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Numbers are as close as we can get to the handwriting of God
Thank you to everyone who commented last night for Abbie—if you sent wishes, thoughts, love, or just the recognition of reading, thank you. Rob has an update on the situation here. The short version is that we are to consider the cat on hospice care. The salient fact is that there is still a cat. We were very surprised: we did not expect him to live until morning, and then we did not expect the veterinarian's house call to end in anything other than the difficult decision Rob had spent the night accepting he would have to make. Instead, there's a cat under Rob's bed as I write—it's one of his traditional hangouts on hot days or nights. He is still not really eating, except for a little licking of tuna liquid, but he has been seen to drink water, wander around the downstairs in an aimless, jingling fashion, and when we got home from a 2-D showing of Pacific Rim (2013) tonight, Abbie was in the dining room, being made much of by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ratatosk and laura47. We are waiting on some test results from the veterinary hospital where he spent an overnight this weekend and then we will see what comes next. For the time being, however, a cat is here.
The thing to understand about Pacific Rim is that I cannot write a comprehensive review of it tonight. I want to write a post just enthusing about all the major or minor details, the realization of the world in in its casual scruffy lived-in-ness and the way it begins where a stupider movie would have tried to throw a late-act twist, the coherently staged fight scenes that are of genuinely epic, elemental scale. The kaiju do not move like weightless computer modeling; they shoulder up out of the sea, snap bridges like wires, grind skyscrapers to ash-glass with the awful immensity of volcanic eruptions or tsunami, things that overwhelm. There is something a little frightening about the Jägers, too, with their nuclear chest-cores and huge sliding hydraulics: I got little flashes every now and then of the God Warriors from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). The film never loses track, though, of the fragile human bodies being slammed all ways within the blind metal armor as they animate it, or the even greater vulnerability of the three-way neural link that allows two pilots to bear the strain of controlling a Jäger where a solo operator would start to bleed from the brain (even if I would have liked the script to take a little more time over what the Drift actually entails and the implications of its slightly Cronenbergian form of telepathy. There is a casual, haunting mention of a dead pilot's memories remaining within the mind of his surviving partner, because they were in the Drift together when he died: there's an entire story in there that is not quite this film). The character backstories have been pared down to the strictly functional, but the worldbuilding is sprawling and meticulous. The genre shout-outs are so numerous and so affectionate that I'm almost waiting for the drinking game. The World War II echoes are almost more intriguing to me: there is nose art on the Jägers, ration cards and work projects, Burn Gorman's kaiju-predicting mathematician is nearly a cartoon of a Bletchley eccentric right down to the tweeds and sweater vest. I did not expect to see a perfect realization of St. Michael and the dragon iconography in a grappling-tailed monster and a giant robot. (I did not expect to see, either, the closest I ever will to the Sea's Tooth of Deep Wizardry (1985) where the Lone Power lies burning in a basalt-stacked canyon at the bottom of the sea, the water bursting into sullen blue flame all along its lava-black and deadly length. I do not believe this is an allusion Guillermo del Toro intended, whereas I'm pretty sure about the other, but it was still an amazing thing to find on my screen.) There are splashy horror-comic setpieces and moments of unexpected understatement. Ron Perlman plays a Tom Waits role. And it's a movie that knows exactly which clichés it wants to honor unashamedly and which ones it wants to subvert or entirely ignore, meaning Rob and I applauded our way through a number of scenes. It's not a romance, for example. Except for the alien monsters rising from the deep, it's not a movie with villains, either. The recurring motif is the sharing of memories, the bridging of minds. Rob noted afterward, approvingly, "Nobody gets betrayed."
We went to the movie in the first place because Abbie was stable and we needed to do something completely different. Pacific Rim was exactly the correct thing to do. About a minute in, I started grinning. I don't think I stopped until the house lights came up. It is dedicated to the right people.
