To Fight Monsters, We Created Monsters". And this is what the trailers showed: giant invading alien monsters, battled by equally giant robots, controlled by square-jawed men. I was *deeply* unimpressed with the first trailer I saw, and wrote the movie off as "another take on Transformers, probably based on a comic or video game I've never heard of. Boring, loud, sausagefest, skipable."

But this isn't what the movie is about. It's not about how "we created monsters" or "we made giant scary robots, powered by men." The *point* of Pacific Rim, at least as far as the fangirls (and similar) are concerned, is we fight giant aliens with giant robots powered by our soulbonds. What's driving the robots ("Jaegers") isn't "a man" or even "a human being", it's a relationship.

It's about compatibility. I don't know who made this .gif, but it's all over tumblr.

The trailers made the movie seem more like this. Image created by mcavoiding, using Pacific Rim's Jaeger Designer app.

Cut for massive, total spoilers for the film.

What makes Pacific Rim different from Transformers or Neon Genesis Evangelion or other mecha stories is that each Jaeger has (at least) *two* pilots. The pilots don't just work side-by-side, they work brain-to-brain: they're basically joined at the corpus callosum, each controlling half of the Jaeger's body. They share minds, memories, and physical reflexes.

Basically, Pacific Rim is a relationship movie. Not all the co-pilot relationships are what we usually think of as "romantic", either: we see established co-pilots who are brothers, others who are identical triplets, still others who are father & son, as well as a married couple.

The central relationship in this relationship movie is between Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). What seems to have confused a lot of people is their assumption that Raleigh is the hero: because he's the first character whose story we follow, because the movie is largely (though not entirely) from his POV, because he's the square-jawed blond man.

But in fact the movie has *two* heroes, or three even, if you count Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), which you certainly should. And the story is definitely not "heroic boy gets girl as reward"! It's much more like, "heroic boy and heroic girl are heroes together! and don't kiss."

Fanart by Nicole

Even more specifically, Raleigh is the male lead and has more lines, but his leading characteristic is emotional intelligence. He's the veteran who's been out and down on his luck for a while, but he's not embittered or brooding. Or at least, he's no more embittered than anyone else, struggling to get by in a world gone apocalyptic. I suspect this is why a lot of reviews said Raleigh is "boring": because he's doing a lot of the emotional work that's usually the woman's role.

Mako, on the other hand, has the Luke Skywalker role. She's the one whose coming-of-age story it is: she's the hot-shot pilot whose leading emotional characteristic is *anger*, with a personal drive for vengeance. I have seen people call her "meek", which has got to be a case of Gorilla Suit Blindness, similar to what happened to Natasha (Black Widow) in "The Avengers". People who are overwhelmed by all the *stuff* going on filed her under "Japanese woman, must be meek", and didn't process what was actually onscreen.

Art by Dana. This is the Mako Mori we see.

For "The Avengers", Gorilla Suit Blindness happened only with mundanes, fans of either gender had no problem seeing Natasha as she was onscreen. For "Pacific Rim", even many fans had problems (at least in the West), I think because it's so much of a Japanese anime in sensibility, tropes and characterization.

Personal hilarity: Kaiju, the name for the invading monsters in Pacific Rim, was a childhood nickname for Sprog the Younger -- given by her older sister, in imitation of the siblings in Card Captor Sakura. Because of the Sprogs, although I'm not truly an anime *fan* I at least am able to "read" it, to pick out important character and plot elements onscreen.

Now, Millennials are much more familiar with anime and its conventions than previous generations have been, which is one reason they're picking up how "Pacific Rim" includes metaphors for globalization and for the plight of Millennials in general. But that's not really why fandom has seized the movie with such loud, glad cries.

The fact is, "find your soulmate to pilot the giant robot and fight monsters" is fanfic (and fanart) bait. Any fandom or interest will do:

Jaeger pilots Beyonce and Jay-Z, by Nitya

And here's my outline for "Pride and Prejudice and Kaiju":

So Darcy & Bingley were always co-pilots, right? And of course Jane and Elizabeth were, too. Or did Elizabeth maybe try co-piloting with Charlotte Lucas? -- but Charlotte wanted something *safe*, like the Baltic or something.

And then when Bingley started courting Jane for possible co-piloting, Miss Bingley saw Darcy as possibly a loose end and hoped to pick him off.

