Movies - Pacific Rim
I originally had zero plans to see Pacific Rim. It’s about giant robots punching giant monsters. Two movie tropes that I have never really been able to generate any interest in. So I didn’t worry about reading stuff that I thought was going to be spoilers, because I had NO intention of seeing this movie. But after about a solid month of internet buzz, by the time this weekend rolled around, I was like “I MUST see this movie!”
The Pacific Rim lovefest probably started with Gingerhaze, who started posting about the movie about a month ago. Then Unwinona started in, she was reposting a lotta Pacific Rim stuff for a while there. Then I started seeing it on scifigrl47’s Tumblr (which I’ve been reading from page one, I finally got all caught up this weekend). She’s pretty selective about what she posts. So I really started paying attention.
OK, so I’ll admit that Raleigh on his knees is pretty sexy. And I could see how if all you know about the movie was that one picture, you could start thinking that Mako Mori is a pretty badass character. And aie, just the look on Raleigh’s face in the last GIF here. (And the follow up comment about how it’s like they’ve already drifted). Yeah, fandom is a sucker for sensitive guys. But it was probably this picture of a half-nekkid Raleigh that pushed me over the edge (Yeah, I'm shallow like that. I can’t stop looking at him!). That and this very smart blog post about The Visual Intelligence of Pacific Rim. Yes, I have gone to see movies purely for the visuals before (What Dreams May Come, Fifth Element, and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters spring to mind).
Basically, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been watching people online going apeshit about this movie. About how it has a multi-ethnic cast. And a strong female lead. But here’s the thing, despite several female fans whose opinions I have grown to respect going bananas over this movie (“I can’t tell you how much fun this film had with subverting the male gaze.”) I came out of it feeling disappointed.
Not because I didn’t enjoy the movie.
But because I felt sad that the current generation of young women can look at a character like Mako Mori and think “This is a great female character.”
Because she’s not. The actress is great, and she does a hell of a lot with the character. But she’s not as badass as I was led to believe. And while she has a compelling backstory (and the actress that plays Child-Mako is amazing) they don’t give her much character development in the present at all. And I don’t care how you want to try to justify it, she’s essentially there to serve the needs of the male characters to have someone to protect (her father) and fall in love with (her partner). You know how Hollywood likes to develop male characters by giving them some form of dead girlfriend so that they can have man pain? Mako exists to be the living version of man-pain. She’s there for the dude’s character development, not so much her own.
When she’s a little girl, Stacker Pentecost rescues her. And he treats her like a little girl that still needs his protection throughout the whole movie. Even after she’s fully grown and more than capable of taking care of herself. When he says, “I need you to protect me.” when they say their goodbyes at the end, you get the feeling it’s more to make her feel better than because he thinks she’s actually going to protect him. In reality, he’s still being self-sacrificing to save her (and the rest of humanity, but you feel like it’s all for her).
Despite the fact that she’s the best candidate for the co-pilot slot on Gipsy Danger, she doesn’t earn it on her own merits. Yes, she has great scores in training and kicks Raleigh’s butt during tryouts. But she doesn’t get her pilot’s slot because she earned it. She doesn’t turn out to be the perfect partner for Raleigh because she’s rebuilt his damaged Jaeger and knows the systems inside and out. Or because she’s studied Raleigh and his fighting style for so long that she’s already halfway inside his head. No, she gets the position because Raleigh inexplicably insists that he won’t pilot with anyone else. And they need him, so he gets what he wants. She gets it because Stacker grants it to her. Reluctantly.
The way that Raleigh looks at her in those early scenes would translate in most movies into “Wow, I’d love to get into her pants.” I don’t know if it’s any less creepy that in this movie that longing look is supposed to be translated into “Wow, what I woman. I really want to get into her brain.” Maybe more creepy? Definitely more creepy…
Mako’s first time in the drift, in the neural connection to her co-pilot and the machine, she almost blows up the Shatterdome. The only reason she doesn’t is because they unplug the power, not because she is strong enough to master her emotions, because she overcomes her own memories, or even because her partner (or her father) is able to talk her down. She’s essentially shown, in a very public way, to be unfit for duty. I would have much rather seen how she overcame her childhood fears and conquered them. THAT would have made her a strong character. Instead she is rescued (again!) by two men, Choi who pulls the plug on the power, and Raleigh, who yanks her out of the harness.
