Poll: Pacific Rim vs The Avengers

[GloatingSwine]

But still, I liked watching it. Just never use the Kaiju in a serious conversation about monsters. Any monster that has problems dealing with being hit from a cargo container in the face or a flare to the eye will last exactly 20 seconds in front of a small tank cannonade.

Except not. I mean it's even a point in the film that the first kaiju to appear basically took three weeks of being pounded on by everything the US military could throw at it and they only got bigger after that.

And why not just mount those plasma weapons and rockets on a smaller, less expensive chassis? Why not mount them on a battleship and have 10 or so battleships monitor the breach and just taunt the monsters and melt them?

The plasma gun doesn't look like it has anything like range. Every time it's used it's basically point blank. And in case you didn't notice, the breach is underwater. Battleships would basically be useless because the Kaiju would be absolutely free to chew their keels out one by one because they are underwater.

They're also pretty fast, since it's a matter of hours at most from them leaving the breach to them making landfall seemingly on either side of the pacific. Hence the large number of jaegers stationed at various points on the pacific rim, because there's no time to get into littoral waters to fight the Kaiju without it making landfall.

So the only thing that might be useful are submarines with supercavitating torpedoes (abandoned in real life because they don't turn very well so can't track a target that knows they're coming).


There is plenty to criticise about Pacific Rim, the key character development of Mako happens basically off screen (her learning to handle the drift and fight the Kaiju should have happened during the fight with Leatherback, because heroically overcoming your challenges in order to punch the bad guy in the face is at the heart of giant robots.), the silly scientist characters added nothing and there needed to be a fight with Crimson Dynamo and Cherno Alpha actually getting to do somehting, not having a scene where we're told how big their robot dicks are but then see them getting smashed in seconds and having no effect on the kaiju.

 

[GloatingSwine]

On the first point :
I know that. Does not make it less stupid. A 120 mm HEAT shell is QUITE a bit more powerful then getting hit by cargo containers at that speed. We are talking about around 40 MJ of force, that can penetrate 800+ mm of RHA steel. Less mass, but much higher velocity and penetrating power.

1. Joules are a unit of energy, not force.

2. An empty 40' cargo container weighs about 4 tons, that means it would have 40MJ of kinetic energy after a 10m fall.

3. The effect of a HEAT round is very localised. It might go through 800mm of RHA but it actually only makes a hole about an inch across. To a monster the size of a Kaiju it'd be like being stabbed really hard with a pin.

On the second point: Yes, though that leads to two problems:
1) Why do they seem to never be 100% sure on where the monsters are? Its like they still dont monitor the entire site properly
2) I envisioned it like the Battleships taunting the monsters like Cherno Alpha did. And then Annihilating them. But OK, fine. It may work the first few times, but then the aliens will code them to not fall for that trick. BUT WHY not mount those things, cannons and plasma cannons on Tank chassis? Like a tank (Kaiju) destroyer? Why not station Nuclear Submarines. Actually, no those can create tsunamis... Why not MOAB artillery? Less expensive then robots, less destructive then a nuke. Why not even mount those on the wall?

So you envisioned battleships fighting what are basically submarines by taunting them to the surface? Why would the Kaiju surface except to punch through the hull from underneath? (PS no-one has any battleships either, the second world war was the end of the line for heavy surface combatant vessels).

Bearing in mind that their time to landfall is sufficiently short that they must be significantly faster than any ship made by humanity. Probably actually employing supercavitation, so they can't be forced into an engagement by submarines either.

Also, do you know what a MOAB is? it's a bomb that weighs ten tons, and the size is essentially the whole reason it does what it does. You can't make artillery out of it, or use it at anything like close range to something you don't also want flattened (like your wall), and since the Kaiju only so far attack in urban coastal environments that means you basically have to bomb your own city flat.

And you don't address the range issue of the plasma cannon, it has a range of maybe 30m if you're lucky, you can't use it on a stationary platform, you need to bring it basically to contact with the enemy to make it do anything (the times it's actually used to kill Kaiju it's used at literally point blank range, as in execution style).

 

[lacktheknack]

I picked Avengers. They're pretty on-par, I think, except for the "Our mech is analog!" which made me die inside as an electronics student.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Avengers was a decently entertaining, pulpy super hero flick full of flashy action and cheesy one liners. It's not great cinema, but it was a good time at the movies.

Pacific Rim was fucking awful. One of the most disappointing films I've ever seen. Aside from maybe 5-10 minutes of monster punching action, it was almost unwatchable.

What's next? Batman Begins vs Howard the Duck?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

ANd Idris Elba kicks Samuel L. Jackson's ass as the imposing comander (come at me).

