PACIFIC RIM (2013)

PACIFIC RIM (vt TITANES DE PACIFICO). Guillermo del Toro, dir., co-script, with Travis Beacham. Travis Beacham, story. USA (Canada): Warner Bros.& Legendary Pictures (prod.) / Warner Bros. (primary dist.), 2013. Andrew Neskoromny and Carol Spier, prod. design.

In a nonjudgmental sense of the term, recombinant cinema, most relevantly here Robo(t)Jox (1989  vs. Godzilla, with large dollops of IRON MAN, THE IRON GIANT, TRANSFORMERS, Ellen Ripley in (sic) a Power Loader taking on the Alien Queen in ALIENS, and large fighting robots from Japanese mecha anime. (William Trevor Kidd recommends more specifically for these robots the TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion [1995-96 f.]). See for human/machine interface central to the Robot Jox/Soldier-Boy motif (to use Joe Haldeman's terminology), along with mind-melds between pairs of human "Jaeger" robot operators — and human/alien mind-melds — mediated cybernetically. Note Industrial and cyberpunk design and massiveness of the machinery and relate that to images and advertising for the film that suggest that to defeat the alien monsters human beings had to become at least monstrous in size. Given that the mind-melding is done with a co-pilot of the Jaeger (hunter) robot and not the machine itself, humans can put off monstrousness in the way the monsters cannot (definitely cf. Ripley vs. the Alien Queen).

5. DRAMA, RDE, 14/VII/13; William Trevor Kidd, 16/VII/13