Because all I said about it at the time was, I really liked it.\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 I think it’s a splendid adventure, and it brought me right back to being a tween in the early 80s watching Voltron and Robotech.\u00a0 Mecha, and the people who love it.<\/p>\n
But there’s more to say about the movie, and why I liked it, and why I have a bit of a fangirl squee over the character of Mako Mori, who has the most sensible name in the entire film.\u00a0 Stacker Pentecost?\u00a0 Really<\/i>?\u00a0 Idris Elba is magnificent at enunciating ludicrous dialogue so well that I wanted to get up and do fist-pumping cheers, and Charlie Hunnam did a fine job as the tormented beefcake, but it was Rinko Kikuchi’s movie.\u00a0 And robots.<\/p>\n
Spoilers, of course.<\/p>\n
I’ll just point this out, for starters:\u00a0 when the camera lingers on a physique, it’s Hunnam’s.\u00a0 That alone changes things up.\u00a0 Mako Mori the character is allowed to be girlish, fierce, stunted, efficient, noble, rebellious, and honorable.\u00a0 No, in the end, she is not the one to push the button and blow up the other dimension.\u00a0 She, the far less experienced pilot, passes out from oxygen deprivation, and Beckett saves the day.\u00a0 That said<\/i>, this was one situation in which I thought that was fine.\u00a0 They were partners. He finished what they started.\u00a0 He could have done none of it without her.<\/p>\n
But let me back up.\u00a0 She’s allowed to be flawed.\u00a0 She’s allowed to choose her adoptive dad over the handsome dude, even if dad doesn’t hold out long with the sternness.\u00a0 She’s allowed to be fit and attractive without that being her character’s point<\/i>.\u00a0 The character’s arc matches the plot’s high stakes.<\/p>\n
As for the movie itself:\u00a0 holy cats.\u00a0 I’ve said several times that it’s a WWII movie wrapped up in modern trappings.\u00a0 You have a diverse group of people on an isolated base racing against time and dealing with interpersonal issues on the way.\u00a0 The jaegers have nose art and mechanics and an air traffic controller.\u00a0 There’s even a DOG, for gosh’s sake.\u00a0 People have to put aside their differences and work together to defeat the enemy.\u00a0 There’s a stirring (ludicrous?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But Elbafied) speech by a leader.<\/p>\n
And the visuals!\u00a0 In one interview, director Guillermo del Toro talked about how the really difficult bit of the whole movie was actually inventing <\/i>the jaegers.\u00a0 To make them seem real, his team had to figure out how they would work, how the hydraulics would look, how the legs would support the rest, and so on.\u00a0 And you see it in the film, how pistons move and hatches slide.\u00a0 The jaegers have a gravity to them that many effects pictures are sorely lacking.<\/p>\n
It’s not a perfect movie, nooo.\u00a0 What I want is the director’s cut with the hour of character development footage del Toro had to excise.\u00a0 I want to know more about the Chinese and Russian teams before they meet their demise.\u00a0 And I want to know more about Beckett and Mori and Pentecost (really?).\u00a0 But for a movie in which robots punch dinosaurs in the face (not that that’s ever a bad thing), it manages to have grit, heart, fun, and lead characters who saw each other as people and pilots first.\u00a0 Well done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Because all I said about it at the time was, I really liked it.\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 I think it’s a splendid adventure, and it brought me right back to being a tween in the early 80s watching Voltron and Robotech.\u00a0 Mecha, and the people who love it. But there’s more to say about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/natterings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}