I'd say that is because Elba is actually acting out a commander while Jackson never stops being Jackson, probably because the character he's playing is mostly the Ultimate Marvel version of Fury, who, lets face it, IS Jackson.

Whether by his own choice or because people expect it of him, I find that all too often in the movies he's in, Jackson ends up playing his typical 'badass ************' role, even though he's at his best when he plays something which is decidedly not that.

 

[GloatingSwine]

3) So why not shoot it a few hundred times then? Or use case shots (that how it is, nit sure)? Or even just good old missiles?

They did when the first one appeared. It took three weeks to kill.

On the second part, yeah. Cherno Alpha seems to be able to taunt them. That thing did not finish striker Eureka's crew when it could have.

You mean it responded to an actual threat rather than ignore it to kill something that wasn't? Note this happened when they were already in littoral waters, ie. not where you fight with a battleship.

The MOAB is a bomb (flaw of my english *facepalm* sorry), then why not monitor the Kaiju and as soon as they show up in front of a city shoot them down with it. It aint THAT powerful. They sure take their time when on land.

They don't show up "in front of" cities though, they show up at coastal cities, that means in harbours. The moment they make landfall they're in the city.

Also bear in mind that the category 5 ate a 2 megaton nuke right in the face and, whilst it wasn't particularly happy about it, didn't die.

As for the plasma cannon, that is why we use a chassis of a tank or a modified chassis. Or just those rockets.

No, that doesn't address the issue at all, it's a weapon which can only be used at point blank range, putting it at foot height is not going to be effective at all. You can mount it on a tank if you want to shoot the kaiju in the toes.

 

[shogunblade]

I fell in love with Pacific Rim. I saw it this summer in 3D and Imax, both were a first time for me, and I really want a sequel.

I cannot say the same for The Avengers. Something about that movie soured with me, and despite what people say about it, my opinion changes daily. Some days I hate it, other days, I don't dislike it as much, but Pacific Rim was just a blast from the first minute to the last.

It had so much more heart to it than The Avengers. There is that one scene with Mako which I won't spoil, but under my 3D glasses, I was fighting tears. It was so moving and horrifying. Watching The Avengers, I knew they were going to win. With Pacific Rim, I didn't get that as much, chalk it up to being an original IP.

P.R. reminded me of the live action Speed Racer that came out a few years ago, not well liked by many, but to me, I got caught up in it. It appealed to the little boy in me that doesn't get to come out all the time during movies, and was so much better.

TL;DR, Pacific Rim.

 

[Daget Sparrow]

Both are ok. Avengers had the better Comedy and characterization, but Pacific Rim had a more interesting antagonist and plot.

Nonetheless, when Avengers said/did something stupid, you didn't notice. When Pacific Rim did something stupid (eg: Dinosaurs having two brains), it was blatantly obvious. I'd say overall that The Avengers was the better film.

 

[Korolev]

I didn't really like the Avengers - mostly because I didn't grow up with any of the characters and find it hard to care about most of them. Also, they're so damned invincible and over-powered and the film has this distinctly non-serious vibe that there wasn't much tension. It look pretty cool, but it was just "heroes smash bad guys! Yay!".

Now, in Pacific Rim, the tension was always there. Sure, you knew the good guys would win (it is a summer-block buster after all), but exactly which characters would survive and which wouldn't wasn't known. The tension was more palpable. Also, I just happen to really like Giant Robots. The action was on a really grand scale and felt more believable to me. With the Avengers, it always looked a little silly with Captain America and Black Widow leaping around in their little costumes doing backflips and whatnot. The Live-Action Action seemed a little fake and hollow. With Pacific Rim, it's entirely CGI, and while it doesn't look "real", it never lacks impact or stylishness.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Pacific rim was embarrassingly bad. I actually walked out of the theater feeling like it was the death of nerd movies. Acting was terribad, plot was nonsensical, the way they fought the monsters was nonsense. The special effects were kind of meh ie lets put them in water so we don't have to render too much of anything else. I seriously thought the characters and their interactions were making fun of anime tropes. (why else would the be so garbage)

I went with friends thinking it would be dumb fun and it was just dull and dumb.

Probably my most hated movie and I wanted to like it.

 

[Mrkillhappy]

I went with the Avengers though for story it is kind of unfair given that the Avengers is not only an adaptation but also technically a sequel to many popular movies so for investment in the story it has a greater build up. That being said Pacific Rim had it's share of great over the top action moments that got me more hype but overall their was less action scenes in the movie just really really good action scenes (for spectacle). Pacific Rim also suffered from a loss of spectacle when you see it on a home theater system instead of how I experienced it which was in IMAX 3D where as the Avengers is more built around character development based action and its impact on the universe over spectacle in height of the things battling each other.