Constantly seeing memes about Americans being sick of "foreign wars". As opposed to what, civil wars that you're not sick of? Or do you like to say foreign wars to feel like you have nothing to do with it
Becoming Greater than Your Origins and Cancelling the Apocalypse
In 2010, Travis Beacham wrote a draft script of Pacific Rim that looks almost nothing like the script and the movie we ended up with. It is an absolutely wild script, and if you've never read it but you're into Pacific Rim, it is 100% worth a read, and easy to find with a quick online search. The rest of this post contains spoilers and an analysis of one of the themes, so if you haven't read it yet and don't want to be spoiled, stop here and go read it!
There are some elements in the script that are either retained or similar in the final script written by Beacham and Del Toro.
Raleigh has still lost Yancy, there is a woman they had fought over (though that woman later became Yancy's fiancé and is named Flick--I always liked that name better than Naomi), and Newt is still a major character.
However, there are also vast, sweeping, and significant differences. Some of them are delightful. For example, I really liked that Duc and Kaori Jessop play a bigger role in the script; in the final film, the international teams don't get as much character development as Duc and Kaori get in the draft script.
Some of the differences are not so delightful and there's an entire Pacific Rim fandom wiki article which includes criticisms of the script (some racism and sexism, for one).
However, the difference I want to discuss is about Earth, the Anteverse, and the Precursors.
In the draft script, there's a mad scientist, Ivo Czerny. Newt interned with him years ago, but Czerny has gone off the grid. Newt and Flick, a journalist haunted by Yancy's death, spend their portion of the movie tracking down Czerny to learn anything he might know that could help Newt close the Breach (the "Interstice" in the draft script).
They finally catch up to Czerny and he almost kills them by detonating a seismic bomb, but not before saying this to Newt:
Did you not listen to a word I said? They aren't just coming here! They made here! Their universe is dying! It's raw survival! You'd stand against the Creators of the universe? And I’m insane?
Creator Travis Beacham has said, "Being from the Bible Belt, I have long-standing issues with apocalypticism. It’s a poisonous, choking mindset. And Pacific Rim is in no small part about overcoming it, persisting in the face of doom and imagining solutions to impossibly large problems."
Putting two and two together, it is clear to me that Ivo's reveal regarding the Precursors is one of the central themes of the draft script: that it is possible to rise up against your creators, against your origins, and not only win, but become your better and greater self.
The Precursors are an allegory for a Bible Belt God, and Ivo Czerny is convinced that there is no point in trying to fight God or His apocalypse.
However, Newt and Flick, even once they learn this information, don't give up. They are more determined than ever to save Earth. Newt even uses other information he's gathered from viewing Czerny's research to come up with a way to close the Interstice. This sends the subtle message: learning the truth of your origins doesn't predetermine your fate or doom you to what it portends.
Newt's direct reply to Czerny is, "We can solve this! There’s hope!" to which Czerny replies, "Hope fails! It lifts you up and it drops you! I’m not going to let you poison the world with hope!"
This too, represents the tug of war between a Bible Belt preacher's apocalyptic proclamations, and a member of the congregation (in this case Newt) who pushes back and dares to claim that the preacher, the authoritarian leader with a direct line to God, is wrong, that we are not doomed to the apocalypse, and in fact, we are capable of stopping it from happening, if only we have hope.
The symbolism was meant for this scenario of the evangelical preacher in service of an apocalypse-inducing God, angry at His children, but I like to think that the message goes deeper, and can be extrapolated to other situations.
For example, more generically, we often see themes in literature of characters unable to escape their upbringing, their parents, their heritage, or their lineage. This includes Oedipus, Antigone, and Hamlet, to name a few. Often these are characters who end up either dead or their fate is otherwise tragic in the end.
Beacham's message in the draft script rejects these themes and challenges us to be masters of our own fate: we don't have to be beholden to our creators--our parents, our community, our heritage, or any other "god" who made us. If we have hope, determination, and a friend or two by our side, we can overcome any situation, any obstacle, no matter how big or impossible.
In the end, that is the theme that continues from the draft script into the final cut of Pacific Rim. The Beckets' father abandons them, but Raleigh and Yancy don't run away from the greatest threat Earth has ever faced--they sign up to stare it down. Raleigh's decision to go after the Saltchuck brings him tragedy, but that is not his end. The same arguments could be made for Mako, Stacker, the Hansens, Tendo, and more.
We are not beholden to our past, no matter where we've come from or what we've done. We are always capable of making the choices to change our future. Hope is always there for us to grasp onto. No problem is inevitable. No problem is ever too big when we work together and we don't give up. If we come together, we can always cancel the apocalypse.
