PACIFIC RIM: a father’s daughter, awesome robots, visual and aural grandeur

Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori

Some things that were great about this film (more about each of these roles/elements in “Things that were not so great about this film” below this list…):

• del Toro deliberately set out to create a formidable female lead that was not merely a sex object: Interview with del Toro on the film and his female lead
• The irresistibly charismatic Idris Elba (replacing the originally cast Tom Cruise, which causes me to assume that this role was either written for a white actor, a non-racialized actor, but not–obviously–a black actor) as Stacker Pentecost, a war-weary leader with a secret. (For those of you who have seen Pacific Rim, just take a moment to imagine Tom Cruise strutting around the Shatterdome…I know, it hurts…)
• An Asian female actor, Rinko Kikuchi, as Mako Mori, a gifted trainee fluent in at least Japanese and English (as well as stick fighting, etc. more on her later)
• Clifton Collins, Jr., an actor with Mexican and Spanish heritage on his mother’s side, that I have admired since his sorrowful performance in Capote, even though the character/person he was playing was of of Cherokee/Irish heritage (Perry Smith’s mother “Flo” Buckskin was a “full-blooded Cherokee,” In Cold Blood, Truman Capote). I love what Collins Jr.’s website says about his family, “An acting chameleon who can easily lose himself in the life of his film and TV characters, Clifton Collins Jr. is a native Angeleno who grew up destined to become a part of the Latino entertainment industry. His great-grandparents on his mother’s side were a Mexican trumpet player and Spanish dancer who formed a traveling family act, and his grandfather was well-known character actor Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, most famous for his humorous sidekick roles in 1950s/1960s John Wayne westerns (he played the excitable hotel keeper in Rio Bravo (1959)) and in TV sitcoms. His uncle and aunt dabbled in the business at one point as well. While his famous granddad was unable to break out of the old unflattering Latino stereotypes, Collins Jr. has done Pedro proud in the new millennium. Playing everything from cops to boxers to serial killers, he has managed to transcend the typical racial trappings of his grandfather’s era and play flesh-and-blood, three-dimensional characters. It was not always that way.” Even though I loved his performance in Capote because it was sensitive and yearning, I don’t think Collins resembles the real Perry Smith very well and I do wish that this interesting role had gone to a native American who identifies as a native American actor. I also don’t think Collins came across as, well, “dumb” as Smith did, as characterized by Capote in his book. It’s complicated, and I don’t think Smith was not natively intelligent, but he had a child-like innocence and fantasy life; that combined with a somewhat dormant sociopathic anger that was haunting, and frightening when unleashed. Collins just didn’t, for me, come across as innocent in that way, almost like a feral child.
• The Wei Tang triplets, a Chinese Jaeger team, were actually played by triplets. The film did not depend on “all Asians look the same” and did not use three similar-appearing Asian men. This is a small thing, and I’m sure they didn’t dare because they knew this film would be marketed heavily in Asia (I’m sure), but I appreciated it nonetheless.
• The tender adoptive father-daughter relationship between Pentecost and Mori (this would have been read somewhat, if not extremely, differently if Tom Cruise had played the Marshall role…depending on his acting to some degree, but largely because of the burden of historical context of white male/Asian female representations on screen and stage). I didn’t find this relationship all that convincing actually, but…it meant well.
• Kikuchi is only one year younger than Charlie Hunnam who plays Raleigh Antrobus, her…neural-drift soul mate in the film; they don’t kiss at the end; the tables of the male gaze are turned when she finds herself peeking at his bare and muscled (and manfully scarred) torso but there is no equivalent scene in which her half-naked body is gazed upon appreciatively
• The performance by Mana Ashida who plays a young Mako–the scenes with her, which are memories/flashbacks of Mori’s while she is in her first pre-battle neural drift with Raleigh, are beautiful–Ashida wears a blue outfit that is unmarred by the ash and destruction around her and the sense of scale is fantastic (this is awesome throughout the film)…it reminded me a bit of the scene in Schindler’s List…I dont remember it extremely well but there is a child wearing red and the garment is in color while the rest is in black and white…it was definitely a magical sequence, even though Ashida, to me, does not look like Kikuchi. Minor issue.
• The visual grandeur and beauty of the film–the water, the destruction of the city/buildings (glass shattering was especially gorgeous, I thought), the fight choreography–many things about the art direction upon which to geek out…
• And more stuff that is sort of beyond the purpose of this blog and that surely is being said better and with more technical background by others.

Things that were not so great about this film:

