generic world/background info

[unbreachable]

Some setting info:

Pacific Rim is set in slightly futuristic times with much of the pacific coast a war torn battle ground. Times are tough, the economy is terrible, rationing is rampant (especially in areas where the kaiju generally hit), and life is hard and people are desperate. The movie is set roughly between late December 2024 and mid January, 2025.

KAIJU

It starts in 2013 when the kaiju Trespasser 'hits' San Francisco, California. The kaiju - a Japanese word that, according to wikipedia and the googles, literally means 'strange creature' or 'monster' (Pacific Rim refers to them as 'giant beasts') - are enormous creatures that resemble dinosaurs that have been bioengineered, unbeknownst to humans, by a breed of inter dimensional creature referred to in the novelization and wiki as the 'Precursors'. Trespasser, a 302 feet tall kaiju first showed its face on August 10, 2013 though it (and presumably most other emergences of the beasts) was prefaced with an earthquake that measure 7.1 on the Richter scale. It weighed in about 2700 tons, and very little was able to penetrate its thick hide - though once pierced, the blood resulted in a toxic waste that was dubbed kaiju blue.

Raleigh's narration states that it took six days and thirty five miles to bring it down, costing millions in resources and millions more in lives.

The Pacific Rim wiki (along with references from Newt in the movie) states that the Precursors started back in the Triassic period, and were actually the dinosaurs that inhabited the world at that period of time. The environment, for whatever reason, wasn't conducive to their need and so they waited millions of years until humans had polluted and corrupted the planet enough for them to be able to take control and colonize.

Initially, the San Francisco (along with Oakland and Sacramento) attack was originally thought to be an isolated event (everyone HOPED it was, at any rate), but unfortunately it wasn't. They continued, one hitting Manila, then Cabo, then the kaiju Scissure hit Sydney and that's when mankind realized they needed to find a way to fight back that didn't included the use of nuclear bombs. Humans needed a solution, and fast.


Tales from Year Zero | Birth of a Jaeger

It is around this time that a one Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld had an inkling that there was something we could do, that there was a way to fight back without ruining the planet in the process. He was hit with inspiration as he watched his young son play with toy robots (you know they were Transformers toys) and monsters (totally Godzilla) in his room.

What if?

What if we built giant robots? What if we created something so massive, something on their level, and brought the fight to them?

So Jasper got to work, started designing and creating and brings his ideas to a conference in Seoul, South Korea. He presents the idea for the Jaeger and is granted an audience with the UN, and he, along with former student and now colleague Caitlin Lightcap, begin working in earnest on the Jaeger program and the Pan Pacific Defense Corps is established.

Unfortunately, this is an incredibly expensive idea and funding is garbage so when Stacker Pentecost comes to check out the progress, all...they have is an arm.

That's it. An arm.

An arm that hasn't even been tested.

So, Stacker, being the innovative man that he is, volunteers and tests it out, saying that he hopes the idea will save lives, but he needs to go back to the UN with something, otherwise there will never be enough funding to complete the project.

It works (though Stacker admits it feels like his hand is in wet concrete), though there are obviously hiccups since the 'interface isn't calibrated to your neural profile' (C. Lightcap, Tales From Year Zero), but it still works.

December 1, 2014, PPDC proving grounds are established on Kodiak Island.

With funds granted, Lightcap and Jasper are able to create and build the first jaeger, Brawler Yukon, implementing her Pons concept. Adam Casey, an Air Force pilot, is the first test subject to attempt and pilot Brawler Yukon, though the attempt ends in his death as the neural load proved too much for him to handle.

They continue, though Lightcap is wary and it is with this Jaeger (and with Jasper's jealousy and impatience, but that's another story) that the two pilot system is discovered, because when the current solo pilot Sergio D'onofrio, Lightcap plugs in and assists with the mental load.


PONS/THE DRIFT

Honestly, Raleigh's narration says it the best when it comes to describing the Drift/Pons system.

