Weekly reading/watching meme

[petronia]

Still no books. Like I maybe read three Cavafy poems. Went to see Pacific Rim, which was very exciting but also disappointing. Part of that is me: I have watched a scientific amount of This Sort Of Thing, can call the reveals before they show up, so as far as I was concerned all that could be hurried along in favour of some non-predictable characterization beats (arguably I liked the Charlie Day/Ron Perlman sequences best). Which Del Toro is capable of; it's not like I'm asking Michael Bay to eke out Oscar-winning performances here.

In fact, I kind of suspect Del Toro worldbuilt for a 24-ep TV series, wrote for a 6-ep OAV, shot the equivalent of two movies, then edited it down to a Hollywood-acceptable one. That's the sort of vaguely dissatisfying perfunctoriness the result has: like watching the glossy big-FX-budget movie version of a really great TV anime. Then you're left explaining to your friends after the Fantasia Film Fest matinee showing that no, actually, in the manga those pilot teams that LITERALLY HAD NO LINES were really cool personalities and had their own backstory chapters and everything.

Also, if this were an anime, Mako would be explicitly the main character and the story would have started with her flashback (leaving Raleigh's as the reveal), which would have been a better edit IMO. And long as we must have a tiresome sub-plot with dude pilots being macho at each other, an anime would have had the decency to distinguish them visually by having one be the brunette. To be fair Del Toro has basically made the first Hollywood action movie with a Japanese character who seems like a real Japanese person so, yanno, kudos for that? XD;

And yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, KAIJU VS GIANT ROBOTS. I'm not even much of a monster movie fan, but dude is an auteur when it comes to creature design.

Comments

[arboretum]

> In fact, I kind of suspect Del Toro worldbuilt for a 24-ep TV series, wrote for a 6-ep OAV, shot the equivalent of two movies, then edited it down to a Hollywood-acceptable one.

haha i like this theory! though i think my first reaction was to suspect the opposite? i feel like a lot of the technical details of the world don't really make that much sense when you think about them, and that kind of makes me think that maybe nobody cared / was really bothered about that while they were making the movie. like, maybe all they wanted was to make the most bombastic action movie they could, and that's what they did, haha.




> dude is an auteur when it comes to creature design.

lmao YES… i don't actually love most of del toro's work… like, story-wise…… but his creatures are always always always awesome.



mako being main character / raleigh's backstory being later reveal makes so much sense dang, i would have liked to see that movie.

haha true re: japanese-ness, but the one thing i did wonder a little about was like… mako was a lil kid when she met pentecost, yeah? and it's implied that he basically raised her, so why exactly does she still speak with such a heavy accent / default to japanese / have such heavy japanese cultural mannerisms? like wouldn't… she have more british cultural influence at this point in her life…? i'm perfectly happy to choose not to care about this point, but i did wonder a little haha.



i defs enjoyed the movie but i didn't expect anything other than a roller coaster of a ride full of fun action, and it defs delivered on that. i'd see it again just for that. action was so good, and i remain impressed that for a movie that literally was just a series of fights strung together with the slightest and most tenuous indication of story, it never got boring for me haha

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

Then you're left explaining to your friends after the Fantasia Film Fest matinee showing that no, actually, in the manga those pilot teams that LITERALLY HAD NO LINES were really cool personalities and had their own backstory chapters and everything.

In Hollywood I've seen the opposite happen: fascinating world makes semi-exciting film, a TV (live-action or animated) series is commissioned to cash in on the popularity and ends up being surprisingly awesome. See: Batman, Starship Troopers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Maybe it's wishful thinking?

I have not seen the film yet, but everything about Mako visually is making me want to go back to doing manga-style fanart.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ha yeah, bring on the tie-ins. XD

[one-if-by-land.livejournal.com]

YES TO EVERYTHING you said about pacific rim, especially how del toro shot two movies and had to edit down to one - he said as much in an interview, that he had to cut out over a hour's worth of material that would've shown more of characters' backstories. I went into the movie expecting epic monster vs robot battles, and I wasn't disappointed, so I guess I can't complain much. better dialogue and story-framing would've pushed pacific rim out of the genre bin and into solidly great filmwork territory, though. :

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

In fact, I kind of suspect Del Toro worldbuilt for a 24-ep TV series, wrote for a 6-ep OAV, shot the equivalent of two movies, then edited it down to a Hollywood-acceptable one.

That seems like an amazingly accurate diagnosis of the problems with this film. What a job he must have had having to contain all of that, and what a pity he had to. I really enjoyed this film in spite of all that, though.