[ETA - And after their abortive first drift together, there is the whole fight in the hallway between Raleigh and Chuck Hansen. Where Chuck insults both of them, and Raleigh beats him up saying, "Apologize to her." I really would have loved to have seen Mako pull Raleigh off of Chuck, then Chuck shove her aside to get to Raleigh and Mako just decks him, right as the Marshall and Herc come out to see what all the commotion is about. That would have 1 - Let Mako stand up for herself and 2- Doubled her shame before her father in the next scene. All it takes is tiny tweaks to a story to make it better. One or two lines, a brief scene.]
During their first big fight, when they’re getting their asses kicked and all their weapons systems are failing, we find out that (guess what!) their Jaeger has a sword. But we don’t know why or how she knows this. She’s presumably been designing and helping rebuilt this Jaeger. Would it have hurt to give her a couple of character-building lines that explained it, like “I added some new weapons when we rebuilt Gipsy Danger. Check this out. We have a sword.”?
During all the fight scenes, she’s pretty much silent, while Raleigh pretty much never shuts up. I know that’s partly a function of having two characters who are mentally linked which leads to “how will the audience know what is happening if we don’t tell them?” on the part of the filmmakers. But they could have given the damn woman some lines instead of having Raleigh run off at the mouth like an idiot (seriously, the decision to give him all the fight scene lines didn’t serve either of their characters).
And at the end, does she get to save the world? Noooooo. No, she runs out of oxygen. Raleigh gets to be self-sacrificing, gives her his oxygen, then shoves her into a escape pod while the MAN gets to save the planet. At least in The Avengers, while the dude was delivering the nuclear bomb to the aliens, the female lead got to be in charge of shutting the portal. But not in this movie. *le sigh* Strong female lead my arse. The two male leads spend all their time protecting her, and ignoring the fact that she’s trained as a warrior, that she’s devoted her whole life to becoming someone capable of killing Kaiju.
I think that when people say that Mako Mori is a strong female character they are clutching onto the fact that she keeps her clothes on, that she’s not the girlfriend, that this isn’t a romance and there’s no kissing. But Del Torro has said in interviews that the training fight scene was shot like a sex scene, and that the movie is a love story without the falling in love. So just because it isn’t there on explicitly screen doesn’t mean that the emotional resonance of the movie isn’t still how all the men love and protect the lone female character. And she pretty much IS the lone female character.
Yeah, there’s one female Jaeger pilot. But she doesn’t really have any lines (and her handful of lines are either in Russian or unintelligible screaming during battle). But there are no other female pilots, no female scientists, no female officers, no significant females in any role other than “woman in crowd” in this movie. No, wait, I think I remember one other female speaking role, Hannibal Chau has a female minion who has like one line at the end of the movie. According to the Pacific Rim wiki, the Crimson Typhoon was originally supposed to be piloted by female triplets, why did they have to change that to add more dudes? *cries*
This is movie swimming with dudes. I don’t care if they’re multiracial dudes, it’s still a dude movie with one female lead. Just listen to how Del Toro describes the characters: “I tried to include every character type. The characters in this movie are standard characters in this kind of story - the scientist, the leader, the pilot, the female pilot.” Note how all those “standard characters” are assumed to be male, unless he specifically says “female”? Because in the patriarchy, the default gender is always assumed to be male unless we specify female. And the traditionally female caretaker roles of nurse and psychologist are oddly completely absent in this macho war movie, where you would assume wounded males might need patching up. So, no feminist cookies for you Mr. Del Toro. I’m not buying that this movie in any way is doing women any favors. This movie flunks the Bechdel test because there aren’t two women who could talk to each other and no, Mako Mori is not any sort of feminist hero.
There may be another post percolating, about plot holes so big you could drive a Jaeger through them…
***
I’m just link parking these here so I can find them again later. I might need to write fanfic for this damn movie. I have feels. Damn but I have feels. For the guys (to my shame).
Why you should see Pacific Rim. Agreed, it was really nice to see an action movie that wasn’t all USA, USA. (of course, that’s one of the reasons why I liked the Avengers too, S.H.E.I.L.D. feels a little bit more multi-national that American…)
Gifset “I can’t get over how much Raleigh just lights up around Mako”
“I think Mako Mori was THE most fleshed-out and interesting character in the movie.” I’m not disagreeing that characters can have flaws, I don’t think she was a flawed character. I just think her entire character is a reflection of how the men interact with her. Without the men to reflect her, does she even exist?
Mako Fan Club cartoon
Mako backstory They really should have included this in the movie.
Panting Raleigh
[Spoilers Ahoy]
WARNING - These are TOTALLY spoilers, since they are GIFs and photos of the very last scenes of the movie
http://raleighsweaters.tumblr.com/post/56557673654/uss-assbutt-and-they-didnt-make-out-and-it
http://raleighsweaters.tumblr.com/post/56471263175
Non-spoilery thoughts - Holy shit, everyone looks so fucking sexy in that armor.