"The Drift. Jaeger tech. Based on DARPA jet-fighter neural systems. Two pilots, mind-melding through memories with the body of a giant machine. The deeper the bond, the better you fight."

It's literally a mind meld technology that is coupled with circuitry suits and relay gel (distributed through said suits) worn by Jaeger pilots so that they can not only move the jaeger, but also feel what the jaeger does.

RABITs

Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers. These are instances where a pilot will latch on to a memory and become trapped, and usually drag the other pilot along for the ride regardless of who the memory belongs to. Focusing on a single memory is discouraged because it is distracting and the emotions will translate into actions (as evidenced by Mako nearly blowing a hole in the Shatterdome).

It's easy to say 'don't chase the rabbit', but according to Raleigh, first Drifts are hard, and most things are generally 'easier said than done'.

COMPATIBILITY

Compatibility is judged both on personality as well as their ability to work with one another in the kwoon combat rooms. The objective isn't to have one pilot superior to the other, but to have two balanced individuals that are capable of piloting a jaeger together and engaging in direct combat with kaiju. According to the wiki, "Drift compatibility is potential that exists between two people, however, it is not predetermined by the relationship (or lack thereof) of the compatible persons".

When you Drift with someone, it’s opening up your mind to them on the most intimate level – they know your thoughts, secrets, anything that comes to mind in that instance is theirs to share and peruse as they will. There’s a certain rawness to the Drift that you can’t find anywhere else outside of it – it opens you up, makes you vulnerable, rips you apart so that all of your most private thoughts and feelings are laid bare, right there on the table for your partner to see. Sex, love, your tragic past - it's all out there and on the table for your co-pilot to pick through.

You can only Drift with someone that you trust implicitly.

On Ghost Drifting, per Beacham

A rare, unanticipated consequence of the neural handshake is that a crew will sometimes find that their link remains somewhat active (though muted) even after they’ve disconnected from the hardware. This will invariably manifest as shared dreaming. The condition has known to the pilots as ghost drifting. It is not common, but the first reported case came reliably from Doctor Caitlin Lightcap herself, the inventor of the Pons system. Even so, Doctor Lightcap and the PPDC’s other experts remain at a loss to explain the mechanisms behind this phenomenon.


JAEGERS
Since I already went into the development of the Jaegers and the actual program above, I won't do that again. Instead, I will simply state what Jaegers are in relation to Pacific Rim and it's continuity.

Big, badass robots.

No, seriously.

Big, badass robots that are piloted by two pilots while engaged in a freaky Vulcan style mind meld dubbed a neural handshake.

The name, according to the movie, translates into Hunter, and they are the weapon of choice (up until the anti-kaiju wall) and are primarily used to fight kaiju and defend humanity.

There are different levels of Jaeger; Mark I up to Mark V, all having weapons tailored to the jaeger in question.

The Jaeger program is shut down and Shatterdomes decommissioned in favor of the Wall of Life program, as the price of humanity's saviors does not come without cost. For example, Sydney's Striker Eureka clocked in at over a hundred billion dollars, an amount unfathomable to most humans.

WALL OF LIFE/ANTI-KAIJU WALL/COASTAL WALL/'THE WALL'
A really, really bad idea.

Basically, it's a large wall purported to keep the kaiju out.

Long story short - it doesn't work. Mutavore busts through the wall to get into Sydney in less than an hour, and despite the UN insisting otherwise, it isn't effective. It's a cheaper alternative, sure, because you can pay the workers in ration cards and little more while jaegers are incomprehensibly expensive.

PILOTS/RANGERS
Jaeger pilots are, at their height, literally rock stars. They are household names, action figures, poster boys and girls. They're idols and people to hero worship. They are, for lack of a better word, superheroes.

Jaegers are only as good as their pilots, and when jaegers started winning, pilots grew to rock star status literally overnight. Danger morphs into propaganda, deadly kaiju into little plastic toys for kids to play with. They appear on talk shows, radio shows, cooking shows, news shows, gossip mags, Vogue, GQ, Time, all of the above. They are the movie stars, the singers, the people to watch and lust after and follow and get autographs from.

