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Monday 15 July 2013

Mako Mori and the Hero's Journey.

(Crossposted from Tumblr, because it was so goddamn long.)

So, it’s come to my attention that there are a bunch of people who think Mako Mori is a “weak" female character, because of course. In fact a good friend of mine (who is a woman and professional film reviewer) thought Mako was too “emotional" , which a) made me go "!!????!!" in blank incomprehension, and b) brought it to my attention that people who aren’t random internet misogynists do indeed have this opinion. Still, it’s a wrong opinion, and here’s why:

First of all, let’s talk about cliche. Pacific Rim is positively roiling in cliches. On purpose. This isn’t a blockbuster movie where some faceless production company focus-grouped a selection of generic Hollywood movie cliches and combined them to create the new Avatar or Transformers. No. This is a movie where Guillermo del Toro, an acclaimed filmmaker and all-round nerd, sat down and thought, “what cliches are awesome?"

Which is how we ended up with a movie about people in giant mecha suits fighting giant Kaiju monsters in an epic battle to save Planet Earth from a Lovecraftian apocalypse.
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Guillermo del Toro took a bunch of classic action/adventure movie tropes and gleefully combined them in a cheesy yet incredibly effective way. Also, he conveniently ignored all the shitty action/adventure tropes that regularly make Hollywood blockbusters into a pile of offensive trash. For example, shitty tropes like America Saving The World. Or female characters being relegated to the role of love-interest, helpless damsel, or ass-kicking sex fantasy.

Mako Mori is neither a damsel, nor a sex fantasy. In fact, much like Stacker Pentecost and Raleigh Becket, she gets her own (beautifully cliched) action/adventure hero character arc.
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Raleigh Becket and Stacker Pentecost both follow character arcs that we see time and time again in the action/adventure genre: the damaged yet cocky maverick hero, and the gruff mentor/authority figure. Raleigh is actually a combination of two tropes: a hero who suffers loss thanks to his own cockiness (the death of his brother), and a maverick who must overcome his troubled past to save the day. Stacker Pentecost, like most mentor/father figures, dies an inevitable but heroic death so the younger hero (Mako) can find her own path.
And Mako? She gets the primary Hero’s Journey.

While the movie is mostly told from Raleigh’s POV, Mako arguably gets more backstory, and has more to overcome during her Hero’s Journey. She’s a rookie pilot (hello, action movie trope!) who needs to prove herself to her mentor figure (yes!) and work together with another hero (yes!!) in order to save the world.

The only reason why some viewers can’t seem to grasp this is because 99% of the time, “young rookie hero" characters look like Luke Skywalker. Aside from the fact that Mako is a woman, her storyline is so simple and cliched (in a good way!) that anyone with a basic familiarity with Hollywood blockbusters or Saturday morning cartoons should be able to follow it with the sound off.
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When she breaks down during her first Drift and almost trashes the Hong Kong Shatterdome, this isn’t an example of female emotional weakness. In fact, it’s exactly what a male hero would’ve done in the same circumstances. Now, I don’t mean that in the sense that “this female character is just the same as a male character, so she’s awesome!" because a) that’s a bullshit concept, and b) Mako Mori isn’t like a male character: she’s a woman, and is also a hero, and she has character flaws and a tragic past, just like Raleigh.

Raleigh spent five years self-flagellating in an Alaskan construction site to deal with the death of his brother; Mako briefly succumbed to a flashback of her home being destroyed by a Kaiju. They both have their “weaknesses", because they are both human beings who have experienced pain and loss.

Before a hero can “win" or get their happy ending, they have to overcome two things: their own internal problems, and The Enemy. This is true of everything from 3000-year-old myths to Disney movies. Basically, Mako Mori (or any character in her position) had to fuck up before she succeeded, otherwise there would be no conflict, and the movie would be crap. Not to mention the fact that the reason why she fucked up in the first place was completely valid — and foreshadowed from the beginning. Mako’s whole life revolves around becoming a Jaeger pilot and avenging her parents, which is one of the biggest classic hero tropes in the entire movie. Avenging your dead parents against an evil monster is the ULTIMATE motivation.
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If you think Mako Mori is weak and emotional, then you must REALLY hate Batman, because Batman is about a zillion times more “emotionally weak", and he never learns. Batman’s “my parents are dead" quest is nowhere near as goal-oriented as Mako’s desire to defeat the Kaiju, and he’s constantly screwing up because of his own emotions: anger, self-loathing, and survivor’s guilt. That’s what makes Batman a compelling character.

But after Mako was brought low by her traumatic flashback during her neural link with Raleigh, she immediately picked herself up and kept going. Rather than being sucked into her anger and grief, she channeled it into strength, formed a team with Raleigh, and they saved the world together.

15 comments:

  1. Yes to everything.

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  2. Okay yes, but what bothered me was not any of that but that after her cool fight scene with Raleigh she pretty much stood around, head bowed deferentially, and let Raleigh and Stacker Pentecost decide the rest of her storyline. Raleigh even says to her "this is worth fighting for," but then he does the fighting, not her.