And everyone knows Darcy’s Jaeger (the Heart of Albion) is going to be front-line, he’s got that whole cool-under-pressure thing down to a science, but he just can’t seem to sync up in the drift with anyone except Bingley. Even before Jane, the problem is that Bingley doesn’t have what it takes for the front line, he’s too kind-hearted. He notices that there are *people* that they sometimes have to step on to get at the Kaiju.

But Elizabeth, she hasn’t really tried out before with someone as ruthless as she is, someone as willing to get the job done and hey, if you die trying, well immortality was never in the odds.

Direct YouTube link

"Sound the Bells", spoilery fanvid by chaila. Since she only has access to cam footage right now, visual quality isn't so great and the monster and fight scenes are especially blurry -- kind of like reality. Although this isn't *exactly* the movie I saw, it's much closer to that movie than any of the official trailers were.

Comments

[Chuchundra]

Eh, I liked Pacific Rim but most of the character bits were sorely lacking. A marketing campaign based on that end of it might have turned out even worse.

I think there was the spine of some good character arcs in the movie, but they were sabotaged by terrible dialogue and some very sub-par acting. Even Idris, who I normally love, came off as fairly lackluster. His "we are cancelling the apocalypse" speech failed to raise even one chill.

The character scene that actually worked the best was the bo fight between Beckett and Mori. Stripped of the need to recite a lot of terrible dialogue, they were able to create some real chemistry with physical interaction.

I liked the "Ring The Bells" video. There's some nice bits there but, like a lot of fan videos, it's too long, running out of ideas about half way through.

[liberal japonicus]

Pacific Rim hasn't done as well in the US as had been hoped (for a nearly-$200-million movie), though it's racking up enough bucks internationally that there will be a sequel.

The missing agent in that first sentence is us, right? Be very careful what you wish for, success is usually the thing that makes these genres turn into (or be turned into) crap.

[bob mcmanus]

Mind Meld at TV Tropes and according to their crowdsource this sense is apparently fairly unusual in anime, or mecha anime. This is the right category, because PR is down there in films.

Course, NGE is about a kinda mental fusion, between pilot and mecha. This is more common, even GitS might be about fusion. And then there is teamwork, about building relationships in a small group to overcome shared or particular obstacles. "Your Scoobie friends will see you through"

[Kellandros]

I've seen plenty of writing about this movie, including interviews with Del Toro here:
http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/12/the-badass-interview-guillermo-del-toro-gets-spoilery-on-pacific-rim/

The point about Mako being in the Luke role I think is pretty spot-on. Del Toro and Beacham both talk about the original Star Wars as the primary inspiration.

The key points they took from it was to make sure everything looks worn and used instead of shiny and new, to make sure there is a larger universe of characters and events beyond what is directly shown, and to not be afraid to start in the middle of the story.

[Kellandros]

Thought of a few other points.

First, the marketing may have been a casualty of Legendary Pictures (the producing company) separating from their publishing deal with Warner Brothers.

Second, like Star Wars Pacific Rim was supposed to be aimed at a younger audience (10-14 or so). I think this may be the forgotten demographic- younger than that you are marketing more to the parents as being non-threatening or positive real life messages(Dreamworks animated movies or Disney's live-action output); older than that and you get the raunchy/edgy movies like Project X, Porky's, etc.

All of the tie-in products seem to be aimed at the niche audience too- graphic novel tie-ins are often just script rough drafts (though this one is supposed to be good), a Heroclix set (because every comic book related property needs a Heroclix set), and the toys (fairly detailed and accurate jaeger's, but not widely available in stores).

Probably the only way they could have gotten the younger audience they needed would have been to beg/bribe McDonald's for a Happy Meal tie-in.

[Nous]

Honestly, I did not mind the dialog at all, but that is because the 'bad' dialog and the 'superficial' character development all meshed perfectly with what I expected from a property that had giant mecha fighting horrors from beyond. It's part of the anime/manga genre.

Same goes with the apparent lack of psychological depth. Del Toro included plenty of psychological depth, but he presents that depth visually rather than verbally and through symbolism and analogy rather than narrative development. The cuts and the mise en scene show us what the characters are reluctant to say. Again, this is in line with anime and manga conventions.

I thought the film was quite well put together and well acted when seen through the correct stylistic frame.