They're humanity's saviors.

PAST GAME MEMORIES: N/A

PERSONALITY: Raleigh Becket is a surprisingly complicated man that has had a lot of really bad things happen to him in a relatively short period of time. If one takes into consideration the average lifespan of a human male (76 years), the fact that he has literally lost his entire family in about a ten year span is shocking.

Or at least, it would be if it weren’t for the Kaiju War – a war against creatures from the depth of the ocean that is so devastating that it has sent the entire world into a tailspin for twelve years. Anything that causes otherwise warring countries to team up and work together for the survival of human kind is a big goddamn deal, and it’s bound to leave lasting impressions in not good ways.

In Raleigh’s case, the price is his incredibly high and to truly understand the cost and the price he has paid (as well as the intricacies of his personality), we have to back up a little to Raleigh’s other immediate family – his mother, father, a sister they no longer talk about and that isn’t listed as next of kin.

It’s sometime after K-Day (the first kaiju attack) that Dominique Lapierre-Becket is diagnosed with cancer, and dies shortly thereafter. After Dominique’s death, Raleigh’s father Richard abandons his three children and disappears. Why he did this is as much a mystery to us as fans as it is to the Becket siblings, but it left three very young children without parents and without direction. Yancy took the lead, being the eldest, and it was a joint decision to join the Jaeger program though it was Yancy’s idea and Raleigh, being a young, impressionable teen, followed after him.

It’s pretty safe to say that Raleigh idolized his brother – especially at that point in an already shaky and tumultuous life. When his mother died and his father left, Raleigh was left with nothing to fixate on beyond his older brother – someone that he has looked up to his entire life. Yancy is Raleigh’s point of reference – he follows where Yancy goes, lets him take the lead and falls in line with him. Yancy always makes the right decisions – Raleigh trusts him implicitly and when Yancy says “we’ll have a laugh, we’ll get ditched after the first cut, and we’ll go home”.

He doesn’t expect to make it past the cut at all and notes that there are people involved that are far more dedicated to the idea of piloting than he and his brother are.

That he follows Yancy like this speaks volumes of Raleigh’s ability to trust. He doesn’t give it freely, he doesn’t give it often, but to those individuals that he does give it to, he may as well be handing them a lump of gold because once Raleigh’s trust is earned, then it’s done and it takes something pretty fucking monumental to shake it up.

Raleigh sees Yancy as this…hero, in a way. He stepped up to the plate when their dad left, gives the orders, and Yancy’s got all the answers. He’d die for Yancy if he had to, and his love for his brother is unquestionable. Their bond is incredibly tight, and when they actually do make it past the first cut, the nature of the Drift only strengthens that bond.

When you Drift with someone, it’s opening up your mind to them on the most intimate level – they know your thoughts, secrets, anything that comes to mind in that instance is theirs to share and peruse as they will. There’s a certain rawness to the Drift that you can’t find anywhere else outside of it – it opens you up, makes you vulnerable, rips you apart so that all of your most private thoughts and feelings are laid bare, right there on the table for your partner to see. It says something about his relationship with Yancy already when Raleigh doesn’t think twice about engaging in something like that with him. They are a matched set, a pair – you engage one, you can be sure that the other will be right there in an instant, fists raised.

At this point in his life, he’s young and excited and he and Yancy are gonna fight kaiju and win and they’re fucking invincible and nothing is ever going to go wrong. Yancy is the level head of the two, reminding Raleigh when he needs to be reminded not to get cocky because when you do that, you make mistakes and you fuck up and people get hurt. Raleigh acknowledges this, accepts that Yancy is right, but that doesn’t stop the cockiness from leaking through anyway.

