Topic: Pacific Rim punchup

It occurs to me that Pacific Rim could have been a lot better with some minor changes. A couple of brief scenes here and there could better humanize our heroes. Here are two I think would help.

To Trey's point about Mako suddenly being okay between attempt 1 and attempt 2, they could have had this scene in between (like when Mako mistakes Raleigh's door for her own).

RALEIGH
We just haven't fully made the connection we need. There's still a lot of tension here.

MAKO
(looking up at him now)
How should we fix it?

RALEIGH
Let's go.

MAKO
Where are we going?

RALEIGH
We're going to do some more fighting.

MAKO
(standing her ground)
No. No more fighting.

She touches his face and gazes into his eyes, then PULLS him into her quarters, which is elaborately decorated in traditional Chinese style.

RALEIGH
Wow. This is NICE.

The door CLOSES behind them.



And this scene between Idris Elba and Robert Kazinsky regarding Stacker becoming Chuck's partner.

CHUCK
Not YOU.

STACKER
I need the Striker Eureka out there, and that means I need you. And THAT means you need a partner.

CHUCK
I've lost my partner. There's no one I'm compatible with. I'm BARELY compatible with my father.

HERC
That's a fact.

STACKER
When I drift, I bring no baggage. There's no rank. There's no emotion but determination. You know anybody else like that?

[Chuck looks away. Then Max the bulldog catches his eye. His eyes light up.]

CHUCK
Yeah. I DO.

STACKER
You cannot drift with a dog!

CHUCK
Why not? He's my best friend!

[Stacker walks away.]

STACKER (OS)
We don't have a suit that fits him.

I also think it would help if the characters actually said each other's names more often or more clearly. During the movie, I could remember Mako's name, but by the end I could only remember that Hercules Hansen identified himself clearly in his final announcement, and I couldn't name a single other character. It was weird.

Last, it just wasn't clear what was going on in the fights enough. Not only were they all shot at night in the rain or underwater, they were all framed very tightly. Loosening up that a little and adding some voiceover about what the plan was would allow the audience to understand better when the plan went awry, and they'd feel more for the characters.

Last edited by Zarban (2013-07-21 15:43:16)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Pacific Rim punchup

Agree. I loved Pac Rim, but there was something illusive... "missing".

One problem for me, was it was taking itself too seriously. The comedy sidekick scientists and Ron Perlman segment tone didn't quite mesh with the über-brooding main characters tone. It's exactly as I predicted in an earlier thread... that GDT can't really do "tone" properly. Not a single GDT movie have had the right "tone" for me, the funny hasn't been "right" funny, and the "serious" hasn't been the "right" serious, and the mix has always bee.... off. He is so close the whole time, but never there.

I would have loved kinda a Han Solo character, who was sarcastic about the whole thing.

The lead could have been more of a reluctant ass-kicker guy, who didn't obey the rules, causes major win by doing this, then later causes major TRAGEDY by doing that, he doesn't wanna fight no more, and is slowly won back. Then ends up in a very similar situation where he has choice "obey orders, or do what makes sense in the situation". Major tensions hangs on "which is he gonna choose". Last minute, he picks an The Best Option(tm) and has a major win and voila.

Somesuch.

Dunno.

It's hard to put my finger on ... what was wrong.

/Z

Last edited by MasterZap (2013-08-05 08:40:49)

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Re: Pacific Rim punchup

I completely agree. My guess is that Charlie Day came in with a lot of ideas to make his character genuinely funny, and GDT let him do them, so he nearly steals the movie. It doesn't feel "of a piece" with the rest of the film.

I really think that just a little bit of punch-up can change a lackluster script into a fun adventure, but it needs to be applied with an even hand. Imagine if the self-sacrifice scenes--which were great ideas with good actors--had had a little more punch behind them because we liked the characters more. As is was, it involved the two least emotionally accessible characters.

Last edited by Zarban (2013-08-05 16:29:16)

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Pacific Rim punchup

Hey Zarban you Watch what you say about charlie day .I like him in the film he was so fun to watch plus today i herd they might make him the villain in Pacific Rim 2. I don't know how to feel about that

I'm Batman

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