#everyone's scared!!! everyone's traumatised!!! let me feel that catharsis!!!

[reiverreturns]

pacific rim is a great movie but one thing i really wish it did more of is explore each character’s self-progression and decisions to do the right thing over what is fearful and hard. when mako nearly destroys the shatterdome chasing the rabit raleigh comforts her by saying first drifts are rough but he implies its because she experiences his memories of losing yancy. yeah yeah the mortifying ordeal of being known is great and all that, but how much better would it have been if raleigh explained to her that there is no hiding from yourself in the drift? that no matter how good you are at suppressing trauma and bad things that have happened to you normally, the drift will dredge them up, and you will have to face them?

because that’s just the sort of thing mako, as a rookie pilot, wouldn’t know. she’d expect to experience raleigh’s memories, maybe brace herself for the worst parts, but she’d be totally unprepared for what she sees of herself. it maps to raleigh too. he isn’t reluctant to get back in the jaeger because he’s worried about losing and surviving again - he’s afraid of being stuck reliving the loss of yancy over and over and over again in too-real memories. the drift could take him out at his knees and he knows it.

but still, they proceed. they face what is present-and-past and push through it, because there is no other choice. stacker pushes against his fear of harm coming to mako until he has to overcome it. this movie is all about connection, of course it is, but it’s about bravery too. knowing that we can be brave when we are loved but, in the end, it’s the responsibility of every one of us to choose to put one foot in front of the other.