An Op-Ed to Legendary upon reading Volume One of ‘Final Breach.’
***Edit: Re-blogged to share an update below***
As you lovely folks no doubt know, the first volume of the Pacific Rim sequel to Uprising to conclude the story has been released in digital format and us poor souls who backed it have been sent digital copies. To say it’s a travesty is putting it lightly. While I know it’s not likely to be read by anyone at Legendary, I decided to express my views. In case anyone would like to read what I sent them, I’ve put the text below the cut. Please be advised there are spoilers and frank language describing what happens in the comic which some may find disturbing.
To anyone else who backed this and wishes to express their dissatisfaction, if you log in, and navigate to ‘updates,’ there is a form saying: If you have any issues, click here to direct message us so that we can help! This prompts a message saying “Send a message To:Legendary Comics.” By Jove, don’t mind if I do…
I’m also going to try the public comments section but I’m certain my comment will be moderated and not see the light of day.
I don’t necessarily think it will be read by Legendary or make any difference. However, we fans funded this project and if I paid a painter to paint my house and they dumped a can of paint on the floor, I’d express my dissatisfaction as well.
Without further ado, here’s what I sent:
I am compelled to write this after reading volume one of Final Breach and to express my deep disappointment in the project.
The first Pacific Rim movie is beloved because it is a story about human connection through crisis, and about how different types of love and relationships, while occasionally complex, have the power to be greater than the sum of their parts. The giant robots punching monsters were just a (very cool) bonus. This is why the popularity of the movie re-spiked during the pandemic: we all needed a story about the world coming together through global adversity.
All your subsequent iterations of this franchise have missed that mark. The fans stayed with you through a complicated relationship with Uprising, which notably featured child soldiers and a plotline that took a beloved hero from the first movie (Newt), subjected him to nonconsensual possession with no redemption, and took another beloved hero of the first movie (Mako) and fridged her unnecessarily for the “male hero pain” of her newly arrived brother character.
We, the fans, backed this project. We wanted you to fix the sins of Uprising with this comic. I feel you have failed us.
If you were to have looked at Pacific Rim fan interactions online, you would have no doubt noticed a significant lean towards the beloved fan-favourite characters of Newt and Hermann. One of the many reasons these characters have had an enduring impact on fans is their positioning as heroes despite falling well outside traditional heroic stereotypes. They are intellectuals and a little off-beat, but they are not ridiculed or othered for their “nerdiness” or potential neuro-atypical characteristics, alongside a healthy dose of queer coding (with Hermann Gottlieb being a clear homage to Alan Turing and Newt falling outside typical male masculine norms in almost every way).
To therefore have abandoned and reduced the character of Newt to a few pages, which reveal that he is, in fact, still alive and still being held hostage and mentally tortured for years, only for Hermann to acknowledge this and then kill him anyway, is, quite frankly, a travesty of story-telling.
What follows is a one-page, extremely graphic death by electrocution, after which we get one panel of Hermann standing by the smoldering corpse of Newton and saying the narrative equivalent of “woah, tough break bruh,” only to show up on the next page all business, with all traces of apparent sadness gone. This is slipshod writing and a callous abandonment of, honestly, both characters. You gave Newt a horrific on-screen death which disrespects and tosses aside the character, his entire narrative arc, and his potential for redemption, especially after the revelation that he is, in fact, still alive. Hermann Gottlieb’s character gets a more silent (and less graphic) death: the death of realistic depictions of humanity, guilt, or grief. You single-handedly ruined both characters in one fell swoop.
You have fundamentally misunderstood what fans love about this story.
Why is it relevant to mention the Pacific Rim fanbase? Because we funded this project. I’ll say it again: we funded this project. And as a fan who funded this project, I have to express my disappointment.
I have no idea if this will be read, but it needed to be expressed. If you have, in fact, read this, then I thank you for your time and implore you to take better care with the television series (or go ahead and retcon the further sins of this travesty of a comic; the fans will not begrudge you for this, I promise).
Do your research. Talk to fans. Understand why the first movie is a beloved classic. Do the things you did not do when laying out the story for this comic. We are the reason you met your funding goal, and we hoped for better.
Legendary needs to stop making Pacific Rims for people who don't like Guillermo del Toro's other works. The target audience actually isn't people who just want to see big fights between mechs and monsters, it's people who also want to see fishman sex and watch a creature figure out how to human.