Raleigh isn’t so much arrogant as he is sure of himself and his brother’s abilities – they Drift exceedingly well together, they’re Stacker Pentecost’s star team, they kick serious ass when they’re in the Drift, and their kill count is getting pretty high – until Knifehead. Before Knifehead, Raleigh really thinks that they’re invincible. He’s like any typical guy in his late teens early twenties; they’re all six foot tall and bulletproof and nothing bad could possibly happen because he’s a fucking badass and his brother is an even bigger badass. He frequently makes risky calls on the battlefield that Stacker doesn’t necessarily approve of, and usually – Raleigh’s right about it. When you’re in battle and it’s spur of the moment, you have to think fast, quick and on your feet. He and Yancy were good at that.

When Yancy and Raleigh engage a kaiju on the coastline of Alaska (in the middle of the damn night), Raleigh assumes that it’s going to be an easy kill, just another notch to put on the belt, another painted symbol to put on a jacket or paint on Gipsy’s hull. Unfortunately, everything goes disastrously wrong and Yancy is killed.

When Raleigh loses Yancy it completely shatters Raleigh. Raleigh’s literally centered his whole damn life around Yancy and when he loses his reference point he’s lost and has nowhere to go. To lose his co-pilot, his brother, is devastating and Raleigh never really recovers from it. Yancy was still connected to him via the Drift when he died,, and that means Raleigh Becket experienced his brothers last few moments with him while still in the Drift. He felt everything – his pain, his terror, his helplessness. He felt him die, and Raleigh equates it to having a piece of his soul literally torn from his body, leaving him helpless and adrift and moving through life in a fog. He solo pilots Gipsy back to the shore, screaming so much the entire time – from pain and anguish – that when he collapses on the beach, he’s hoarse and unable to focus on anything other than the silence in his head and a ringing in his ears.

He declines survivors benefits and leaves the PPDC. He cannot fathom the thought of anyone else in his head, ever, and to sully Yancy’s memory with even the idea of continuing to pilot is unfathomable to Raleigh.

Raleigh spends five years of his life working on a wall that he knows is futile, that he knows won’t protect the people but he thinks that maybe, just maybe it’s something that will give people hope, so that’s what he does. If he can’t pilot (and he can’t, he won’t) then he can keep his hands busy on something that humanity (not Raleigh) deems worthwhile.

* * *



Charlie Hunnam says that Raleigh “loves humanity but hates people.” This is the most accurate description of Raleigh five years after his encounter with Knifehead and after the death of his brother. Previously, it wasn’t like that at all – he wanted to kick ass and take names, take shots and celebrate with his brother. These days, he’d rather just be left alone than engage in small talk or simple conversation. He doesn’t really keep friends, doesn’t’ engage in conversation with anyone from his past, and essentially spents those five years working on the wall simply existing. That’s all he does, because now, it’s all he knows how to do. Yancy isn’t around to guide him, and he’s not around to tell Raleigh that he’s wasting his fucking life building a goddamn wall that isn’t going to do any good.

Raleigh prefers substance in his relationships – a good, solid foundation is a prerequisite for anything substantial in his life. The people he engages with upon his return are all people that he knows already and he doesn’t go out of his way to really meet more. He cares about the overall survival of humanity – he just dislikes people on a personal level. Raleigh has trouble with engaging in new relationships because relationships are built on trust and it’s difficult for him to be pulled out of his shell long enough to be able to give someone that chance to prove themselves.

Mako Mori is the first person that has been able to do this in five years.

Their first meeting is awkward; she speaks Japanese based on an incorrect assumption that he can’t understand it and later tells him flat out that she doubts his abilities, and doesn’t believe he’s the right person for the mission because his decisions get people hurt. Raleigh is inexorably drawn to Mako, and she shakes him up, rattles him around and challenges the way he thinks and perceives everything else. She gets under his skin in a good way, ruffles his feathers until he calls her on it and challenges her back, bringing her onto the kwoon floor to spar in front of all of the potential candidates and several vets.

