OK THE PACIFIC RIM CLASS POST
we have people of colour, badass ladies, badass disabled people, can there be more?
yes, yes there can because as far as i can tell our leads are working class.
“Safe zones that only the rich and powerful can buy their way into” [Pentecost] said. “What about the rest?“
i’m going off both the movie and the novelisation here, but let’s start with stacker pentecost, and idris elba. idris elba is from one of the poorest areas of london, and he has an Accent, which he uses for stacker. that alone is an argument, but according to the novelisation, stacker is from tottenham.
Born December 30 1985, Tottenham, England. Parents Obadel, laborer, and Viviane, club performer. Family loosely involved with organized crime. Father died 1995 of wounds suffered in a knife fight with nightclub owner. Stacker, then 12, burned the club down and attacked father’s killer. Sent to ministry school, realized suitability for military service.
i don’t know how canon this is now, since it doesn’t mention his sister luna at all but jesus christ can you get more working class, particularly london working class and black. and even if that’s not canon his family are military which often attracts working class kids, if not outright targeting them.
and this is the guy who saves the world, because pacific rim might be about how you need to work together and have meaningful connections, but pentecost keeps the jaeger programme together, a black, working class man from a potentially criminal family depending on how canonical the novel is, who probably has a criminal record, this is the leader of the resistance, because he won’t let poor people be crushed by the kaiju, he will not stop defending the entire fucking planet, he’s literally a christ figure he had a HALO, his last name is PENTECOST. and he’s still educated and culturally sensitive and obviously a great dad and a good fucking person
and then for raleigh, charlie hunnam is from newcastle and while he’s playing an american he’s using the same accent he’s used to play white trash jax teller. i’m going to steal from postcard actually, because charlie hunnam’s current accent is ‘two mixed-together accents both of which are almost exclusively found in the way they sound in his mouth on shaggy-haired filthy men in biker gangs’. the novelisation says his family have been to a lot of different countries but he still doesn’t feel not working class? so maybe there’s military there; or a fic suggested an embassy worker parent. and then obviously there’s his predisposition towards construction, and just his general everything. also, again, working class person who is culturally sensitive and emotionally sensitive and a good fucking person.
i don’t feel comfortable analysing mako’s class background in depth, because i’m white and english and know fuck all about japanese class systems, but her dad was a swordmaker, which is the definition of working with your hands, at least and she lived in a small village, and had never been to toyko before she was there when onibaba attacked. and then she was raised by stacker, of the aforementioned background.
the point of this post is WORKING CLASS PEOPLE OF COLOUR SAVE THE WORLD, ACCOMPANIED BY THE ONE DECENT WHITE DUDE WHO IS ALSO WORKING CLASS, AND DISABLED SCIENTISTS WHO ARE HUGELY IMPORTANT IN THE WORLD SAVING, NO REALLY WHERE DID THIS FILM COME FROM
yeah like i’ve wanted to say for a while that i’m OBSESSED with stacker pentecost’s ‘today we are cancelling the apocalypse’ speech because his speech patterns are 100% working class london — cancellin’, not cancelling — and there are very, very few films that give a speech of such gravitas and importance to someone who is allowed to keep non-RP speech patterns like that if they’re british
and this really matters, guys. it matters if you’ve gone to see english-language films all of your life, often with british actors in them, and you’ve basically never heard anyone who sounds like you in them. and idris elba not only gets to be that person, he gets to be the leader. the messiah figure of the jaegar program drops his g’s, he sounds like he’s from a council estate in hackney, he gets to be not only a figure of authority but a figure of inspiration and of hope. that’s fucking HUGE. i’d be really, really hard-pushed to give you more than a few examples of hollywood films with british actors in any role that’s even remotely comparable.
