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Well you do need to hold reserves.

To which I'd say your reserve is Gipsy. While you have a mission you need to accomplish this attack, by two of the biggest Category 4's ever seen and the first where you're dealing with two simultaneously, has to be dealt with before that mission is possible. Sending two Jaegers out to deal with the threat is quite literally the plan with the least chance of success. Putting Gipsy in reserve as a last ditch, "we're fucked if we need you guys anyways so why not" unit and send in Cherno, Typhoon, and Striker. Cherno is tough enough to at least keep one of them occupied while Typhoon and Striker kill the other then triple team the last one. The ways Typhoon and Cherno died both more or less required they be fighting one on one. Had either of them had back up it's highly unlikely they would have been destroyed.

While ideally you want Striker completely healthy for the run on the Breach by going one on one with Otachi and Leatherback you're maximizing your chances of losing one or suffering severe damage to both. So you're maximizing the odds Striker will be pristine but also that it will be making the run alone or with only Gipsy for backup.

This is the kind of situation that comes up a lot in RTS games (yes, I know, games) and in my experience trying to put just enough force in the prelim battle to win typically loses you most of your resources. You're better off taking everything you got and smashing that spoiler attack and then send in everything against the final target.

Tsukiyumi wrote:That whole fight with Cherno and Crimson was one of my biggest gripes with the movie. Sound tactical doctrine dictates that you never hold back; you hit the enemy's weakest point with maximum strength. Going 2-on-2 when you could go 4-on-1 is just plain stupid, from a tactical standpoint.

Especially when these are the "biggest we've ever seen" and therefore probably considerably more powerful than any that you have ever seen. You've been losing bots left and right when fighting one-on-one so.... you stick with that plan?

Ok I'll keep it short since obviously we have to agree to disagree on this point.

I still don't understand. You suggest that the premise needs to be taken seriously. I would argue that it was. Every movie of this type requires a certain amount of SoD. I love Hellboy, but Hellboy is built upon the premise that there is an entire mystical fantasy world that directly interacted with the human world on my occasions, and still does, but people don't believe it because... stuff. There's no adequate explanation as for why this is. It's part of the premise of the movie. It's a high concept idea. "What if fairy tales were true and still living amongst us we just can't see them?" Taking that basic concept it then runs with the idea and creates an entire world based off acceptance of this premise. If you start demanding explanations for that premise it just disentigrates because at it's core the premise isn't sustaniable in reality. You can't craft an explanation for Hellboy's basic idea and resort to just throwing up your hands and saying "Magic".

Blade II, the movie that introduced me to Del Toro is the same way. There is a gigantic vampire conspiracy in the world and no one notices because... vampires. Hell, the vampires seem to have an unending stream of not terribly bright humans working for them who never spill the beans. Then you've got people with machine guns strapped to their backs dressed in black leather walking through the streets like it's nothing. How do they get away with this? Because it's fucking cool.

Jaws, "What would happen if a giant shark acted less like an animal and more like a serial killer?"

Star Trek, "What if we could voyage to other worlds with in a reasonable time span."

This is my entire point. In many movies like this there is a central premise that is by itself, completely unjustifiable but rather than throw up our hands because you can't make it work these stories simply say, "But what if it could?" What if you could hide the entire fairy tale world in plain sight? What if you could have a giant vampire conspiracy, what if Michael Myers was a shark, what if we could go to other planets in a reasonable time frame and soon? The fact that at their core these movies and shows have a rather ridiculous premises that can't be defended doesn't make them bad. Hellboy is amazingly fun and absolutely gorgeous. Guillermo crafts an entire world around the premise and its a blast. Same with Blade II. Jaws in spite of being ridiculous still has some of the best suspense I've seen outside a Hitchcock movie. It's a beautifully paced movie... about a homicidal shark. Star Trek... is Star Trek. It's obvoiusly generated enough devotion for this site to exist all based off technology that might as well be built upon fairy farts for as realistic as it is.