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  3. Andrew Knighton16 July 2013 at 00:25

    Nice analysis. I also liked the fact that they kept her from becoming primarily a love interest by leaving the romantic element of the relationship almost entirely unspoken throughout the film. The understated nature of the one or two references made it more powerful, and meant that her character as a kick-ass monster fighter was left to shine, rather than becoming an addendum to Raleigh.

    From the perspective of gender portrayals, I thought that the general lack of female characters in the film was the troublesome part, not the excellent Mako Mori. (And none of that stopped me enjoying it)

    Incidentally, I found your blog through the piece on costume in Pacific Rim, which was great.

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  4. Thanks! :)

    And yes, I found the lack of women in this movie pretty surprising, especially considering the fact that del Toro had said in interviews etc that he'd put a lot of thought into making sure it wasn't a sexist movie. Ordinarily I'm pretty disappointed when I see a film and the population of the world has ~mysteriously~ been reduced to an 80/20 split between men and women (The Dark Knight Rises did this, even in the crowd scenes, it felt like), but I loved Mako Mori so much that to me, it sort of made up for Pacific Rim being a Bechdel Fail.

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  5. I didn't really see it that way at all. I don't think Raleigh thought she needed defending or anything -- she was probably going to lash out as well, and he just did it first. And I really anjoyed her respect for Stacker Pentecost, which was in line with his importance as a father figure, and her final line to him: "Sensei, I love you."

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  6. I think some of others' reading of her character is a cultural misunderstanding of her being Japanese. I think del Toro has created a beautiful, complex, and completely non-Hollywood, character. I'd be interested to see what audiences in Japan etc think of her

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  7. This was my one big problem with the movie, but Mako is such an awesome female character that I call it a small niggle and just hope they do better in any sequels that might come along.

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  8. I am loving your Pacific Rim coverage. Especially the symbolism of the red shoe in the last post. Brilliant.

    I LOVED Mako. Finally a kick-ass lady who doesn't have to be a total cold hard ass. But, OF COURSE, that gets read as weak. *headdesk* This is reminding a little of the Black Widow backlash. Sigh. I think it's also important that Mako is Japanese, she doesn't have the same cultural attitudes that Americans do so why should she act the way an American would in that situation? She wouldn't.

    (Stealing from my own blog review of the movie...)
    I thought Mako had a nice mix of vulnerable and tough. She didn’t have to lose her femininity to kick some alien ass. The romance was also nicely understated. There’s no kiss, but it’s clear these people feel something for each other. And I love Raleigh's great non-declaration sort of declaration of his feelings right before the big fight.

    http://bethmatthewsbooks.com/2013/07/14/review-pacfic-rim-2013/

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  9. Christine Sutcliffe23 July 2013 at 15:35

    Amen to all of the above! I just saw the film today and deliberately didn't read this post until now so I could form my own opinions and I agreed with everything you just said. :D

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  10. I just found this blog post! One thing that troubled me was the way Raleigh does all the talking while they're in the Jaeger, as if Mako can't figure this stuff out by, uh, sharing a neural connection with him. And the way he clearly speaks Japanese but they don't converse in that language.


    But! I agree that she isn't being deferential; she's being respectful, and that this is a strength that complements Raleigh's knee-jerk disobedience. I liked that when she studied Raleigh's decision-making, she found his maverick tendencies predictable.

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  11. I liked two things about this film, Mako and the fight scenes. The rest put me to sleep. In her defense as a character I have to say that emotion is not weakness. Failure to overcome weakness is weakness. Overcoming weakness it what makes her a strong character and is part of the character arc of any good character. In that respect, she was awesome!! She was the only character I felt an emotional desire to see win in her struggle. So kudos to you for defending her!!

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  12. I don't have a problem with Mako having an emotional stumbling block. It's the way in which she seems to lack control of her own story line. She never gets to effectively stand up to her father figure for herself and Raleigh is constantly protecting her and made to fight her battles for her (with both her father and the rest of the base it seems) to the point where he ends up ejecting her unconsious body from the final confrontation, that is an issue. Mako herself is not the problem, it is the way the male characters behave and her comparative lack of independent agency that bothers me.

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  13. Looked more like a 90/10 split to me! Apart from running screaming people, the only other women I spotted were an unspeaking political leader on a screen (1 woman out of around 8), the black market guys assistant and the other female Jaeger pilot.

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  14. diaryofadocumentaryfilmmaker31 July 2013 at 14:01

    "Pacific Rim is positively roiling in cliches." The name of the main jaegar (Gipsy Danger) is also racist. Antiziganism for the Romani is the direct equivalent of anti-semitism for Jewish people, and Gipsy Danger is horrifically antiziganist. Pretty amazing 'slip' really considering how culturally diverse the production team was.

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  15. It's "Gypsy Danger" because it was named after a _plane_.

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