Thoughts On Uprising

my first reaction to seeing hermann's lab/workspace in uprising was indignation because it was so uncharacteristicly cluttered and adorned with things that more befitted newton's sensibilities. ..but the more i thought about it the more i realized how representative it was of him. his inability to let go of the past, and his inability to let go of newton- his lack of support taken slowly out from under him leaving him in a sprawling mess as he tries to clutter out his loneliness. uprising has literally the worst writing and somehow literally the best environmental design and that combination does horrible, horrible things to me. it keeps me up at night

newt says something early on in his first interaction with hermann that in retrospect of the whole move can only be, and i mean literally can only be construed in two ways

one was that he was and has been trying to lure hermann to his apartment to kill him for an indeterminate amount of time. The “finally” means that he’s brought up alice before. He’s tried to get hermann to go to his apartment before. But in doing so would 100% without a doubt reveal newt’s kaiju infection, so the only in-step with his evil mastermind characterization that’s revealed later is that newt was trying to lure hermann over alone to get him out of the way. Or, the other is that he's making an extreme error in judgement as a cry for help. it's literally- it can only be one of those two things or more likely both at once. It could be both at once

why do they include details like this that are impossible to catch unless you're absolutely insane

ok third reason is that the implication is he's completely insane but the rest of the movie seems to disprove that but that's also like. part of it. part of why the comment is absolutely deranged

i dont even know if the writers realized the repercussions of that one line

the most upsetting thing about the implied circumstances of hermann not knowing what's been happening with newt is that fairly early on newton would have to have distanced himself from hermann, because if they had gotten involved already, even just as close friends, hermann would have Definitely known something was going on with him

...which means they never got involved, which means newt would have had done something to convincingly break hermann's heart enough not to pursue him when he distances their post-pacific-rim-1 relationship. ...and i hate everything about that

and so does newt, and so does hermann. no one wins here. uprising is terrible and i hate how i have to fucking unwind this poorly thought out disaster to respool it into something that makes sense, however painful that is

the WORST timeline is that they DID get involved and the takeover happened farther down the road in an extremely orchestrated way by the precursors so that hermann doesn't suspect anything but that can't be accurate to uprising either because their chemistry would be totally different

you wouldnt get hermann's sort of bruised but hopeful attitude trying to rekindle their friendship, nor that distraughtly indulgent hug in the middle of the movie which is the way hermann would act on feelings he never got to express because newt distanced them too quickly

that part fucked me up it was the most in character part of the movie as an act of "you're slipping away from me and maybe this is my shot & maybe this is goodbye and to hell with it i miss you and im going to act on it now" desperation

the single most in character thing about this movie is that this is exactly how hermann would hug newt at his wits end and that absolutely broke me

suddenly shao industries is implicated in the rogue jaeger they took down that has KAIJU BIOTECH in it and when hermann hears about it potentially being shao industries his first comment is "Shao Industries? They don't even have a bio division" HERMANN........... NEWT IS HEAD OF R&D AT SHAO INDUSTRIES

NEWT IS LIKE THE NUMBER ONE KAIJU BIOLOGIST ON EARTH

YOU'RE JUST TOO IN LOVE WITH HIM TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY

i can't take this anymore. why is chuck not on the wall. why is chuck not on the fucking wall

the amount of disrespect for the first movie cast is staggering. how could they do this to them. i dont even like chuck

and they just...... they go straight from that vast disrespectful oversight to casually introducing a /suspended human brain/ being (mostly likely unethically) used as a drifting partner for training and NEVER TOUCH ON THAT AGAIN and then hamfistedly rip off the first movie again like god i can't believe that's a MISSABLE DETAIL. The..... deeply psychotic nature of that, and EVERYTHING it implies and it's a. A THROWAWAY LORE FLAVOR ELEMENT?? this. this movie brings me to literal, physical tears

one of the NINE writers for this fucking movie was an absolute genius and unfortunately by all accounts it probably wasn't del toro seeing as how next to none of his original script and vision made it into the final. but god above what a Thing that was wrought in it's place