So coming back to Pacific Rim, the core premise, the high concept, is "What if giant monsters really did exist and the best we could do to fight them is giant robots?" That's the SOD point. That's the equivalent of accepting Hellboy's fairy tale world in plain sight, or the Warp drive, or a shark that can hold a grudge. That's the point where the movie says, "Giant monsters exist, giant robots are the best way to fight them. Ok, moving on."

As for grown up, did you watch the movie? Guillermo packed a lot of world building into it. He created a very interesting world to be honest. The construction of the wall being working for food rations, discussion in Hong Kong's mess about how they can still get food other people can't, it speaks of a world that has poured everything they have into fighting this threat. The existence of the Kaiju parts black market alone. You've got a hollowed out Kaiju skull being used as a temple to worship them. It all points to a much larger world adapting to the presence of these creatures and the results of trying to fight them both the building of the Jaegers and the wall. It's taking the premise as seriously as it can. It takes it as least as seriously as Hellboy and more so than Blade II.

I have no problem with that. But telling me to basically have no right to complain about things I didn't like about the movie since "I knew what the premise was and I accepted it the moment I bought a ticket"......well, I think that is very condescending of you.

I'm not telling you that you don't have a right to complain. I'm telling you that you're tilting at Windmills. You've chosen to attack the concept of what is a high concept story which inevitably gets you no where. How would you react to someone criticizing the existence of warp drive and the transporter as their reasons for disliking Star Trek? The entire point of a high concept movie, and yes Pac Rim is one, is to take a ridiculous premise and ask, "But what if it wasn't ridiculous?" So bitching about said premise being ridiculous is missing the ENTIRE point of the movie. That's what I'm trying to convey. The premise is inherently ridiculous, this entire movie is asking, "But what if it wasn't?"

I noticed that the Chinese Jaeger took little damage. The pilot pod was ripped out and two of the three saw hands were crushed. That's it. Easily salvageable. Though finding triplets again or three people capatible would be hard. Also repairing it in a short amount of time too.

Background info says destroyed Jaegers are dropped off in some area where one of the first Kaijus died.

Dropped off... why? Well early nuclear ones could be dangerous I suppose.

Yeah, CT should be easily salvagable. Compared to the kind of damage Gipsy took vs. Knifehead and was salvaged CT Shouldn't be a big deal. Hell, if finding triplets is a problem cut one of the small arms off and put a two man crew pod back in.

Tyyr wrote:Sending two Jaegers out to deal with the threat is quite literally the plan with the least chance of success.

Jim wrote:Especially when these are the "biggest we've ever seen" and therefore probably considerably more powerful than any that you have ever seen. You've been losing bots left and right when fighting one-on-one so.... you stick with that plan?

Yeah, in my review on Facebook, I hint at the fact that Sun Tzu's The Art of War would've been a good thing for Pentecost to read at some point.

Maximum strength at the enemy's weakest point. That's the way to win, the majority of the time.

Tsukiyumi wrote:That whole fight with Cherno and Crimson was one of my biggest gripes with the movie. Sound tactical doctrine dictates that you never hold back; you hit the enemy's weakest point with maximum strength. Going 2-on-2 when you could go 4-on-1 is just plain stupid, from a tactical standpoint.

Agreed with this. They should not have held Striker Eureka back at all against those two.

Tyyr wrote:Dropped off... why? Well early nuclear ones could be dangerous I suppose.

Yeah, CT should be easily salvagable. Compared to the kind of damage Gipsy took vs. Knifehead and was salvaged CT Shouldn't be a big deal. Hell, if finding triplets is a problem cut one of the small arms off and put a two man crew pod back in.

Don't know why they drop them off. Maybe to use as spare parts or not block shipping routes. I don't know.

The Russian took similar damage as Gypsy did. I guess it is a matter of how much you are willing to spend to fix broken giant robots.