parallels.
for what, I have no fucking clue.
but saying “parallels” automatically makes any post sound 30% smarter

I have been racking my brain on this for awhile and I think i might have a theory.

In many ways Pacific Rim is about people. The decisions they make and how they interact with each other. I think that’s why it has the fan following it does. We all empathize with the characters, they feel like real people. Its something missing from most big budget action flicks. They are people that have been hurt by war and some of them express it in ways we understand while others don’t.

It takes two people to drift. A pair, just like a pair of shoes. Without one shoe you are hobbled, impaired. You need two shoes working together to be a complete person and you need two pilots working together to have a complete Jaeger. When Mako loses her family (and her shoe) as a little girl she becomes half a person. she leads a full life but its tainted by her obsession with revenge. She’s one shoe. The other shoe is Raleigh hes lost his other half and he’s broken, disgraced and gone into hiding. Hes also obsessed but by despair instead of revenge. When Pentecost gives Mako her shoe back she finally has permission to find her other half. She does and with his help they both find peace as a pair of Jaeger pilots.

So really the shoe is two things. Obsession and Partnership.

With Hannibal’s shoe you start out with the idea of obsession. Which is something Newt struggles with. He and Hannibal both have that in common but Hannibal’s obsession has corrupted him while Newt’s is scattered and hes ultimately trying to be a force for good. Under the right circumstances I could see Newt easily go that Hannibal direction. Which is kinda what I took away when he lifts up that shoe (after Hannibal is consumed by his own obsession in the form of the baby kaiju) and looks at it. Luckily there’s partnership. That’s where Hermann comes in. (interestingly enough in the cut scene where Hermann is holding Newt after his solo drift he is losing his shoe which shows that same idea of shoes/partnership.) Hermann’s big old floppy dirty oxfords are the opposite of the jingly shiny Hannibal shoe. He prevents Newt from going down that road by being his other half. Just like Raleigh is to Mako.

I recall Guillermo talking about colors, and how everything about Mako in this scene is blue, it’s all blues and cool tones- and then the shoe is red.

He likened the shoe to Mako’s heart. A child, clutching the broken remnants of her heart, the thing she desires most- her family, her childhood, in the palm of her hands, in the moment it has all been taken away from her. That comes back as very important later, when Stacker gives her back that tiny red shoe. Gives her her heart back, finally allows himself to trust her so that she can go after what she wants- justice for her childhood and all the things they’ve lost in this war.

I think it’s something very similar there, that image of Newt with Hannibal’s shoe is that moment after Newt has really been disillusioned about the Kaiju. They aren’t what he thought they were. He’s lost every idea he ever had about how awesome and cool the Kaiju are, that feeling of glory is gone. Color is so damn telling in everything Del Toro has ever directed, and what is gold? Fame, glory, heroics, everything Newt wanted, in the moment it’s been taken away from him.

Two very distinct moments of loss.

I’m surprised Hermann just kinda lets himself be lead around in this scene. He looks almost upset Newt doesn’t approve of the salute he totally doesn’t practice in front of a mirror sometimes.
This part really does illustrate the height difference though. Newton what are you doing here? You are late for your interview with the lollipop guild.

On one hand, I’m glad they cut this scene because it tries to setup a conflict between Newt and the Jaeger pilots that doesn’t really go anywhere. The takeaway should be Newt’s frustration that no one is really looking into Kaiju motivation deep enough (foreshadowing his solo Drift), but his confrontation with Raleigh overpowers it.

Plus, there’s enough in-fighting with Chuck vs Raleigh, we don’t need any scientists vs jocks bullshit. So, again, very glad for the cut.

BUT on the other hand, it’s fun to see Newt be an impulsive, passionate, spastic asshole. It’s about time he be the antagonizer - in the rest of the movie, Hermann tends to be the one who has the more snippy attitude.

It’s also hilarious how long-suffering Hermann is in this scene. Really, it’s amusing how quickly the two go from sniping at each other to forgetting about it. The entire scene from open to close of elevator basically plays out as:

● sniping
● sniping
● shared frustrated looks over Stacker’s new charge
● long-suffering eyerolls from Hermann while Newt blows up
● half-hearted snipe from Newt
● immediate appeal to Hermann from Newt about he how doesn’t like the new guy
● walk into the sunset elevator together

Seriously. They are totally married work-married besties, even if they don’t know it yet. (In the scope of their relationship arc, I’m also glad they cut this scene because the Kaiju Bros feel too close here. It’s great for head-canons to hint so early on that they actually like each other underneath the barbs, but less satisfactory for drama.)