and the next scene after that has newton firing and unfiring someone in the same breath and then hijacking someone else's coffee right out of their hands i literally can't take this. i cannot take this movie

uprising drinking game that will get you killed: take a shot every time they do an uninspired mimic of the first movie

there's a line between tactful homage and ...whatever this is, and apparently no one told anyone in the writers room about it

i cannot believe i'm advocating for hermann to have less of a role in something for any reason but lord above and beyond why didn't they give the tactical shouting role to literally any of the handful of TRAINED military officers in the room and not the godforsaken scientist im broken. im absolutely broken. i think i disassociated through most of the rest of this which is the only plausible explanation for how could i have forgotten the depths of agony this movie provides

..although apparently not dissociative enough not to notice the abysmally mediocre shot direction. how do you punch a robot through a building to the left and then have it come in through the right and not have anyone in your 150 million dollar budget notice how poorly that reads i mean really. the middle cut being "straight on" (angled ineffectively at that) trying to mend the momentum gap is just clunky

and if that wasn't irritating enough that shot drives straight into the FIRST (the first.) of the "call backs" to the otherwise clever momentum gags from the first movie. just to underline what a bumbling knockoff of a film it is [the voice of someone currently suffering an aneurysm] they didn't even bother to get newton's tattoos right how does one screw up this badly on a 150 million dollar budget. do you think no one will notice? DO YOU THINK I WONT NOTICE?

this is once again a perfect time for me to complain about how they switched his bracelets to his dominant hand for no apparent reason other than to most likely get in the way of him working with it

and the amount of people calling him "newt" who have no business doing so- especially. especially hermann. he only does it once and it's not while newton is even in the room and of all the out of character moments in the film it's by far the most painfully jarring

AND OF COURSE the one fucking time in the movie when it would have been APT to call him newt (as, being the name of an animal, it would make the line "we caught ourselves a newton" slightly more poetic albeit still annoying) they revert back to his full name. i can't believe this

and now, after a full (albeit staggered) rewatch, i can say with confidence that i sincerely, viscerally, and deeply loathe uprising. awful movie. good night.

the real questions is: when the fuck did he switch to contacts. did the precursors make him do that. what do the aliens have against glasses

the fucking kaiju overlords paid for his lasik surgery

hermann has longer hair in uprising and after all the dedication i put into understanding and eventually falling in love with his first terrible haircut it feels like an absolute transgression to rip it away from me

OK SO

HERE (in ms paint approximation) IS SHAO INDUSTRIES LAB THIS is how things start off while Newt is setting off the virus Then it cuts to some other action, then cuts back to THIS without ANY explanation for why they switched places or how. In comes Newt's boss (Liwen) who picks up the gun left on the dividing table and points it at Newt AND THEN ANOTHER CUT, AND THEN SOMEHOW IT ENDS UP LIKE THIS AND IT'S DRIVING ME INSANE BECASE THERE'S NO MOTIVATION, IT MAKES NO SENSE, THEY DIDN'T HAVE PEOPLE WALKING AROUND AT ALL, IT JUST. GOD!!!!

like yeah between one and two they do have newt sauntering around a little but it's nigh impossible to tell where anyone is because of how they shot it and then i have NO explanation for how Newt ended up on the other side of the room and Liwen next to Hermann

like gods there are so many reasons for why liwen COULD have ended up next to hermann like she could have gone over to HELP him which would have been good CHARACTER MOTIVATION for them to then start WORKING TOGETHER because why in GODS NAME WOULD HE TRUST HER THAT QUICKLY

...but was ANY of that on screen?? absolutely fucking not this movie is an absolute mess and if it was just bad i could deal with it but it's so close to being good every single time if they had just made DIFFERENT CHOICES and instead they do SHIT LIKE THIS

i had to completely rechoreograph that scene for my amv and this. this is why. god there were so many ways they could have fixed it and they did none of them

and you do not know what i went through to pull a "functioning" map of the lab off. it's literally broken and you do not want to hear me get into it. this is my.... faithful interpretation.

im getting into it.

so the fucking. they come into the fucking lab from this main entrance where it's SORT OF HARD TO TELL, BUT THAT'S A LARGE WINDOW SHOWING THE HANGAR BAY and look at how the airplane strip guidelines go in the direction of the red arrow this is from another side of the lab, looking out, you know, in the opposite direction. so you would think. yes, this is the opposite side of the lab, right. this should should take place on the other end of this structure, which is sort of suspended in this hangar, and is not much wider than the lab itself



NO.