• The heroes’ Jaeger is named “Gipsy Danger” which evokes harmful stereotypes of the Romani people. Thank you to my former student Tara Castellano who raised my consciousness about the extent of the oppression of the Romani.
• A series of nameless Asian men are bested by the white male protagonist (Charlie Hunnam is English but I think he used an American accent in this film…?), another scene in a Hollywood film in which the lesson is: white men are better at martial arts than any endless stream of Asian men coming at him.
• The Wei Tang brothers do not, as I recall, have any lines, and they die first during the final battle sequence, before the white-skinned teams of other nationalities (Russia, Australia). We see them first playing basketball and sinking at least one difficult shot; we are shown them through Raleigh’s eyes, and I wondered if the purpose of that scene was to establish that they, Asian men, do not have individuality, think with a hive mind, and are somewhat robotically excellent at (not necessarily macho) physical skills that require strength but more importantly precision, such as sinking a one-handed long shot…they are also wearing stereotypical red uniforms, possibly with some gold dragons or something on their chests. It’s like the film said, “In case you missed the fact that they’re CHINESE…also code for, NOT THE HEROES OF THIS FILM…”
• The film does not pass the Bechdel test, like most science fiction movies
• The only other woman with lines, the Russian of the husband-and-wife Jaeger team, has only a few words spoken to her husband and I think they were in Russian
• The Russians appear cartoonish with their hugeness and bleached blonde hair, I kind of thought I was in that Rocky movie for a minute
• According to the movie’s wikia, Collins, Jr.’s character, Tendo Choi, is Chinese-Peruvian. That name is a mix of Japanese and Chinese or Korean. Collins, Jr. is not part Asian. And he doesn’t really look it (hey, not his fault–and I know mixed-Asian people look all kinds of ways…). So, big deal, one might say. It’s not really a big deal except that whitewashing of Asian characters is so rampant in Hollywood it is part of a big deal. I mean, the bigger deal is Orientalism, geopolitics, war, violence, xenophobia, racism, peace on earth, etc.
• Mako Mori, while a very capable woman with many skills, admirable qualities, and great potential, is somewhat infantilized due to her daughterly position and the emphasis on her childhood, while no other male characters are shown in similar ways. She is what Maureen Murdock calls “father’s daughters” in her work to theorize a heroine’s journey. And this is yet another instance in which a woman who is poised to assume a position of power is shown only in relation to her father–that original source of power–and there is no mother figure, original or adoptive, in sight. (A recent and grotesque example of this is in the all-around terrible and schlocky stereotype-riddled movie Oz: The Great and Powerful). Mori breaks with her father only because he releases her into her new role as a warrior, and as he dies he is “replaced” in her affections, loyalty, etc. by a new man, Raleigh.
• When I saw Mako for the first time, I groaned a little inside at her haircut, which is almost identical to the fembots in Cloud Atlas. The stereotypical angular, severe “Asian” bowl haircut. There’s a little nod to her rebellious streak and/or to post-punk sci-fi culture with symmetrical blue streaks on either side of her face. To me, the purpose of this hairdo was to establish that her character is maybe a little uptight, a little obedient, which is an Asian stereotype. She is a foil to Raleigh, who is a dirty, rugged has-been, a working class man, a forgotten nobody. She is all precision with her hair, her clipboard, her rank, her singularity as the only female who speaks English around town.
• Ron Perlman has Hannibal Chau, a white man who has assumed an Asian surname, the name of his “second favorite Szechuan restaurant.” He is clearly meant to be hammy, comic relief. I enjoy his performances usually, but I didn’t find his character particularly funny or original. He’s a white man in a stereotypical quasi-dystopic faux Chinatown who is a blackmarketeer with a host of seedy nameless natives, mostly,  working for him. Not really funny.
• I was disturbed that one of the kaiju was pregnant. At first I thought, “Reptiles lay eggs.” Then I corrected myself, “They’re aliens.” I couldn’t help but be a little disturbed that the new life within the dead beast was going to be born only to be destroyed, even though I knew that their only purpose was to destroy humanity. I don’t know if this was really something “not so great” about this film, but I found it somewhat disturbing and it just reminded me of all the misogyny and violence against females in Hollywood (even though one cannot assume that the pregnant kaiju had…gender). The manner in which Chau basically mocked the creature for basically suffocating on its own umbilical cord was…troubling. It reminded me a little of his weirdly crass character in that mess of a movie Alien 4.
• Speaking of birth and feminine metaphors…the whole spatiality of the alien’s invasion was feminine–basically they existed in what was portrayed somewhat like a uterus, or just the archetypal cave, and the “throat/wormhole” could be read as an analog to a birth canal. The fact that those involved in the destruction of the world/cave/tomb through the rift were male (two male scientists, Raleigh Antrobus in the final, as he ejected Mako Mori as she ran out of air before they could detonate their Jaeger’s nuclear reactor…) is archetypal as well.
• (Raleigh) Antrobus evokes “anthropos” Greek for pertaining to man, human beings…positing him as the everyman, or the ultimate man perhaps. I haven’t looked up meanings of Mako or Mori yet…but I kind of doubt they’re as pointed, but I could be wrong.
• Chuck Hansen (Robert Kazinsky) gets into a fight with Raleigh and calls him and Mako “bitches.” Raleigh demands that Chuck apologize “to her” (even though he was called a bitch, too, as I recall…) while beating the crap out of him. Mako looks on, upset that they are fighting. This was totally unnecessary. Obviously, she can fight her own fights, apparently better than any man on the base. It was only to establish alpha male status and that Raleigh “still has it.” UGH. And, if you, like Mako, lost your family and your entire city, and potentially your species/planet, would you really care if some punk called you a bitch? Weird.
• The Shatterdome is part of/under the auspices of the Pan Pacific Defense something or other, yet all the people in charge and who are actually useful, except for our lone and pretty Mako Mori, are NOT ASIAN, not from the PACIFIC. This is such a huge “duh” it’s hardly worth mentioning. Yes, this is a Hollywood movie, so would one expect everyone to be Asian in it? No. Could there have been maybe ONE speaking role for an Asian or even Asian American male? Sure. That would have been both realistic and gone a long way with me.

That’s it for now…