#pacific rim meta

[driftwithme]

In terms of worldbuilding, I'm very much aware that Guillermo del Toro didn't want the PPDC to work like the military or to be assumed to work like the military.

Problem is that you have a considerable number of important characters with military background that ends up bleeding to their job in the PPDC. It means that even if at its core the PPDC is not and will not be the military (ever), it still holds aspects of it and that should be recognized as a problem.

Take Pentecost, for example. He effectively pulls up rank on Raleigh when he mentions that Raleigh is a ranger and he himself is Marshall. Of course, pulling rank is not exclusive to the military, but given the context and Pentecost's past, it ends up reading exactly like a high ranking officer would talk to his subordinate.

Mako and Chuck also exhibit typical behavior of children who grew up with military dads. The level of exigence they operate under is not just due to the fact they grew up between Shatterdomes or that they were at war— it is also the result of a parent that expects something of their children and kids want to meet their expectations, make their parents proud. Mako and Chuck can be described as methodical, almost obsessed with their missions. This is not necessarily bad, as it makes them passionate and relentless on the path to achieve their dreams, but it is also a heavy tool on their mental health.

Militars are also more prone to knowing when to shut up and suck up when someone with more power than them makes a decision they don't agree with. That Pentecost and Herc are at the top of the command in the Jaeger Program at the end of it is not a surprise. They are trained to obey what their superiors say and to find a way around their orders, basically making things work out of nothing. I'm not saying that only an officer could do that, just that they had the training to back it up and prepare them more for that situation.

Militar culture is not only about weapons. It was developed through centuries of warfare to face better against crisis. The chain of command is an easy way to organize everyone's function so it is clear in the middle of the chaos what your job is, what orders you must obey, who you should be following, etc. Things like living in quarters, eating rations, maintaining a tight schedule, keeping up with the routine... That's necessary in a place like the Shatterdomes, where everything needs to work like a clock.

I'm really happy that Pacific Rim is not military propaganda and that it doesn't romanticize war. That might be one of my biggest reasons for it to be one of my favorite movies.

It's simply that in order to avoid romanticizing something, you need to look at the complexity of the worldbuilding and recognize the good and the bad within some facts.

And while I'm at it: the Jaeger Program freaking works like the aviation. I'll just leave it there lmao.

[monsterblogging]

I'm like 99% sure that the post-9/11 political atmosphere played a role in shaping a certain perception of Raleigh Becket as someone who could do no wrong and Newt Geiszler as someone who could do no right.

I think this perception has been mellowing out over time, but I still occasionally see traces of it, like Raleigh being unironically described as a "golden retriever" or Newt being infantilized in some way or another.

[mydearthisbe]

Things I Kept Thinking About While Watching Pacific Rim (2013):

It's crazy that there are only two female pilots when the entire premise of Jaeger Pilots is a capacity for intellectual and emotional vulnerability with each other. I feel like you are way more likely to come across women who are skilled in doing that than men

I thought at some point they might return to why the Jaeger pilots were being defunded, considering it was by far their most efficient way of dealing with the Kaiju. I understand that if the film is taken as an allegory for climate change, that move represents a form of environmental nihilism, but the metaphor kind of falls short when the same nations they're representing are also deeply militaristic. The more likely outcome than rerouting resources away from a military operation, would probably be the alliance itself falling apart? I think if the film had used that premise, it would more strongly contrast with why the Jaeger rebellion, which persistently believes in the power of cooperation, empathy, and collective action, is the best solution

I did appreciate the detail that most people defaulted to their first language in times of trouble (Mako speaking in Japanese during her fight, Sasha and Alexis speaking in Russian during theirs, etc.) or when they wanted to communicate privately (like Mako commenting on Raleigh when she thought he wouldn't understand) and I think that helped the movie to expand beyond an American War Movie

On that note, I feel like what the movie lacked in strength of dialogue (often feeling very American War Movie), it more than made up for in interesting world-building and character dynamics. The idea that Stacker knew Mako should be a pilot, but was reluctant to put her and Raleigh in the same Jaeger, due to their mutual Kaiju trauma, was so interesting. The concept of drift compatibility, very cool. The concept of the rapid technological evolution of Jaegers from analog (nuclear) to digital, with both of them having clear drawbacks, very cool. Even just the concept of Raleigh being one of the only established pilots to be completely and utterly willing to let any stranger in his head. I feel like I could think about this movie for hours

Truly, they breezed past the dinosaur thing. Nobody even questioned it!!! What do you mean, the dinosaurs were a trial run? They really needed a paleontologist on their research team

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I don't know if this was asked before, but could kaijus realistically exist in the Twilight world? Or would Aro have considered them too much of a threat and wiped them out alongside other threats to humanity?

