These jaegers employ defensive maneuvers away from a major populace, and when they find themselves battling in the middle of a city it's as a last resort, after calling for city-wide evacuations. Mass destruction does occur in del Toro's vision, but it isn't voyeuristic, glossing over human loss.
"Pacific Rim" is also a martial arts film, with its giant protagonists pulling off poses and its pilots highly proficient in bÅjutsu. And like most martial arts films where plot mainly exists as something on which to hang physical poetry, the aim of its cinematic combat is not to champion violence but to inspire awe at an entity's abilities rather than the scope of suffering. Such conflicts are compelling because they are useful in suggesting a kind of purity between opposites. Good vs evil. Jaeger vs Kaiju. Mano-a-mano.
Another Big Brainless American Movie
The Wall Street Journal's Jeff Yang came to this conclusion, deducing (at the time) "Pacific Rim"'s lack of resonance in Japan due to its status as "a quintessentially American movie: A big, boisterous brawl between forces of cataclysmic destruction, best watched with brain on pause." This of course was arrived at despite praises sung from Japanese pop culture icons Hideo Kojima, Go Nagai and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto cited in this piece among others.
But let us consider its American traits, if any. It is distributed by Warner Bros. and produced by Legendary Pictures. Its protagonist is American. But beyond that, it's hard to see how else the Stars and Stripes shine through. The film features roles for China, Russia, Australia, Great Britain, Hong Kong and Japan. I don't even think the United States is mentioned even once. Heck, even the Philippines (specifically Manila) got a shout-out. Though the film's lead is American, he is played by a Brit. And while we're keeping score, a Brit and an American play the Aussies, and two Canadians play Russians. It's enough to make you wonder what del Toro's casting director was smoking.
Near the end, none of the jaegers are left. The battles occur mostly in Asia. Maybe it's "a quintessentially American movie" because most of the cast is white and English is the primary language?
Going back to that Manila shout out, I'm sure it wasn't accidental. Before American cartoons reached our shores in the '80s, Super Robot Anime ruled our kids' airwaves. They became so potent that Ferdinand Marcos banned several of them (most notably "Voltes V") because of their underlying subtext about rebelling against a tyrannical aristocracy (I remember my relatives telling me to turn the TV off when they came on). After Marcos was deposed, these cartoons were the some of the first programs to be rebroadcast.
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