I am going to bed.
ratatosk and laura47. We are waiting on some test results from the veterinary hospital where he spent an overnight this weekend and then we will see what comes next. For the time being, however, a cat is here.The thing to understand about Pacific Rim is that I cannot write a comprehensive review of it tonight. I want to write a post just enthusing about all the major or minor details, the realization of the world in in its casual scruffy lived-in-ness and the way it begins where a stupider movie would have tried to throw a late-act twist, the coherently staged fight scenes that are of genuinely epic, elemental scale. The kaiju do not move like weightless computer modeling; they shoulder up out of the sea, snap bridges like wires, grind skyscrapers to ash-glass with the awful immensity of volcanic eruptions or tsunami, things that overwhelm. There is something a little frightening about the Jägers, too, with their nuclear chest-cores and huge sliding hydraulics: I got little flashes every now and then of the God Warriors from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). The film never loses track, though, of the fragile human bodies being slammed all ways within the blind metal armor as they animate it, or the even greater vulnerability of the three-way neural link that allows two pilots to bear the strain of controlling a Jäger where a solo operator would start to bleed from the brain (even if I would have liked the script to take a little more time over what the Drift actually entails and the implications of its slightly Cronenbergian form of telepathy. There is a casual, haunting mention of a dead pilot's memories remaining within the mind of his surviving partner, because they were in the Drift together when he died: there's an entire story in there that is not quite this film). The character backstories have been pared down to the strictly functional, but the worldbuilding is sprawling and meticulous. The genre shout-outs are so numerous and so affectionate that I'm almost waiting for the drinking game. The World War II echoes are almost more intriguing to me: there is nose art on the Jägers, ration cards and work projects, Burn Gorman's kaiju-predicting mathematician is nearly a cartoon of a Bletchley eccentric right down to the tweeds and sweater vest. I did not expect to see a perfect realization of St. Michael and the dragon iconography in a grappling-tailed monster and a giant robot. (I did not expect to see, either, the closest I ever will to the Sea's Tooth of Deep Wizardry (1985) where the Lone Power lies burning in a basalt-stacked canyon at the bottom of the sea, the water bursting into sullen blue flame all along its lava-black and deadly length. I do not believe this is an allusion Guillermo del Toro intended, whereas I'm pretty sure about the other, but it was still an amazing thing to find on my screen.) There are splashy horror-comic setpieces and moments of unexpected understatement. Ron Perlman plays a Tom Waits role. And it's a movie that knows exactly which clichés it wants to honor unashamedly and which ones it wants to subvert or entirely ignore, meaning Rob and I applauded our way through a number of scenes. It's not a romance, for example. Except for the alien monsters rising from the deep, it's not a movie with villains, either. The recurring motif is the sharing of memories, the bridging of minds. Rob noted afterward, approvingly, "Nobody gets betrayed."
We went to the movie in the first place because Abbie was stable and we needed to do something completely different. Pacific Rim was exactly the correct thing to do. About a minute in, I started grinning. I don't think I stopped until the house lights came up. It is dedicated to the right people.
I am going to bed.
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Good thoughts for Abbie, and you and Rob.
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I was not expecting it!
Good thoughts for Abbie, and you and Rob.
Thank you.
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"Nobody gets betrayed" is very important to me--very very. I can't tell you how much I hate the almost tossed-in (because for some reason it has to be there?) Hollywood betrayal.
The thing the girls said was it was about the value and importance of working together as opposed to the heroic individualistic hero solving the problem. The fact that it takes two to pilot the mecha shows that, for starters.
... Yeah, I'll have to see it at some point.
Can I link to this over on Tumblr? That way the ninja girl and Little Springtime would get to see it. (If you'd prefer I didn't, I can refer them here.)
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Of course! They should just understand I had basically not slept in two nights when I wrote it.
It is a very loud film, meaning that my ears are still ringing (and I wear earplugs to all movies nowadays), and I would love to know if deleted scenes will be made available on the DVD, because there are some odd missed story beats or opportunities I was expecting the script to take advantage of, which it didn't, but it is a film I am hoping to see again and it is a film that needs to be seen in theaters. Those are very rare now. It requires the big screen. I am so glad those still exist.
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I'm glad!
To your earlier comment—
"Nobody gets betrayed" is very important to me--very very. I can't tell you how much I hate the almost tossed-in (because for some reason it has to be there?) Hollywood betrayal.