Man, I remember seeing this, but for the life of me I can't find it on the blog either so I may have just let it rot in the inbox. Oh well, we can do this now.

Can Kaiju Realistically Exist

Yes. Absolutely

The thing about the whole backdrop of Kaijus (I'm assuming from Pacific Rim) is that they're extradimensional creatures designed for warfare. They're not the true enemy but also they're not from here. The aliens showed up during the Triassic Age, looked around, went "ah shit, we can't actually survive here" and then waited for millions of years until we'd polluted the planet and made it habitable for them.

Namely, they showed up before human history, and the kaijus only appeared extremely recently in history (2013) with no way of the Volturi having been able to predict their appearance or close the interdimensional portal deep at the bottom of the ocean where they purposefully put it to avoid discovery/closure.

Aro would certainly have considered them a massive threat, especially since we find out their M.O. is actually to wipe out the dominant sapient creatures (humans) in order to colonize the planet and that these creatures are actually just designed weapons. The entire point of Kaijus is to exterminate mankind. That's a big no for the Volturi.

Would Pacific Rim Happen?

I imagine Aro's funneling all the money he can into the R&D efforts to stop these fucking things and would very well be trying to figure out where they're coming from, what are they, and how the hell do we get rid of them?

The Volturi may or may not find out about the rift as humanity does and they may be able to survive getting much closer to it without equipment than humans can.

Pacific Rim ends the Kaiju attacks initially when they nuke the portal, so the Volturi may be able to send someone to the other side before this point and kill everyone over there but given that the environment is likely markedly different (as the whole point is earth had to be polluted to a certain to degree to be remotely livable) I don't know if even vampires could do well over there.

But I imagine there's a lot of looking for "close the fucking portal" gifted vampire on Aro's end or "blow up giant lizards" gifted vampires. Both of which, sadly, Aro does not have in his arsenal (I doubt Jane and Alec would be effective as Kaiju brains != Human/Vampire brains at all)

[avelera]

I think the term, “flaws” as a necessity for writing well-rounded fictional characters is often misunderstood. It can lead to new writers thinking these flaws should be in a laundry list alongside their OCs hobbies, eye color, and favorite food.

All of the above traits shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. They all need to serve the story in some way, usually by illustrating plot, character, or themes in a way that enhances the story.

Saying a character’s flaw is that they’re “clumsy” isn’t really a flaw unless this trait stands between them and what they want in a meaningful way. Being clumsy is an obstacle for a dancer, or for a teenager who will be socially judged and derided in a meaningful way to the story. Even still, it’s a somewhat shallow and overused flaw.

What got me thinking about this is the fanfic characters I tend to enjoy writing are flawed people. The more flawed, the better.

I struggled to write Nicky and Joe in The Old Guard because they don’t really have any flaws. They’re never stupid, or selfish, or awkward, or mean. I couldn’t really write them until I wrote a story where the plot is that one of them gets returned by amnesia to his pre-character development Crusader self, back when he was prejudiced, quick to anger, and provincial in his world view. Then I had somewhere to go with them.

By contrast, Newt and Hermann from Pacific Rim are riddled with flaws, and it made them not only popular characters, but a blast to write. They’re rude, loud, snarky, selfish, self-involved, self-important, arrogant, and mean. They’re also both sincerely trying to save the world and willing to sacrifice themselves to do it if necessary. It makes them a wonderful mass of contradictions and it makes them feel like real people.

And recently I wrote about my desire to write Dream and Hob from Sandman as more like their comic selves, with all the rough edges and taciturn misanthropy and selfishness and rudeness that implies. I don’t want to write perfect people.

