Del Toro's Pacific Rim

@Calnos:After the first couple of kaiju get Tesla-punched to death, it starts making a great deal of sense.

edited 14th Dec '12 2:36:15 PM by Iaculus

I wonder how difficult it would be to send Cherno Alpha through the portal so that rather than the monsters terrorizing Russia, Russia could terrorize wherever it is the monsters come from?

Its just annoying to have all the talk be about EVA or Portal instead of Pacific Rim.

They're probably having a difficult enough on defense alone, never mind going on the offensive.

Wars are not won by defensive action. You must go to the enemy and break his ability or his will to fight, preferably both. As long as you only defend and he knows it, a smart guy is never going to commit to his attacks so fully that you can manage either.

It's why so many movies end with the hail mary offense.

edited 14th Dec '12 7:26:52 PM by Night

The movie is giant robots fighting giant monsters. I don't think getting to the portal would be difficult if there's no monsters to fight through.

Wars are not won by defensive action.

Russia v. Napoleon. Vietnam v. the United States. Afghanistan v. anybody.

Can it even be considered a war? The trailer implies that the monsters are intelligent, but they could just as easily nothing more than really, really big animals running purely off of instinct.

The trailer does not necessary imply that the Kaiju are intelligent to me.

"Something found us", but that something could easily be something else living in the same world as the Kaiju, and they send the Kaiju here like we sending out drones to fight.

They cant go through the interstace because it's a big swirly hoel made by gods from another dimension. Well I suppose they could, but then they'd have to fight an industrial fishfarm full of millions Kaiju, in which case they would get curbstomped in five seconds.

We don't know that. They could just be beasts wandering through a large portal positioned in a major feeding ground/habitat.

Won on the back of media reaction to the Tet Offensive. And in a larger sense it completely ignores that the dynamic was exactly the reverse of what you're saying; the US typically fought the major actions as the defender, and didn't win the war.

That's how successful guerrilla warfare works. The little guy plays aggressor when things happen or he dies; Afghanistan has the same dynamic. Napoleon's the only valid example, and even that's kinda questionable since, again, he didn't lose the war in Russia, he lost his army in Russia. He lost the war in Spain by giving away a base from which strikes against his capital could be launched.

Vietnam (and Afghanistan) was defensive because the locals focused on making occupation as difficult and unpleasant for the occupiers/imperialists as possible, and as a result managed to wear them down to the point that they decided it wasn't worth it. In both cases, they were defending their own homelands; the Vietnamese didn't try to attack the mainland US (and it would have backfired horribly if they had, since it would have given the US a much stronger motivation to keep fighting them) and Afghanistan didn't attack Russian territory.

If Earth ever faced aliens that had vastly superior technology or power, that would probably be our best move, too. Wear them down until they decide Earth isn't worth the trouble it poses.

Losing your army and losing the war is basically equivalent; you can't win a war without an army, and everything after that is just denoument. Napoleon lost in Russia and the Nazis lost at Stalingrad, even if in the latter case it took years longer to end the war. This tactic doesn't work as well for Earth in the event of an alien invasion, though, because high technology means that sheer space doesn't give much of an advantage; it only worked in the old days when supply lines were a big issue.

edited 14th Dec '12 8:19:58 PM by WarriorEowyn

Is it worth mentioning that I mostly meant that statement as a continuation of playing up the up-and-coming memetic status of Cherno Alpha? And another shot at a Russian Reversal joke? <__<

You seem to have a grave misapprehension of the interaction between strategic, operational, and tactical goals.

You could classify the overall goal as defensive.

You cannot classify the means used to reach that goal at the operational level (Tet or any firebase attack), or the tactical level (any particular nuisance attack), as defensive. A guerrilla movement survives on its ability to dictate the place and length of battle; forced into a defensive action (as Tet did in the later stages) it will suffer greatly (with Tet ultimately resulting in the effective destruction of the Viet Cong as a force when they tried to hold what they took).

The overall goals of an insurgency may be defensive in nature but it must fight as close to a purely offensive campaign taking as many purely offensive actions as possible. It cannot await the blow, as Clauswitz described the defense, because it cannot withstand the blow. Every time it lets its enemy mass against it and launch his own attacks, it will be crushed. (Tet again.)

Wars are won by imposing your will on the enemy; by offensive action.

edited 14th Dec '12 8:27:05 PM by Night

SO how about them giant robots that punch monsters in the face? They look pretty cool right?

Veddy veddy much so. No frakking discussions including Clausewitz.

You reckon the Indian Jaeger would be a multi-armed Shiva Zulu?

UH, yes we do. The Kaiju were sent here by the creators of the universe to take our place because there's was dying.

—scratches head—

Uh, late response, but where does it say that?

Side note: anyone know the correct pronunciation for "Jaeger"? Yay-ger? Aa-ger? Jag-ger? Something completely different?

It's Yay-ger, you can hear the AI says the name in the trailer.

The script.

And where art thine script?

Ugh, can we keep the Vietnam arguments out? I'm too busy imagining the Cherno Alpha kicking Dagon's scaley ass.

Right here.

http://www.mediafire.com/?lb8catctlrqriem