Nobody in Pacific Rim is a weasel. Nobody is a blowhard. The government isn't evil, it's frightened and overwhelmed—the Wall of Life won't save anyone, but these days the Jäger program isn't, either. It's one of the tropes of a war movie, a motley gang pulled together against the odds, but there's so little of the expected conflict in this one, it's actually refreshing. The protagonist wants the co-protagonist as his partner. There's a cocky, antagonistic kid, but he's explicitly identified as not a villain. When the scientists come piling breathlessly in through the door with last-minute information, they're not shut out or shouted down or any of the expected bullheaded forms of military blindness, they're listened to. It doesn't make the movie boring. It was great.
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What you saw as a St. Michael thing, Waka saw as a shoutout to Japanese legend, when one of the Minamotos is lifted into the air by a demon and slices him through the middle with a sword, and Little Springtime and the ninja girl said it was a complete shoutout to Evangelion: "When firepower fails, they use the progressive knife," LS is telling me.
I have some thoughts about single combat and land clearance that I'll stick up on my blog.
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That's awesome. Let's hear it for multivalent signifiers.
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Watanabe no Tsuna. Waka notes that not all versions of the story have the demon actually flying off with him, but lots of them do, he says.
I don't care; that's still really cool.
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I was so charmed that Hermann got his own poster.
As I wrote to
I loved the mid-credits scene. And the dedication at the very end of the film.
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(And those blackboards. I love that he goes from madly scribbling on blackboards to working with a 3D holographic model)
--I missed the dedication at the end--who was it to?
Just got back from LimeRed btw. YOU AND ROB MUST COME HERE OK?
Okay, off to jail now. I love saying that.
but before I go, one last thing
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Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda, creators of some of the greatest monsters on the screen. Harryhausen was a master of stop-motion. Honda directed the original Gojira (1954).
Just got back from LimeRed btw. YOU AND ROB MUST COME HERE OK?
We'd love to! What's LimeRed?
Tell me about Cronenbergian telepathy?
I just thought of Cronenberg because it's artificial telepathy—mechanically assisted—and because of the potential for body horror, which the film occasionally alludes to: the drivesuit's spinal interface with its slightly insect-legged, clicking contact points, the brain-destroying properties of the Drift, the way that the damage to a Jäger is felt as pain by its pilot.
One thing me and the ninja girl were musing on was how much you gain of the other person's memories in drift, and how much you retain upon waking.
I thought the movie implied quite a lot: there's a repeated refrain of pilots acknowledging the things they don't have to say to each other (although sometimes it is important to say them nonetheless) because they've already felt them in each other's minds. We see this with Raleigh and his brother, with the father-and-son Hansens, with Raleigh's experience of Mako's memories of the destruction of Tokyo. Rob pointed out that right after Newt and Hermann come out of the Drift, they're finishing each other's sentences and speaking in unison. There are ways in which the Drift is still the great missed opportunity of the film for me, though—I really expected it to make more of the fact that Raleigh and his brother were in each other's heads when Yancy died. They never got the chance to unplug from either Gipsy Danger or each other. Raleigh tells Mako she might still feel some of his brother's memories in there. Having fragments of a dead man you loved always in your head is an incredibly evocative image of trauma. If we were going to get that one stunning memory of Mako's, I would love to have seen a similar ghostscape for Raleigh.
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Ditto.
I really loved what being in drift did for Newt and Hermann--if I think about it too hard, I'm likely to get all teary-eyed.
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Here; I like this one because you don't even have to read it slashily. They need the sleep either way.
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I am also very fond of Hermann's default expression of wary skepticism.
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Perhaps he would enjoy horchata-for-cats.
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Do you have any suggestions?
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Dude. I had no idea.
Thank you! As of tonight he is eating very small amounts of Beechnut puréed chicken, but it never hurts to have alternatives.
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My own ancient of days kitteh has taken a "fuck tuna" stance for several years now (maybe one should call it a "fuck everything" stance), but will go for reduced-sodium cooking broth from a tin.