I saw a post that imagined Hob as passionate about returning artifacts stolen by the English to their country of origin. It was a very sweet post and fun, don’t get me wrong. But as a perverse creature, my first thought was, “Ok, but what if he wasn’t? What if he, as a former bandit and soldier for the Crown, wasn’t in favor of the artifacts being returned? What if he was the opposite?”

Now to be clear, I think it’s more in character for the brief glimpse of the Teacher Hob we see for him to be more worldly, more in favor of repatriation. I genuinely think that take is probably more accurate to the character.

That’s not the point.

The point is that I think one way to avoid creating these sort of perfect shiny soft characters with all the rough edges sawed off is to ask, “Ok but what if they didn’t do the right thing here?”

What if they don’t have perfect, up to date progressive political views on all possible topics? What if they weren’t always altruistic? What if they don’t always say just the right thing to their lover when that person is feeling down? What if they have moments where they’re stupid, selfish, insensitive, prejudiced, rude, awkward, or off-putting?

Personally, I think that’s how you get more interesting characters, who are more like real people and, more importantly, have room to grow or sometimes not grow in a way that better serves your story.

[sleepyowling]

i love how wide of an impact pacific rim has on fanfiction, across various fandom. there are a total of 10 thousand pacific rim fics, but nearly 3 thousand fics tagged as pacific rim au (most of them not tagged in the pacific rim fandom).

it shows the truly unique set up of pacific rim and the vast and fertile ground that it is for studying relationships.

[practicalgothicism]

The Hivemind & Drift in Pacific Rim through the lens of (probably Very bastardized) Quantum Entanglement

gonna start out by saying:

does this have any REAL WORLD BASIS? nope,,not really am i probbaly WILDLY misinterpreting and misusing quantum entanglement? YEAH MOST LIKELY but i am having Fun. :)

if the Hivemind (and then, extrapolating from that, the SPECTER effect (dcwt ily)/ghost drifting/drift hangover/the nerm hive stuff/whatever you wanna call it) could be explained/made possible by quantum mechanics

and it seems like the answer is.. Kinda? like irl no, its very much NOT but in pacrim, where there are.. giant cloned monsters coming out of an interdimensional breach i think that this could actually be used as a way to explain it like. ok so particles are tethered, yeah?

think of the individual consiousnesses within the hive as particles

"Entanglement can also occur among hundreds, millions, and even more particles. The phenomenon is thought to take place throughout nature, among the atoms and molecules in living species and within metals and other materials. When hundreds of particles become entangled, they still act as one unified object. Like a flock of birds, the particles become a whole entity unto itself without being in direct contact with one another." (“What Is Entanglement and Why Is It Important?” Caltech Science Exchange, scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/entanglement. Accessed 16 July 2024.)

WHICH MEANS THAT EACH MEMBER OF THE HIVE COULD BE ENTANGLED, ACTING AS ONE UNIFIED OBJECT and then if we think of the drift as CAUSING ENTANGLEMENT then it means that when drifting occurs it BINDS THE PARTICIPANTS CLOSE ENOUGH TOGETHER TO BE ONE OBJECT ON THE MOLECULAR, ON THE QUANTUM LEVEL

`"In natural settings such as the human body, for example, not two but hundreds of molecules or even more become entangled, as they also do in various metals and magnets, making up an interwoven community. In these many-body entangled systems, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

“The particles act together like a single object whose identity lies not with the individual components but in a higher plane. It becomes something larger than itself,” says Spyridon (Spiros) Michalakis, outreach manager of Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM) and a staff researcher. "` (Nalick, Jon. “Untangling Quantum Entanglement.” Caltech Magazine, Caltech Magazine, 11 Oct. 2019, magazine.caltech.edu/post/untangling-entanglement.)

so this implies that each of our particles is entangled, yes?

and if the hive functions as ONE BODY made up of MANY MINDS, then would it not follow that the hive could be a "many-body entanlged system"? the particles dont have to communicate because they may as well be ONE OBJECT

the kaiju's minds in the hive dont have to communicate faster than the speed of light because they may as well be ONE OBJECT and then exptrapolating from that, drift hangover/SPECTER effect/ghost drifing would all just be byproducts of two human minds BECOMING ENTANGLED, BECOMING "ONE OBJECT"

