#newt gotlieb

[kaijuposting]

The Pacific Rim Draft Script: Who The Heck Is Newt Gotlieb?

Some of you may have heard (or even read it on Travis Beacham's blog) that Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb were originally one character. And indeed, in the Pacific Rim draft script, we can find a guy named Newt Gotlieb.

But if we read through the script, we can see that this an oversimplified statement. Newt Gotlieb has a different vibe from the both of them, and it's very obvious that Newt Geiszler was strongly influenced by another character.

Newt Gotlieb is a particle physicist who works for the Calixto Particle Observatory near Lima, Peru. At some point before the story, he began e-mailing Felicity "Flick" Kincaid, reporter and former girlfriend of Yancy Antrobus, who wants to uncover the mysteries of the kaiju and maybe even find a way to stop them. But it seems he got cold feet, because whenever Flick tried to e-mail him for more information, his replies were "vague and infrequent."

Finally, Flick tracked him down to his workplace. Here's his introduction and first scene:

INT. MAIN CORRIDOR -- CONTINUOUS Flick enters the dim hallway, relieved to be in from the cold. No sound save for the BUZZ of fluorescent lights and the ghostly CROONING of the wind outside. She spots a man come out into the hallway and linger, engrossed by his clipboard. He wears headphones, listening to music. He hasn't noticed her.

He's NEWT GOTLIEB (33) -- a lanky, unkempt academic with scruffy brown hair and an impish grin. Geekishly cute in his own peculiar way. Flick attempts to get his attention.

FLICK Excuse me… (he doesn't hear) Excuse me! Finally he looks up and takes off the headphones.

FLICK (CONT’D) I got an e-mail from someone here in reference to an article I'm --

NEWT You're Felicity Kincaid.

FLICK You can call me Flick… And you must be gotlieb @ calixto.org?

NEWT No. No, I'm not.

She glances at nametag on his lanyard: "Gotlieb." He relents.

NEWT (CONT’D) What are you doing here?

FLICK You e-mailed me. “I have info relevant to your investigation.” That’s what you said.

NEWT I figured you probably got stuff like that all the time.

FLICK I don’t. How substantial is it?

NEWT I don’t know. But I know COSDEC’s got it too, and I know they don’t talk about it.

FLICK All the more reason to have this conversation in person, right?

He turns to go.

(A quick note - "COSDEC" stands for "Combined Special Defense Corp." It's essentially an older version of the PPDC.)

Newt Gotlieb also works with a "stout, bespectacled scientist" named Myron Toynbee. Toynbee is glad that Newt e-mailed Flick, because there's some hot scientific data they're sitting on that Toynbee would rather the world know about. Eleven years ago, Gotlieb and Toynbee worked for a Doctor Ivo Czerny, who discovered that the kaiju were coming from a portal leading to a parallel universe. Soon Czerny got a call from COSDEC and went to work for their sci-division... until one day, they exiled him to the Australian outback.

Flick decides to talk to Doctor Czerny, and Newt follows after.

Across the lobby, Newt enters off the street, looking lost. He cranes his to scan the casual crowd of GUESTS. He searches and finally spots Flick at the front desk. He beams.

NEWT Hey! I caught you.

Finished with both her transactions, Flick hangs up and turns, a bit surprised to see Newt.

FLICK What are you doing here?

NEWT Well, I was thinking -- You're going to need some help.

FLICK You're bold all of a sudden.

NEWT I got you into this. I feel like I need to own up to that.

Before they can leave for Australia, a kaiju attacks and the pair of them have to avoid getting squished. After escaping, Newt cleans Flick's wounds; Flick abruptly insists that they'll never have a relationship, and Newt plays ignorant.

They reach Doctor Czerny, who reveals that the Interstice is a portal to an older, dying universe. He believes that the Precursors used a particle accelerator to create a new universe - our universe. When Czerny refuses to give Newt and Flick more answers, the pair of them poke around his place.