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Logistically, or in terms of things the movie contains?
(She'd love it, seriously. It's big and loud and smart. You don't get that much in blockbusters these days.)
My own ancient of days kitteh has taken a "fuck tuna" stance for several years now (maybe one should call it a "fuck everything" stance), but will go for reduced-sodium cooking broth from a tin.
See above to
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And huzzah for pureed fowl! Turkey Dinner is also a useful substance, but I think that one may be Gerber. I am so glad Abbie is eating, even if it's only gack. And the baby puree has a modicum of liquid, so it counts toward hydration...
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I was thinking this too. Also, this:
Ron Perlman plays a Tom Waits role.
And this:
It is dedicated to the right people.
I find I actually want to see it again.
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Hah! Is not just my brain.
I find I actually want to see it again.
I am really hoping the Somerville Theatre picks it for next year's 'Thon. We saw it upstairs on one of the smaller screens, because something first-weekend was in the main house, and I loved it; but I want to see the kaiju as big as I can get them.
(I mean, without going to a Jordan's IMAX; that would give me a migraine.)
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I'm thinking I might have to see this film.
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I do recommend it.
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Surprisingly well worth your time!
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Comfort to both cat, and you its people.
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I guess if I need a fallback career . . .
(I look forward to hearing what you think of it!)
Comfort to both cat, and you its people.
Thank you. I think we all need it.
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What I really want now is the story of how the Drift was created; the heroes who were the alpha and beta testers of the tech. Also how Stacker manages to not bring anything into the Drift.
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Yay!
I disagreed with nearly everything to do with the engineering of the Jaegers and the military tactics, but I've come to expect that from action movies.
Is there a characteristic way you feel movies get military engineering wrong, or is it just the usual handwave of convenient science is convenient, now (if the movie is intelligent) move on to the worldbuilding?
Newt and Gottlieb were my favorites, unsurprisingly.
I loved them. I tend to gravitate toward scientists, artists, academics in a narrative no matter what, but as I told
And, of course, they work exactly the same way as a Jäger team: right brain, left brain. It may be headbanging science, but it's great metaphor.
What I really want now is the story of how the Drift was created; the heroes who were the alpha and beta testers of the tech. Also how Stacker manages to not bring anything into the Drift.
Rob thinks there will have to be a prequel. There's just too much cool history, and the Jägers we didn't see at all, and the Jägers we barely got to see, and Pentecost.
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Movies will almost never explain why conventional tech won't work, making the super ridiculous tech necessary. To some extent, this is because in real life some elements of the military also don't care that conventional tech will do the job just fine (see also Air Force Research Labs projects colloquially referred to as the "shit cannon," "rods from god," and "voices of god" just to start with. I wish I knew the actual honest to god codenames for these). But none of those projects ever make it past vaporware.
So the Jaegers? 260 feet tall, according to the pacific rim wikia, made of titanium or iron core, depending on model year. Let's skip the bit where "all titanium, no alloys" is utterly ridiculous because titanium is always alloyed with something because that improves its tensile strength. Anyway, the wiki claims it's 1,980 tons, but assuming pure titanium, which weighs in at 4.5g/cm^-3 (and keep in mind, an alloy would be heavier) and let's say the thing is about a fifth as wide as it is tall, and a fifth as deep, I'm totally making up the second two dimensions here and assuming there's only 20% empty space inside the kaiju, and also being really lazy and assuming the kaiju is roughly cubic rather than cylindrical, and ignoring things like the weight of the "50 diesel engines per muscle fiber" (which is its own bit of staggeringly unlikely engineering) because I want to be able to do the math in my head and not go looking for my calculator, but these numbers are at least vaguely in the right ballpark. Anyway, that's actually 72 billion kilograms. Or about 80,000 tons. Or 1,100 M1 Abrams tanks, which get less than half a mile to the gallon fuel efficiency to move their bulk! Only 9,000 M1 Abrams have ever been produced, over the entire history of the US military industrial complex.
But anyway, let's accept the quoted number of 1,980 tons, which the footnotes on the wiki tell me were taken from the officially licensed art book for the film, even though it's a factor of 50 too small, or budgeting for my fantastically lazy handwavy math above, at least a factor of 20 too small. Whatever. Very small.