"“The key to correcting errors in entangled systems is, in fact, entanglement,” says Preskill. “If you want to protect information from damage due to the extreme instability of superpositions, you have to hide the information in a form that’s very hard to get at,” he says. “And the way you do that is by encoding it in a highly entangled state.”" (Nalick, Jon. “Untangling Quantum Entanglement.” Caltech Magazine, Caltech Magazine, 11 Oct. 2019, magazine.caltech.edu/post/untangling-entanglement.) ok so then with this it could imply that hte REASON newt had to drift to gain access was because of HOW ENTANGLED the hive is

he had to entangle himself to be able to even SEE the effects of the hive's entanglement

[riafunnel]

Oh my god I just realized that aside from giant robots beating up Kaiju another reason I fucking love Pacific Rim is that Mako & Raleigh in the drift is pretty much similar to what Van & Hitomi have!!!!!

They're so in sync that they can sense each other's thoughts/emotions!!!!

[mohntilyet]

i have to be so real. sometimes you have to outright not give a shit what the author thinks. i’m not saying to disregard how a character is portrayed and give into fanon characterisations but sometimes i will see fans be like “(head writer) omggg do you think this character is a good person?” “how would this character react if xyz happened?” as though that’s not a question you can and have to answer for yourself.! any character can contain multitudes and if you keep limiting your perception of them solely on word of god its not fun for the writer or even yourself anymore. THINK FOR YOURSELF. INVENT NEW WAYS TO FUCK YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS OVER

[binomech]

hermann "i am existentially disturbed by the disruptive alien life coming out of the ocean in an act of disrespect to centuries of human rationality and science, so i will fine-tune myself into a perfect killing machine through mathematical abstraction, and dedicate every waking hour to ensure the success of giant interpersonal-love-powered mechs that represent all the best accomplishments of humanity, even if collaborating in a project responsible for so many deaths makes me a monster, even if I will never be allowed to pilot them because my actual organic body is disabled and there's no room for it the paradigm of what humanity has decided makes a person" gottlieb

newton "i empathize with the alien species colonizing our planet through the bottom of our very polluted oceans, even and especially when they hurt or kill the people i love because it's not their fault the reality they were born into was not fit to be a home and it's not like they had role models to socialize them into being polite and likable and safe to be around and maybe if we could talk to them they would understand that we're trying to make a life worth living in this planet too, even as we constantly fuck it up and invade and destroy the homes of other species, we could reach an understanding because humanity and the kaiju are both equally monstruous to the most vulnerable" geiszler

[avril lavigne voice] can i make it any more obvious

[chibi-chaos]

I’d like to take this my dear @eadrey-the-iptscray​ and raise you.

Pacific Rim uses bridges as their thesis. It is the core concept that they expand on, which you give several good example of.

Bridges, let’s go specifically involve the drift, is about connecting two people who may be very different (ie. how we have Raleigh the seasoned American veteran with trauma, Mako his opposite in several ways, nationality, time in a Jaeger, much more academically smarter than him.) 

We can point out how many other Jaeger pilot pairing so vividly different and one other example I want to say is Kaori and Duc Jessop where literally Kaori doesn’t know English and Duc doesn’t understand Japanese but after the drift Kaori starts speaking in English - a first step into bridging the gap the two have.

But what is a thesis without it’s antithesis?

In this case I want to argue the antithesis is walls.

Where bridges connect two places, two people and so on. Walls do the opposite. They block.

In Pacific Rim there are a few walls I want to raise.

1. Anti-Kaiju Wall (alternatively the Wall, Coastal Wall or the Wall of Life) - how many times in history has the apparently solution for some been “we’ll build a wall”.  The wall literally splits Sydney in half, and as we see in the movie living conditions on the wall and likely around it are bleak. There is no hope in walls like there is in bridges.

2. Societal walls (barriers) following on from the failure of the Anti-Kaiju wall we have another form of a wall we can find in a news report (I love how this move puts so much lore like this). One politician claims the UN are moving millions of people to safe zones following the walls failure with Mutavore - but what is noted by the reporter is only the rich and powerful are being moved. Once more another divide of society thanks to a wall.