And I could listen to Charlie Hunnam or Idris Elba talk all day. *girly sigh*
The Pacific Rim lovefest probably started with Gingerhaze, who started posting about the movie about a month ago. Then Unwinona started in, she was reposting a lotta Pacific Rim stuff for a while there. Then I started seeing it on scifigrl47’s Tumblr (which I’ve been reading from page one, I finally got all caught up this weekend). She’s pretty selective about what she posts. So I really started paying attention.
OK, so I’ll admit that Raleigh on his knees is pretty sexy. And I could see how if all you know about the movie was that one picture, you could start thinking that Mako Mori is a pretty badass character. And aie, just the look on Raleigh’s face in the last GIF here. (And the follow up comment about how it’s like they’ve already drifted). Yeah, fandom is a sucker for sensitive guys. But it was probably this picture of a half-nekkid Raleigh that pushed me over the edge (Yeah, I'm shallow like that. I can’t stop looking at him!). That and this very smart blog post about The Visual Intelligence of Pacific Rim. Yes, I have gone to see movies purely for the visuals before (What Dreams May Come, Fifth Element, and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters spring to mind).
Basically, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been watching people online going apeshit about this movie. About how it has a multi-ethnic cast. And a strong female lead. But here’s the thing, despite several female fans whose opinions I have grown to respect going bananas over this movie (“I can’t tell you how much fun this film had with subverting the male gaze.”) I came out of it feeling disappointed.
Not because I didn’t enjoy the movie.
But because I felt sad that the current generation of young women can look at a character like Mako Mori and think “This is a great female character.”
Because she’s not. The actress is great, and she does a hell of a lot with the character. But she’s not as badass as I was led to believe. And while she has a compelling backstory (and the actress that plays Child-Mako is amazing) they don’t give her much character development in the present at all. And I don’t care how you want to try to justify it, she’s essentially there to serve the needs of the male characters to have someone to protect (her father) and fall in love with (her partner). You know how Hollywood likes to develop male characters by giving them some form of dead girlfriend so that they can have man pain? Mako exists to be the living version of man-pain. She’s there for the dude’s character development, not so much her own.
When she’s a little girl, Stacker Pentecost rescues her. And he treats her like a little girl that still needs his protection throughout the whole movie. Even after she’s fully grown and more than capable of taking care of herself. When he says, “I need you to protect me.” when they say their goodbyes at the end, you get the feeling it’s more to make her feel better than because he thinks she’s actually going to protect him. In reality, he’s still being self-sacrificing to save her (and the rest of humanity, but you feel like it’s all for her).
Despite the fact that she’s the best candidate for the co-pilot slot on Gipsy Danger, she doesn’t earn it on her own merits. Yes, she has great scores in training and kicks Raleigh’s butt during tryouts. But she doesn’t get her pilot’s slot because she earned it. She doesn’t turn out to be the perfect partner for Raleigh because she’s rebuilt his damaged Jaeger and knows the systems inside and out. Or because she’s studied Raleigh and his fighting style for so long that she’s already halfway inside his head. No, she gets the position because Raleigh inexplicably insists that he won’t pilot with anyone else. And they need him, so he gets what he wants. She gets it because Stacker grants it to her. Reluctantly.
The way that Raleigh looks at her in those early scenes would translate in most movies into “Wow, I’d love to get into her pants.” I don’t know if it’s any less creepy that in this movie that longing look is supposed to be translated into “Wow, what I woman. I really want to get into her brain.” Maybe more creepy? Definitely more creepy…
Mako’s first time in the drift, in the neural connection to her co-pilot and the machine, she almost blows up the Shatterdome. The only reason she doesn’t is because they unplug the power, not because she is strong enough to master her emotions, because she overcomes her own memories, or even because her partner (or her father) is able to talk her down. She’s essentially shown, in a very public way, to be unfit for duty. I would have much rather seen how she overcame her childhood fears and conquered them. THAT would have made her a strong character. Instead she is rescued (again!) by two men, Choi who pulls the plug on the power, and Raleigh, who yanks her out of the harness.
[ETA - And after their abortive first drift together, there is the whole fight in the hallway between Raleigh and Chuck Hansen. Where Chuck insults both of them, and Raleigh beats him up saying, "Apologize to her." I really would have loved to have seen Mako pull Raleigh off of Chuck, then Chuck shove her aside to get to Raleigh and Mako just decks him, right as the Marshall and Herc come out to see what all the commotion is about. That would have 1 - Let Mako stand up for herself and 2- Doubled her shame before her father in the next scene. All it takes is tiny tweaks to a story to make it better. One or two lines, a brief scene.]