Flick picks her way into a quonset hut, but she's caught by Czerny, who reveals how he learned this information: he drifted with a kaiju brain. He lets Flick drift with the kaiju brain he has.

While this is going on, Newt discovers Czerny's data on the Interstice, and discovers what appears to be a weak point. Czerny, who has made up his mind that there's simply no stopping the Precursors, attempts to blow the whole place up with a nuke to try and stop Newt from bringing false hope to the world. He attacks Newt, but Newt escapes and rescues Flick before the bomb can go off. (It's quite obvious that this inspired the scene of Hermann rescuing Newt in the film.)

Flick reveals that she learned through her drift with a kaiju brain that the Interstice is stabilizing, which means that the weak point Newt discovered can be targeted. The pair of them take their discovery to COSDEC. The scene where Newt explains the Interstice's weakness is very similar to the scene where Hermann explains how he believes that detonating a nuke in the breach will close it.

Mako and Raleigh close the Interstice, and Newt holds onto Flick as they wait to find out whether they survived.

I'm sure you've noticed that Flick has quite a lot in common with Newt Geiszler, and that her interactions with Newt Gotlieb strongly mirror interactions between Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb. So while I would say that this statement that Newt and Hermann used to be one character isn't exactly wrong, I would also propose that it's just as accurate (if not more accurate) to say that Newt used to be a gal - until Guillermo del Toro transed his gender.

[monsterblogging]

How Pacific Rim gives the finger to the Catholic Church

Another interesting thing that many people miss about Pacific Rim is that it has some... things to say about religion, especially the Catholic Church. It can be easy to miss because it's not all spelled out for you, but once you see it, you'll never unsee it.

First, let's take a look at Raleigh's speech from the beginning of the film:

There are things you can't fight, acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. You can win.

This speech here establishes that when you fight kaiju, you aren't just fighting monsters. You're defying God himself.

"You're reading too much into it!" some of you might say. "'Act of God' is just a legal term for massive disasters."

Ah, but I'm not reading too much into it. Because this line was originally found in the draft script, which was way more explicit in linking the Precursors with the divine.

In the draft script, the Precursors aren't just some random alien invaders. They're actually the creators of our universe, and we're just a pesky little accident that happened on the planet they want to live on.

The character of Ivo Czerny, who had drifted with a kaiju brain, was given this dialog:

I looked into the abyss. I’d been infected with the truth -- that this is the end of us. We are the vermin of the gods. There’s no point in putting up a fight…

A different character, Commander Kaz Takada, says:

We call the enemy the Precursors… I may as well tell the world the gods want us dead.

The character of Newt Gotlieb is given this dialog:

I don't care if they are the creators of the universe. I like the universe.

And I'm not a creationist.

So, Raleigh's line wasn't just a careless reference to a legal term. It was introducing the story's thesis.

In the final version of the film, we don't have all of this explicit dialog. And yet, the sentiment is still there. How do we know this? For one thing, the Precursors are modeled on Catholic clergy. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters, quotes Guillermo del Toro as saying:

We gave the Precursors elements of ecclesiastical royalty, dividing them into cardinals and bishops.

Fun fact: If we go to the old Art of Pacific Rim page on The Internet Archive and check the filenames, we can see that this Precursor - the one who stares up at Lady Danger as it goes 'splodey - is a Precursor Bishop.

(Screencaps from quiteunlikely.net)

Further establishing the link between the Precursors and the Catholic Church are the costumes of the BuenaKai nuns:

(Screencap from movie-screencaps.com)

A better picture of the costume can be found on PropstoreAuction. If you want to see the whole thing, go there; because I'm going to crop it because the whole thing's pretty big. Anyway, you can see that their costumes include cornettes and stoles.

(By the way, there are also kaiju monks. This isn't a girls-only club like the Netflix cartoon would have you think.)