I can't find numbers online for the top speed of any of the Jaegers, and I'm too lazy to get film clips and measure how fast they move, but let's be conservative and say they have a maximum ground speed of 50 mph, based on how Gipsy Danger got to Knifehead, seven miles off the coast of Alaska, in the span of a few moments of jocular banter. I'm sure it wasn't seven full minutes in film-watching time, but as I said, I'm being conservative. Anyway, that's something like 17 trillion Joules to move the thing, or 4.5 million kilowatt-hours, or 4,500 megawatt-hours. It's actually not completely unreasonable to move the thing if it has a nuclear reactor in its chest: according to the US Energy Information Administration, the smallest nuclear power plant in the US produces 478 MW, and the largest about 4,000 MW. So you'd just need a core the size of the facility in Palo Verde, Arizona, which resides on 4,000 acres of land. For comparison, that's the area of 2,500 Somervilles.
(comment exceeded LJ's maximum length)
I've elided the details of electrical and mechanical efficiencies here, largely because I fear boring you and your readers at this point, but suffice to say it only makes the math look worse for the Jaegers.
You could also look at the economics of building the Jaeger -- the cost of the titanium for one Jaeger, in 2013 dollars at 2013 prices is USD433 trillion, or 28 times the GDP of the US, or 5 times the gross world product, if the wikipedia page on GWP can be believed. We can argue that the appearance of the kaiju dramatically changed the economics of the entire world, but even if you could mine that much titanium for free, you still have to come up with enough energy to smelt it. Titanium smelts at 1700C. Smelting a couple billion kilograms of the stuff, well, that'll burn a lot of oil. (I'll leave the calculation of how much oil as an exercise for the reader.)
Moving on, for the amount of energy it takes to move a Jaeger, you could sent hundreds of unmanned submarines, each carrying a nuclear payload, into the Breach as soon as a kaiju emerges. Or if you would rather use conventional weapons, pack the submarine drones with thousands of tons of chemical explosive. Pilot the drone into the kaiju's mouth and detonate. There, cities saved. You've destroyed the local ocean ecology, but the kaiju are already doing that, and it frees up resources for research into how to shut down the Breach.
Anyway, I sound crankier than I really am about this. I can fanwank a dozen explanations for why existing weaponry wouldn't work, and the Jaegers made for excellent cinema. Also without that macguffin we wouldn't have the Drift, which drove all the amazing character development and heart of the movie. I just would have appreciated a lampshade, is all.
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You should just post this. Your analysis is awesome.
I've elided the details of electrical and mechanical efficiencies here, largely because I fear boring you and your readers at this point, but suffice to say it only makes the math look worse for the Jaegers.
Your answers aren't boring me. I asked because it's your field!
Pilot the drone into the kaiju's mouth and detonate. There, cities saved.
I'm trying to remember if there's something from Raleigh's opening narration about how nuclear weapons were used against the kaiju at first, then abandoned in favor of the Jäger project, or whether I'm just making up headcanon.
I just would have appreciated a lampshade, is all.
Fair enough.
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Anyway, movies always fail to consider how much machines would really weigh, or how much fuel they'd consume, or how much they'd cost. And while I had to sit down for about twenty minutes to work out the precise details of how wrong the math was in this particular instance, I have enough engineering intuition to have noted, while watching the movie, "there's no way the numbers here add up." That's okay though. Good world building and emotional arcs make up for bad math.
they appeared and they were such perfect types of scientist in a science fiction film (terminally tightly wound boffin, manically reckless geek)
Yes! Their interactions -- with each other, with their equipment, with the military -- all rang very true to me. I worked for two summers with Air Force Research Labs, and another year and a half with a defense contractor, and all those interactions rang very very true for me. They were perfect.
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That's the tension of a lot of science fiction. I am very glad Pacific Rim came out on the right side for you.
They were perfect.
I really hate emoticons, so just put a smile here.
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It's so rare in any kind of movie nowadays. It was so beautiful.