Also, don’t get me started on the salute. That makes THREE now. Herman is absolutely a wanna-be soldier type who sees Stacker as some kind of father-figure. It is adorkable and another delightful little characterization that plays against the tweedy-professor archetype.

I think the most telling thing is that Hermann even allows Newt to touch him like that. Has anybody mentioned THAT yet? I mean he just lets Newt manhandle him back into the elevator. Its the kind of familiarity through touch you see with people who have either been together a long time or touch each other casually all the time. Also He doesn’t outright push Hermann back because he is aware of his bad leg. Its more like herding him around. Its oddly personal.

Also I think him pointing out Hermann isn’t a soldier is a bit of a compliment. He obviously has trouble with authority figures. Hermann has the opposite problem he NEEDS authority figures. Newt has more respect for scientists then he has for soldiers (as we just saw with him screaming at Raleigh) He almost says your not a soldier like hes demeaning himself by acting like one. I think this kinda shows up to with his protest flashbacks in the drift. Brains over brawn.

The other thing is that hes still talking about the ranger to Hermann not because he thinks the man is going to agree with him but because he knows he will at least LISTEN. From this confrontation with a random stranger I imagine he does this shit with just about anybody and the only person still patient enough to tolerate it is the one guy still sticking around the lab with him after everybody else has given up the ghost.

Why are you guys so INTERESTING.

STOP BEING SUCH INTERESTING CHARACTERS.

They have a similar sort of quiet familiarity in the Hannibal Chau briefing scene. That could have been a “get-along shirt“ moment in which Stacker forces them to work together, but there’s no need.

And excellent point on the contrast in how they feel about authority. I think half the reason Newt shouts, “MOVE OVER YOU FASCIST” to Herc in LOCCENT is that he just. can’t. help. himself. It’s so ingrained within him to be anti-authority.

important observations to support my belief that inception and pacific rim take place in the same universe, and that drift technology is the distant descendant of dream sharing tech.

It IS a jump because the PASIV operates on a drug basically, a soporific, and there’s some wobbly science about proximity and sharing a device. altering the chemical can alter the properties of the dream, clarity, length, etc.

However, you could argue it’s a prototype of the PONS system, which is more safe as you can manually turn it off unless you have a situation like mako’s, or are, let’s say, drifting with a hivemind alien consciousness. While the PASIV does have the failsafe of pulling the IV out and therefore halting the drug administration, it is far less guaranteed as an out than the PONS failsafes.

For it to have morphed into neural bridging they would have had to abandon the espionage and like. conceptual uses of dream sharing to make it a more confined connection and also a waking one. You could argue the neural handshake is just a shortened dream, and the completion of that handshake the kick? Which fits with the visuals we get for the drift sequences, even the jolt when drifters return to full lucidity.

The thing about dream sharing for the purposes of military training and espionage is they are trained not to create dreams from memory as doing so can become dangerous and dissociative for the dreamer, which lines up really well with the dangers of chasing RABIT and attempting to drift with someone with whom you are not compatible

And you could definitely argue that the drift partners are in a sort of in-between place in terms of consciousness for the entirety of the drift, as they could chase the RABIT at any point and go Fully into the memory and are also partially experiencing the others’ thoughts/etc

So initially with the mark-1 they focused on creating jaeger tech that made the robot able to drift with a single human. They had this giant ass robot which is able to connect with a person via an induced dream state, align nervous systems, and act as one being. But they then realized, due to the death of whatever his name was, (RIP that one guy) even with the tech allowing them to use more of the brain of the pilot as its processor, it wasn’t enough. needs more RAM, essentially, so.

Then the neural handshake is introduced. More of the initial PASIV type tech is reintroduced when you have two or more jaeger pilots, as it was built for multiple people. They’d have to expand and also pinpoint the consciousnesses and how they were aligning. they had to have testers who werent jaeger pilots???

and to complete this ENORMOUS LEAP OF LOGIC, (which i am doing because i want to fuse these two universes and not because i want to convince anyone that this is an absolute truth), maybe hermann has a PASIV in the lab leftover from the very beginning of his work in the Jaeger program.