Now, forget everything you know about Uprising or The Black, and consider all of this in the context of the anti-authority themes in Guillermo del Toro's other work. This casts the nature of the Precursors and the hivemind in a somewhat different light than many of us are used to. These aren't just scary aliens. This is a civilization built on ideals of rigid hierarchy and total dominion. And they're also essentially theocrats.

What's also really interesting is that when you take all of this together, it means that the kaiju spiritualists aren't actually wrong in regarding the kaiju as divine beings sent by the gods. They're just assholes for aligning themselves with a malefic divine.

[bitmeddler]

New from Sanrio… it’s HELLO KAIJU!!! 

Based on the opening of the movie with the talk shows and the sneakers and all that craziness, I feel like this totally could have happened. Trespasser-chan just might have been canon. And Newt would have bought the hell out of it. And Hermann would have disapproved (that or he would have secretly bought it for Newt and given it to him anonymously…)

This is a fill for the square “Action Figures / Posters” for @theloccent Pacific Rim Bingo. Three down, one to go!

[darksideoftheshipps]

[frogcabbage]

My dad hasn't watched Pacific Rim in years and he says the only thing he can remember about it are "the 2 gay scientists" i'm

[loveaintforkeeping]

I will sing to you every day If it will take away the pain Oh and I’ve heard you got it, got it so bad 'Cause I am the best you’ll never have

-Miss Missing You, Fall Out Boy

[churmac-blog]

herman’s idea of flirting with newt is putting the beds next to each other when they play minecraft

[dragofelid]

I rewatched Pacific rim again

and I had to redraw hermann and newt

[kaijuposting]

In the Pacific Rim draft script, intrepid reporter Felicity "Flick" Kincaid is the one who drifts with a kaiju brain. It's honestly a kind of stupid process and a bit squicky, so I won't go into detail.

Here, drifting with a kaiju brain isn't explicitly stated to be too much for the human brain, so it's unclear if that's a problem here or if it's life-threatening because it's just that alarming, and maybe also because of the fucked-up procedure used for it. Flick also gets strapped to a table in the process, and to make a long story short that's why she requires rescuing from her love interest, Newt Gotlieb. So if that scene where Hermann Gottlieb rescued Newt Geiszler felt particularly romantic? That could be why - it was literally adapted from a love interest rescue scene!

[thisjaegerisourgetalongshirt]

Hermann and newt driving to the airport after h's father cited their relationship for the reason the sanctity of marriage is in crisis. Hermann pulls off the highway, picks up a day laborer to act as witness and finds a Vegas style drive thru wedding. Newt does not pay attention to anything until like the last 3% of this quest

"Newton, will you marry me?"

"Like, in my heart gut? or government style?"

"Legally binding."

"...let's eat an entire wedding cake on the plane after."

[dacergirl369]

chapter one of me and jazz’s (@apprenticeofdoyle) newmann fantasy au is up on ao3!!!!!!!!!! i’m so excited about this fic u guys omg

MIT professor Newt Geiszler is a part-time cryptozoologist intrigued by a recent spree of killings near his campus. After a mysterious visitor drops by his freshman monster mythology course, Newt is exposed to the truth he’s spent his entire career searching for-- and a dark, dangerous reality, lurking just below the surface of Boston...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16643564

[ice-mint]

But what if this happened. Precursor!Newt would be so confused...

[bunnyreese12]

Humm

[frogcabbage]

Newt forces Herman to watch anime with him.

[loveaintforkeeping]

[formewithme]

PacificRim series aesthetics | Anthology

The first thing [Newton] does when he gets to his office, smarting from the needle and high on endorphins, is email the eccentric mathematician in Cambridge, the other Cambridge a non-creature-infested ocean away, with whom he’d been corresponding for a while and whom his colleagues have begun to call Newt’s Internet Boyfriend.

Hermann, Newton types, tell me you’ve crawled out from under your rock for long enough to realize your disdain for monster movies is now scientifically invalid.

Please don’t call me that, Gottlieb writes back. I’m already working on it.

@irisbleufic