He tells Stacker she’s his co-pilot and when he’s told no, he finds the fight in him that he used to have, the urge to bite back, to want something, to grow some balls and take it (as Yancy once told him before they got into a fistfight over a woman). He wants Mako to be his co-pilot and this is monumental because before, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else being in his head, couldn’t even entertain the notion of it happening. His respect for her grows and she corrects him when he’s wrong and clarifies boundaries and firmly tells him that it is because of respect for the Marshal, not simple obedience that she doesn’t fight harder to be his co-pilot.

Ina way, his relationship with Mako begins to define the person that he is becoming – he wants to do better, be better and she inspires (both directly and indirectly) him to pull himself together and fight not only because he feels like he has to, but because he wants to. Raleigh goes with Stacker because dying in a jaeger is the best option at the time – through the course of the following week, Raleigh begins to find reasons to survive. At first they are little, but they become monumental as time progresses and he finds things (Mako) that are worthwhile to stick around for.

He tells Mako that he has crappy timing and that he never really thought about the future before now – and it’s true, he hadn’t. Raleigh had never really seen a future beyond the wall, without Yancy. He’d only been existing up until that point and when Pentecost offered him a chance to die in a jaeger he went because honestly? Raleigh assumed he was going to die either way. He was going to get frostbite and lose a limb, he was going to fall off the very top and die, or maybe he’d wind up with pneumonia and die alone, coughing up blood.

Point is, Raleigh assumed he was going to die – Pentecost offered him a way to do it nobly, honorably, and Raleigh took that route, thinking and assuming he had no future anyway. It’s only after Drifting with Mako and slowly letting her drag him out of his shell that he realizes he does want a future – and he’d like Mako in it, in some way shape or form. She’s his co-pilot and once you’ve got a co-pilot they’re part of your life forever, romantically or not, and he doesn’t want to let the one person that changed his life and turned it around go. He doesn’t necessarily fall in love head over heels for her by the end of the film (it’s made fairly clear that Raleigh has trouble letting people in and despite the fact that Mako is the first to do this, he is still hesitant, uncertain about pushing past boundaries that have been in place for five years), but it’s obvious there is a very deep mutual affection between them and it’s the first time in a very long time that he’s willing to explore that part of himself – a part that has been locked up and away, key tossed into the frothing white-capped waters of the Pacific.

All of this sounds like Raleigh’s got a shitload of negativity hanging around him – and he does – but he’s also a good guy. He’s nice, when the situation calls for it, polite and considerate when faced with ignorance (in the case of Newt babbling like an idiot about wanting to meet a kaiju face to face). He does have a sense of humor, but it’s been tempered by all of the hard things in his life and things to laugh about have been very scarce. He’s also got a rebellious streak in him – he frequently disobeys orders (as evidenced by he and Yancy getting the boat) because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Raleigh tries – really, he does try – to be ‘good’, and sometimes his decisions backfire and he’s left picking up the pieces and dealing with the consequences of his actions.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Raleigh trained at the Jaeger Academy and was a Jaeger pilot. He’s military, highly disciplined and well trained in a kind of…robot bushido and can handle himself in high pressure situations. He’s also piloted a jaeger on his own, which is usually something that will kill the pilot – hence the need for two. How this affects him long term remains to be seen.

He also experiences ghost-drifting, detailed below as stated by Beacham;

A rare, unanticipated consequence of the neural handshake is that a crew will sometimes find that their link remains somewhat active (though muted) even after they’ve disconnected from the hardware. This will invariably manifest as shared dreaming. The condition has known to the pilots as ghost drifting. It is not common, but the first reported case came reliably from Doctor Caitlin Lightcap herself, the inventor of the Pons system. Even so, Doctor Lightcap and the PPDC’s other experts remain at a loss to explain the mechanisms behind this phenomenon.

According to the novelization, Raleigh and Yancy experienced this in Lima and spent half a night finishing one another’s sentences. Raleigh experiences this with Mako as well, though it’s not on the same level as Raleigh and Yancy.