Last week I was fortunate enough to experience the hot metal on alien on Charlie Day awesome-orgy that was Pacific Rim. In Pacific Rim, giant exoskeleton suits, Jaegers, protect Earth from pan-dimensional monsters with as many explosions as possible. Surpassing the production value of Robot Jox and eclipsing the emotional spectrum found in Mobile Suit Gundam, director Guillermo del Toro orchestrated a world teetering on the edge of oblivion, and though del Toro has a way with monsters only known to Monster Manual scribes, it was the humanoid Jaegers that stole the majority of my attention.
Considering that I haven’t gotten approval for my “Five Reasons Why Charlie Day Should Appear in Everything” article yet, scope your ocular organs below and lay witness to four reasons why the Jaegers are the coolest blend between man and machine since Robocop.
4. The Drift
Designed to be an alternative to dropping nukes, the Jaegers, or “hunters” of Pacific Rim are a global response project designed to destroy giant monsters with (ideally) little collateral damage. This is nothing particularly new to the mech genre, but the Jaeger Program mixes up the nuclear-powered exosuit norm like a digestif making contact with fine ale.
It is of no coincidence that the pilot’s cockpit is a separate head component for the Jaeger, as each pilot represents one hemisphere of the Jaeger’s brain and body. When the two pilots are fully calibrated, they move together and in perfect unison in a process known as the drift. It may seem complicated at first as you are unsure of how the Jaeger hardware recognizes one individual’s right arm movements versus the other, but in essence the two pilots are simultaneously controlling and being controlled by one another. Trust me, the synchronized movement between the two mech pilots looks nothing like the “It’s morphin’ time” sequence from Power Rangers.
Producing stronger drift connections therefore hinge on the human connection between the pilots, as stronger interpersonal relationships, be they fraternal, patriarchal, or even romantic, produce the clearest, and most stable connection between the two pilots. To compensate for the sky-scraping suits of armor, Pacific Rim doubled up on the knights inside.
The drift is of particular significance because it puts humanity behind the wheel of the Jaeger mechs. While a Jaeger’s ordinance is an explosive factor in any combat situation, the drift factor in piloting ends up separating the mecha wheat from the robot chaff. The makers behind Pacific Rim take particular time to emphasize that these are not robots fighting monsters, and by having each Jaeger function as a duo, it’s impossible for the human factor to be overshadowed.
Am I saying that the Jaegers are powered by love? No. I mean the Jaeger designer does say in the graphic novel prequel Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero that love between the pilots does make a difference in controlling the Jaeger, it’s more about the sharing the load of piloting such a huge form with proper balance that makes the suit function. Love can only power alien technology, as we learned from E.T. What powers the humanoid nukes known as the Jaegers however, is a mini nuclear reactor.
While the compatibility between the pilots is of utmost significance, what the individual brings mentally into the Jaeger is brought into the drift as well. Remember the time you mistrusted that gas in high school and had to pretend you didn’t smell a horrendous odor throughout seventh period pre-calc? Well now your co-pilot does too, and he also knows what you really think about his girlfriend.
The trick to being a good Jaeger pilot therefore lies in having a clear, worry-free mind, one that remains stoic and as clear as glass even in the face of despair or rage. As Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost describes in the prequel, piloting a Jaeger is “like trying to solve a Rubix cube in the middle of a boxing match.” Ironically, in order to pilot a 1,980 ton, twin I-19 Plasma cannon equipped alien-stomping death-machine, one must first find enlightenment.
3. They Represent The Best of Humanity
Jaegers represent the best of humanity, as not only does cooperation allow the Jaegers to function, but also there would be no Jaegers all together if it weren’t for the powers of cooperation. Just as Oxymandias predicted in Watchmen, the appearance of the first transdimensional giant monster, or Kaiju, which is Japanese for giant monster, instantly snuffs out all conflict between nations, ushering in a global coalition to pool resources for Kaiju-countering Jaegers.
Don’t get me wrong now, this ain’t some pinko Commie mecha movie. Every nation may help one another fund the Jaegers, but every nation still gets their own customized and not-stereotypical Jaeger to represent their homeland without ever being too in your face about it.
Basically, do you remember G-Gundam? It was a show about an Earth where every nation had a national Gundam mech to fight for control of the galaxy in a world tournament. Basically, it was Street Fighter but everybody had a mech, and a politically incorrect mech at that. Take for example Sweden’s Gundam, the torrential horror born from beyond the gales of cruelty, hardship, and when Subway runs out of peanut-butter cookies — the Windmill Gundam (!). If you imagined a windmill with arms and legs sticking out of it, then congrats, you are an official anime character designer. The American Gundam wears a football helmet, just to remind you that they don’t discriminate with their discrimination.
Wait is there even wind in space?