During their first big fight, when they’re getting their asses kicked and all their weapons systems are failing, we find out that (guess what!) their Jaeger has a sword. But we don’t know why or how she knows this. She’s presumably been designing and helping rebuilt this Jaeger. Would it have hurt to give her a couple of character-building lines that explained it, like “I added some new weapons when we rebuilt Gipsy Danger. Check this out. We have a sword.”?
During all the fight scenes, she’s pretty much silent, while Raleigh pretty much never shuts up. I know that’s partly a function of having two characters who are mentally linked which leads to “how will the audience know what is happening if we don’t tell them?” on the part of the filmmakers. But they could have given the damn woman some lines instead of having Raleigh run off at the mouth like an idiot (seriously, the decision to give him all the fight scene lines didn’t serve either of their characters).
And at the end, does she get to save the world? Noooooo. No, she runs out of oxygen. Raleigh gets to be self-sacrificing, gives her his oxygen, then shoves her into a escape pod while the MAN gets to save the planet. At least in The Avengers, while the dude was delivering the nuclear bomb to the aliens, the female lead got to be in charge of shutting the portal. But not in this movie. *le sigh* Strong female lead my arse. The two male leads spend all their time protecting her, and ignoring the fact that she’s trained as a warrior, that she’s devoted her whole life to becoming someone capable of killing Kaiju.
I think that when people say that Mako Mori is a strong female character they are clutching onto the fact that she keeps her clothes on, that she’s not the girlfriend, that this isn’t a romance and there’s no kissing. But Del Torro has said in interviews that the training fight scene was shot like a sex scene, and that the movie is a love story without the falling in love. So just because it isn’t there on explicitly screen doesn’t mean that the emotional resonance of the movie isn’t still how all the men love and protect the lone female character. And she pretty much IS the lone female character.
Yeah, there’s one female Jaeger pilot. But she doesn’t really have any lines (and her handful of lines are either in Russian or unintelligible screaming during battle). But there are no other female pilots, no female scientists, no female officers, no significant females in any role other than “woman in crowd” in this movie. No, wait, I think I remember one other female speaking role, Hannibal Chau has a female minion who has like one line at the end of the movie. According to the Pacific Rim wiki, the Crimson Typhoon was originally supposed to be piloted by female triplets, why did they have to change that to add more dudes? *cries*
This is movie swimming with dudes. I don’t care if they’re multiracial dudes, it’s still a dude movie with one female lead. Just listen to how Del Toro describes the characters: “I tried to include every character type. The characters in this movie are standard characters in this kind of story - the scientist, the leader, the pilot, the female pilot.” Note how all those “standard characters” are assumed to be male, unless he specifically says “female”? Because in the patriarchy, the default gender is always assumed to be male unless we specify female. And the traditionally female caretaker roles of nurse and psychologist are oddly completely absent in this macho war movie, where you would assume wounded males might need patching up. So, no feminist cookies for you Mr. Del Toro. I’m not buying that this movie in any way is doing women any favors. This movie flunks the Bechdel test because there aren’t two women who could talk to each other and no, Mako Mori is not any sort of feminist hero.
There may be another post percolating, about plot holes so big you could drive a Jaeger through them…
***
I’m just link parking these here so I can find them again later. I might need to write fanfic for this damn movie. I have feels. Damn but I have feels. For the guys (to my shame).
Why you should see Pacific Rim. Agreed, it was really nice to see an action movie that wasn’t all USA, USA. (of course, that’s one of the reasons why I liked the Avengers too, S.H.E.I.L.D. feels a little bit more multi-national that American…)
Gifset “I can’t get over how much Raleigh just lights up around Mako”
“I think Mako Mori was THE most fleshed-out and interesting character in the movie.” I’m not disagreeing that characters can have flaws, I don’t think she was a flawed character. I just think her entire character is a reflection of how the men interact with her. Without the men to reflect her, does she even exist?
Mako Fan Club cartoon
Mako backstory They really should have included this in the movie.
Panting Raleigh
[Spoilers Ahoy]
WARNING - These are TOTALLY spoilers, since they are GIFs and photos of the very last scenes of the movie
http://raleighsweaters.tumblr.com/post/56557673654/uss-assbutt-and-they-didnt-make-out-and-it
http://raleighsweaters.tumblr.com/post/56471263175
Non-spoilery thoughts - Holy shit, everyone looks so fucking sexy in that armor.
And I could listen to Charlie Hunnam or Idris Elba talk all day. *girly sigh*