IT;'S LIKE THIS
NEWT ROUNDS THE CORNER UP THE STAIRS TO THE RIGHT
you can. you can see the lab layout behind him there's no way i can be mistaken about that
and what's. destroying me is that hermann newt enter this lab
from the left
they come in from this side WHICH MEANS
THEY CAME IN FROM HERE A CORNER. IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. WITH NO MEANS OF ELEVATORING UP TO
IM GOING INSANE I LITERALLY CANT PLAUSIBLY DRAW THIS FLOORPLAN UP IT LITERALLY DOESNT ADHERE TO LOGIC
THIS BUDGET WAS 150 MILLION DOLLARS


i never felt fucking lost in pacific rim
ever
i knew where everyone was at all times
ive never studied the shatterdome like this because i've never felt like i HAD TO
there's like a spot on the scaffolding upwalk that they return to a couple of times in the films and i always know EXACTLY where they are despite the lighting and everything else
where you can look out and see gipsy danger

it's like
maddening
i didnt realize that they return to the same lab in uprising because they NEVER GROUND YOU IN YOUR ENVIROMENT

a friend: "this movie truly sounds like one big exercise in 'what not to do'"

down to the decor on newton's fucking walls
but again.
if it were only mistakes, i could just ignore it
it's so much wrong surrounding pure diamond

pacrims color palette is like. a rainbow of complementary colors set into an earthy steel. it's one of the most rusty yet vibrant movies ive ever seen; it's powerfully beautiful
uprising is red white and blue.
the entire movie
and the most offensive color of blue you could ever put on a screen it's awful this is the entire color palette and im not joking at all im sorry its red, white, blue, and flesh

......where did newton get red lipstick

there is no, utterly no answer to this question that doesn't have vastly interesting implications

the salacious amount of details in uprising that were left poorly attended to are absolutely maddening. i hate what this movie did. i hate what it did to me

evil newt would definitely wear his shoes on the bed and i hate it

...there are, in fact, many reasons why Uprising is canonically incongruent with pacific rim. The most egregious of them being that for the events to take place on the same timeline the kaiju brain fragment (which was at some point lovingly nicknamed "Alice") would have had to be still driftable, which was NOT the case and a major point in the movie that forced newt to go after Hannibal Chau and get the secondary kaiju brain.

another is that newton learned how to shave properly

i'm finally venturing into the pacific rim novelizations and whenever it talks about hermann's wife my entire body electrifies and i start sweating excitedly. it feels salacious almost. the forbidden het version of hermann

hermann having het feelings is so kinky i can't explain it

i THINK it's partially because the books also heavily plays up the aspect of his character where he's very people-averse and finds solace in his work/mathematics to avoid human/emotional matters so the fact that he also has The Hets feels especially carnal

god thinking about how Insane it would drive pre-uprising newton to discover hermann has been having hets. it would put him on the most violent bender of revenge prostitute use and just.... more of his normal self-destruction, but with an angry cry-for-attention tinge to it

i wouldn't be able to in good conscious of Timeline B write hermann actually getting involved with anyone in that 10 year period, but newt catching wind of someone trying to court him/hermann considering the possibility would absolutely destroy the both of them in such... ways

i like the fact that newt is actually just too much of a brain-touched asshole to keep anyone no matter how you look at it. hermann is decent enough to have a relationship (albeit a sad one). newt has to settle for intoxicated one-night-stands no matter What he wants

okay, lets be real here. it's not a one-night-stand if you're paying for it.

Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
mall goth newt $3,600
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying