Drifting: Newt and Hermann
Jul. 22nd, 2013 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
effexIn which I watch 15 seconds of a shitty Pacific Rim cam, on repeat, in slow-mo, for fandom science.
Newt and Hermann are first up, Raleigh and Mako should follow later this week.
Pacific Rim uses the drift to give us most of the character backstory, which is a neat device but also very frustrating, because shit goes by fast. Especially for Newt and Hermann, who have the quickest, least visually coherent drift.
Newt's first drift is simple enough - he plugs into the brain inna jar, and we get:
Tiny, bespectacled Newt fishing with an older man (I can't find him listed in the credits, so he could be a dad, an uncle, a Big Brother, whatever).
An older Newt in some sort of anatomy/bio class (?) talking enthusiastically with classmates (?). Everyone seems to be wearing lab coats.
And some shots of surgical equipment and dissection overlayed with diagrams of Kaiju, which segues into the Kaiju side of things.
Newt and Hermann's drift together is less straight forward, with lots of blurry segues, and mostly Newt-centric. Seriously, we get maybe three clear Hermann memories.
So, we go from Newt's brace-for-aneurism face to:
What is probably Tiny Newt, even though he's wearing a suit and doesn't have his glasses. Tiny Newt has a tiny pilot's helmet and sweet jet and robot toys.
Older, but pre-tattoo Newt at a protest (which has at least 400x more women than the rest of the movie). I've seen the fist imagery in Pacific Rim fanworks, but I don't know what it's for. Can't make out the signs, either. Dammit.
Tiny Hermann in a suit, doing complicated math in front of a couple of adults.
There's some blurred motion and a shot of Newt's face between this and the next scene, but I couldn't get a decent shot or work out what was going on.
A tiny, sad child. It could be either Newt or Hermann, we've seen both in suits, but given the shorts and fancy shoes I'm going with Hermann.
A side note: I've seen folks talking about how this drift shows that Hermann was bullied as a child. And while he probably was - he was a child math prodigy, bullying and isolation unfortunately come with the territory - I didn't see anything that backed that up. He's certainly distressed here, but that could be due to any number of traumas. The possibilities are endless!
Newt and jars filled with stuff, possibly Kaiju specimens.
Hermann and... whatever that is.
Newt getting tattooed. This is a cool scene and one of the longer ones (a full second!), but the visuals are so layered I had trouble getting a good screenshot. Alas.
Tiny Newt, probably - he's back in the suit (did they only have the one outfit? this is presumably set in the late 90's, c'mon), but Hermann only usesgrandpa glasses for computer work, so.
And then we segue to the Kaiju, followed by bleeding and vomiting. Good times.
Side notes x2: every time I watch this (which has been a lot) I can't help thinking god, I hope they went straight to medical after the movie ended. They're both had seizures (multiple for Newt), plus their blood pressure's elevated so high they've ruptured shit in their eyes and noses. That is bad.
Side note x3: Shitty cam is really shitty, guys. If you want to see the movie (and have access to it in theaters), go see it in theaters. I promise it's worth it.
Newt and Hermann are first up, Raleigh and Mako should follow later this week.
Pacific Rim uses the drift to give us most of the character backstory, which is a neat device but also very frustrating, because shit goes by fast. Especially for Newt and Hermann, who have the quickest, least visually coherent drift.
Newt's first drift is simple enough - he plugs into the brain inna jar, and we get:
Tiny, bespectacled Newt fishing with an older man (I can't find him listed in the credits, so he could be a dad, an uncle, a Big Brother, whatever).
An older Newt in some sort of anatomy/bio class (?) talking enthusiastically with classmates (?). Everyone seems to be wearing lab coats.
And some shots of surgical equipment and dissection overlayed with diagrams of Kaiju, which segues into the Kaiju side of things.
Newt and Hermann's drift together is less straight forward, with lots of blurry segues, and mostly Newt-centric. Seriously, we get maybe three clear Hermann memories.
So, we go from Newt's brace-for-aneurism face to:
What is probably Tiny Newt, even though he's wearing a suit and doesn't have his glasses. Tiny Newt has a tiny pilot's helmet and sweet jet and robot toys.
Older, but pre-tattoo Newt at a protest (which has at least 400x more women than the rest of the movie). I've seen the fist imagery in Pacific Rim fanworks, but I don't know what it's for. Can't make out the signs, either. Dammit.
Tiny Hermann in a suit, doing complicated math in front of a couple of adults.
There's some blurred motion and a shot of Newt's face between this and the next scene, but I couldn't get a decent shot or work out what was going on.
A tiny, sad child. It could be either Newt or Hermann, we've seen both in suits, but given the shorts and fancy shoes I'm going with Hermann.
A side note: I've seen folks talking about how this drift shows that Hermann was bullied as a child. And while he probably was - he was a child math prodigy, bullying and isolation unfortunately come with the territory - I didn't see anything that backed that up. He's certainly distressed here, but that could be due to any number of traumas. The possibilities are endless!
Newt and jars filled with stuff, possibly Kaiju specimens.
Hermann and... whatever that is.
Newt getting tattooed. This is a cool scene and one of the longer ones (a full second!), but the visuals are so layered I had trouble getting a good screenshot. Alas.
Tiny Newt, probably - he's back in the suit (did they only have the one outfit? this is presumably set in the late 90's, c'mon), but Hermann only uses
And then we segue to the Kaiju, followed by bleeding and vomiting. Good times.
Side notes x2: every time I watch this (which has been a lot) I can't help thinking god, I hope they went straight to medical after the movie ended. They're both had seizures (multiple for Newt), plus their blood pressure's elevated so high they've ruptured shit in their eyes and noses. That is bad.
Side note x3: Shitty cam is really shitty, guys. If you want to see the movie (and have access to it in theaters), go see it in theaters. I promise it's worth it.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 03:17 am (UTC)I will say, in the joint drift I think the first one and last one are both Hermann, not Newt. The first one I'm less sure about, except that I think they kept sticking him in those kinds of suits... and before he got all bullied etc he could've had dorky pilot helmets and robots <3!
The last one, I'm going by the mouth-- not that I've studied their mouths but it looks like Burn's to me.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-26 01:51 am (UTC)The suit thing confused me - I absolutely associate it with Hermann, even if he doesn't actually wear them as an adult - and I am totally down for an 'all the kid shots are Hermann' interpretation. It opens up twice the backstory possibilities!
The main reason I came down on the Newt side is the cinematography - we zoom into his face, everything kind of... funnels inward, and it morphs into the toy scenes. Which would be a really weird narrative choice if it's supposed to be Hermann, you know? When Raleigh and Mako drift for the first time, we zoom into Raleigh and get a quick shot of him and his brother before shifting to Mako... tldr, I've watched this too many times.
For the last one, hmm... I do like the idea of it being Hermann. It's fun to think of the reasons why that memory would get dredged up. A point of shared history? He's needed reading glasses for a long time? Sparked by something emotional we don't see?
Comparing the kid actor's mouths, though - and I cannot believe I did this - I'm pretty sure it's Trek Buccino, who's listed as young Newt (vs Drew Adkins, who plays Hermann). Which brings us back to the suit question.