Terribly unsatisified

[neotoma]

I've been trying to read the novelization of Pacific Rim, but somehow the writer has managed to make Raleigh come across as a dudebro, which is just unpleasant.

Where is the big Labrador puppy from the movie? Why am I reading about a guy who is insubordinate and disrespectful, because Raleigh was neither of those things in the movie?!

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

....did they confuse him with the younger Aussie kid? Because, yeah, no. That's not at all the Raleigh I saw in the movie.

[giandujakiss]

But it is the Raleigh you expect to see - so it doesn't surprise me at all that the novelization author got it wrong, for the same reason that so many reviewers missed what Black Widow did in the Avengers movie. There's an idea of what a male hero looks like in this kind of narrative; sounds like the book author was just following that narrative. And if the author is male - well, I'm betting male fantasies more often revolve around bucking authority and being rewarded for it than around being respectful.

[madripoor_rose]

Very true.

I was also wondering what draft of the script was sent to the tie-in author, because that IS the usual 'action hero' shorthand, and we did have the whole 'don't get cocky' scene with his brother at the beginning. So maybe Raliegh was written as the stereotype at some point, and then improved?

[neotoma]

I can only guess the tie-in author got an early version of the script, or totally missed the point if he got something closer to the finished version.

...I'm thinking I might have to abandon the novelization, no matter what juicy details about the minor characters like the other Jaeger pilots are in it, just because I'm finding Raleigh so repulsive.

And I might have to write a review for Amazon saying "the author made Raleigh a dudebro, and thus totally missed his characterization from the movie. Would not recommend."

Seriously, this is messing up my attempts to plot a PR fic. :(

[malkingrey]

I can only guess the tie-in author got an early version of the script

Speaking as somebody who did a couple of movie tie-ins once upon a time, that's depressingly probable. In which case they'd be getting the character purely as written, without any of the nuances that the actor and the director (and the costume designer, and the cinematographer, etc., etc.) brought to the role. And God forbid that the tie-in novelist should attempt to add some three-dimensionality to what by the nature of screenplays is mostly a sketched-in outline, because he or she might accidentally take the character in a different direction from the actor and the director and all the et ceteras.

The writer probably counted himself lucky if the scenes in the screenplay more or less matched up with the ones in the final movie.

Writing tie-ins can pay well, but it is often dispiriting work.

[neotoma]

I wonder if the novelization author got an early version of the script or something. Because seriously, I'm finding book-Raleigh to be kind of unpleasantly skeevy.

Especially because one of the things that comes across in the movie is that being the bucking-authority male power fantasy is actually counter-productive to saving the world. (ie, everyone thinks Chuck Hansen is a jerk with daddy-issues, even if he's good at piloting a Jaeger).

Basically, I wonder if no one informed the novelization author that the film was about subverting that particular narrative, because it really is, and yet the novelization is trying to wallow in it and I'm finding it very offputting.

[feuervogel]

The novelization was, in fact, made from an earlier draft of the script than the one that was released. (See: the end scene when you get there.) Something to do with production schedules so the book will come out around the same time as the movie.

The writing is terrible, and there are some glaring continuity errors. My favorite is where Raleigh says he's never done a mission with a Mark V jaeger, then further down the page, he talks about being on a mission with Striker Eureka. It's on page 49.

(PS: If you're interested in traveling to Atlanta, I'm running a Pacific Rim con in May...)

[jenab]

I wanted to read the novelization but heard Raleigh wasn't portrayed well in it.

[neotoma]

He doesn't read like Raleigh to me. Raleigh is more centered, more emotionally aware, not disrespectful or insubordinate (seriously, Raleigh in the book says he was dismissed from service after Knifehead for insubordination... which is just no).

I might just skim the rest of it and see if I can find sufficient other characters viewpoint scenes to be worth it, but at the moment, it's kind of awful.

[jenab]

I don't know if this would help but kayim has gathered some information from Travis Beacham regarding the world of Pacific Rim.

http://kayim.dreamwidth.org/184226.html#cutid1