Fortunately, the Jaeger designs run somewhere in between generic grey automatons and humanoid windmill. Each country’s representative Jaeger seethes from head to toe in unique quasi-nationalistic pride. The Russian Jaeger for example, Cherno Alpha, is a big, blocky and heavily plated death engine with nary a paint-job and a retro-fitted cyberpunk pilot interface, but for what Cherno lacks in aesthetics, it over-compensates with firepower, not unlike many Ruskaya Machina. Even its name reflects its pride, as the Cherno refers to Chernobyl, and the Alpha reflects that it’s a Soviet-built Mk. I Jaeger — ugly, but gets the job done.
2. The Interface Fixes The Old Problems
The Jaegers operate on the unique drift system sure, but that’s only because a single pilot experiences brain damage from piloting the colossus alone, a mecha-trope that has always been poorly reflected/explained; its best examples probably being Hiro’s heavy breathing in Gundam Wing, or the leagues of tears shed in Evangelion.
For some reason, piloting a machine in these works, especially Gundam Wing, is extremely strenuous to the mind, which makes no sense as these mecha are controlled by pedals and levers, user interfaces that ultimately make no sense when you consider the intricate controls that go into a mecha. Do you have to flip a switch for each individual finger, or do you have a “flip the bird” macro assigned to the big red F**k-you-fire-rockets button?
The point is, these machines are “too much to handle” in order to point out in your plot when you have a legendary wunderkind pilot who can handle the mental strain of pushing buttons on a thing made on an assembly line. It’s like saying that you can only drive a Lamborghini if you can resist the sexual advances of the cigarette lighter.
Pacific Rim’s interface does away with all of this vague nonsense, assigning a big Gazelle-home-fitness-center like foot pedal system to sense leg movements, and the neural uplink pons system that allows pilot to bond to machine to pilot. Now a specific explanation for how this uplink works isn’t actually given, but you can’t hold the movie accountable for such an omission. It’s the same idea behind the dream machine in Inception or the tablet device in your hand — you may use it everyday, but that doesn’t mean you know how it works.
By initiating a neural uplink, it suddenly makes sense why pilots start going crazy whenever they sit in particular mech suits, as the large size is simply too much for one brain to handle, resulting in a seizure of the motor cortex, or death from a sudden 100-foot drop after you lose connectivity with the mech. It’s a small detail to include, but it just acknowledges one of the biggest pet peeves I’ve had in pop culture since the Darth Vader “Nooooooo” George Lucas mixed into the force lightning scene in the blu-ray edition of Return of The Jedi.
1. Mecha are Always Awesome
Finally, for all the changes the Jaegers bring to the mech game, they still acknowledge their gundamanium roots and Gatchaman genealogy.
To answer what’s undoubtedly on your mind — no, there are no rocket fists for the mechs, a la Gigantor, as that would make no sense from a design stand-point. To make a fist shoot out and fly back into place would not only require an on board AI for the fists, but tons of rocket-fuel.
What we get instead are rocket-propelled elbows! It still gives you the satisfying impact of a rocket fist, but with no messy clean up or additional fuel tank loading, and it’s one of those things you’re just surprised no one has thought of before.
Actually, I think they had something similar for the mechs in Big O! Except it was more of giant propeller forearms there, and the mechs there were reluctantly called Mega Dueces…Just makes me think of what happens on a Sunday morning after a night of jaeger bombs, sake bombs for the sake of alcoholic symmetry, and a chipotle chaser.
Speaking of design flaws, y’know what always bothered me about Gundam in general? The fact that they make gigantic proportional assault rifles for the mechs, rifles that use giant, Shaq sized bullets for ammunition. That would mean a single bullet would cost the equivalent of a basketball center made out of precious fictional space metal. So while Pacific Rim doesn’t have giant dumb robot guns, they still throw in giant chest-mounted robot missiles, ones that require a team of engineers and an industrial-sized hangar to reload.
As if these homages and adaptations of mech staples weren’t enough, in an example of perfect casting that is only outshined by Patrick Stewart’s head as Professor Charles Xavier, the on board A.I. for Gipsy Danger is voiced by Ellen Mclain, otherwise known as the passive aggressively cruel A.I. Antagonist from Portal, GLaDOS. As awesome things go, this is like finding out that you can’t go to the Ellie Goulding concert for your birthday because she’s shown up at your door to wish you a dubstep-mixed Happy Birthday.
Mind you I tried to keep this article majority spoiler-free, so I’m just scratching the surface of this iceberg that turns out to just be a partially frozen humanoid exosuit, so what do you think? Is the drift system a hokey gimmick or the new standard of mech piloting? Would an American Jaeger just be a giant red, white and blue mecha Eagle? Do you still wish for giant Mech-proportionate assault rifles? Then would you kindly let us know in the comments?