Unpopular opinion: Stupid blue holograms ruining the magic...
The more I’m looking at Pacific Rim: Uprising’s movie clips and previews, and the more I’m wondering how those blue holograms inside the Jaegers are supposed to make piloting more “real” or visceral to the audience?
Why try to bring the fight with the Kaiju outside the Jaeger inside the Conn-pod?
Aren’t the two pilots supposed to be entirely connected to the Jaeger’s own nervous system?
Didn’t they explain, in the novelization, that the Jaegers even have some kind of pain receptors in order for the pilots to feel like the stakes are high in battle, and try their best to avoid Jaeger “injury” because any damage to their giant robot physically hurts them?
Aren’t the pilots meant to be the two brain hemispheres of the giant robot? Synchronizing their actions while each also being able to control their own body movements individually, as well as momentarily taking over some of the Jaeger’s systemic functions?
Thus, aren’t they supposed to be watching the battle through their Jaeger’s optics? i.e. Looking at what happens outside their Jaeger’s body directly through the Jaeger’s eyes?
Did I understand the whole movie wrong? Were other people in the audience under the impression that the only visual cues the pilots had regarding what was happening outside their Jaegers when they were in combat were those strange screen readings in front of them?
Because adding blue holograms now makes me feel like they’re no longer connected to the giant robot’s own nervous system, looking at things happening from the Jaeger’s very perspective while fighting for their survival; but instead looking at a computer rendered blue miniaturized versions of what’s happening to their Jaegers.
They could be in a room from miles away, remotely fighting those holograms and interacting with them in some sort of piloting chamber, while the Jaeger itself fights the real version of those threats.
I know the goal was to create the opposite effect, because apparently watching two pilots strapped in a giant elliptical machine - and then having to wait until the camera pans to the outside to connect their movements with the actual fight - wasn’t the type of visual excitement that children dream about when going to bed at night...
But Jesus! Children play with giant cardboard boxes thinking they’re plane cockpits! If there’s one type of audience that’s able to easily connect the dots, and believe that the pilots are experiencing everything the giant robots are going through as the very extension of their own bodies, it’s them!
I may be a fan of videogames, sci-fi series, and I do enjoy a good hologram standing in lieu of reality every now and then. But in a Conn-pod, to me, they feel extremely needless and highly distracting, breaking the direct connection between man and machine that was solidly established in the first movie.
When you’re directly watching a giant alien monster charging at you at full speed from the robot’s perspective, you don’t need a hologram to remind you that “Eh look! Here’s a giant alien monster charging at me!”
I just... I don’t get it... I really don’t.