3. Mental walls - I don’t remember if this is one that could be explicitly pointed to, but I am going to say that it is hinted to more than once. What is a threat to a successful drift (or relationship) is walls, mental walls from trauma and hurt. We see several characters who have built walls to ignore the pain (some more literally than others in the case of Raleigh I’d argue)

The movie shows that bridges are needed, some purposely seeking to destroy them, they connect humanity but literally and figuratively. While walls divide or block of things that will inevitably breakthrough, which only delays that one needs to focus on as to be able to move on.

It’s a simple message perhaps. But it’s one that I feel is needed.

going absolutely FERAL thinking about all the circular storytelling in Pacific Rim.

like........

bridges

Trespasser destroys the Golden Gate Bridge on K-Day

Caitlin Lightcap invents the Pons system (pons is Latin for "bridge"!) to help fight kaiju

Newt uses the Pons system to drift with a kaiju and becomes a bridge between humanity and the Precursors (also narratively bridging the gap between Pacific Rim and the sequel but I digress)

Newt and Hermann also use the Pons system to drift with the baby kaiju and learn how to destroy the Breach that way

aaaaaand G. Danger jumps through the Breach (a bridge between Earth and the Anteverse!) to kill the Precursors & kaiju and everything comes full circle with the destruction of ANOTHER bridge

[driftwithme]

At the end of the day, my take is that most of the Jaeger pilots we know from Pacific Rim (2013) could have been in the military, except Raleigh.

He doesn't know how and when to shut the fuck up, he won't shut up if he's being witness to some injustice, he will disobey orders if the orders don't make sense to him or risk someone's life, he won't partake in any form of cruelty or keep it down because it is a superior doing it...

Yeah, maybe the movie is right and he is nothing special when it comes to physical or intellectual attributes. What sets him aside and makes him a fantastic ranger is that Raleigh will never ignore his principles and his guts. He's willing to stand up for what he believes in even if life punches him down again and again.

He might not have been a chosen one by design (since we know Travis Beacham actively tried to make him the contrary of that, actually), but he is a classic hero in what matters most: not giving up and standing for what's right.

[monsterblogging]

Narratively, I think becoming a Jaeger pilot should be treated the same way Star Trek: Deep Space 9 treats becoming a Starfleet officer.

Like, there's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but it's not inherently good, either. Starfleet isn't some immensely evil oppressive force or anything, but it's not infallible, and it's not some ultimate force of goodness. And it's perfectly fine to want to do something else with your life.

[mollyencrypted]

Thesis: Alien Vs Predator (2004) is good because it asks 'what if the horror movie monster decided not to kill you and instead helps you save the world and maybe crushes on you a little?' and Pacific Rim (2013) is good because it asks 'what if the mortifying ordeal of being known gave you the ability to inflict science-fiction violence upon representations of modern dangers?', and Venom (2018) is good because it makes each of these questions the answer to the other.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ok so i was actually kinda surprised to find that looking at the ao3 stats and adjusting for how long ofmd’s existed (a year and a half) vs how long the stucky fandom’s been around (coming up on a decade), not only is gentlebeard on par with stucky but it actually beats stucky for amount of fics written. but i’m making a prediction now just based on how i’ve observed fandoms to work: i do think the gentlebeard popularity will peter out faster than stucky did

i’m not saying bc i think gentlebeard is worse or the ofmd fandom is weak or anything, i’m saying this bc in fandom it seems like the white masc queerbait ships* have like, an absurd amount of longevity that goes way beyond the general fandom surrounding whatever media said white masc queerbait ship hails from. im thinking abt the protagonist/rival ship from the TERF wizard series that nobody decent talks about in public anymore. before we all cut jkr out of our lives, people were still churning out fics abt the main character and that racist blond kid pretty regularly. and another example, we have those scientists from pacific rim that are more popular than any of the main characters from that movie. it’s been years and the newt/hermann fandom is still going strong.

and i say “newt/hermann fandom” intentionally, bc that’s the thing that i think actually gives these ships their longevity: when there are fans who are primarily invested in a piece of media because of a noncanonical masc4masc queerbait ship, they’re not really fans of the media itself. i mean, some of them might be, but if they are then that’s in addition to being fans of this alternate queer interpretation of the media in question. they’re a fan of the fandom mass hallucination that the fans collectively and collaboratively invented of a romantic/sexual/homoerotic relationship between two guys who on-screen might hug like once or twice (or sometimes even never)

and i’m pretty sure the reason this sort of fandom phenomenon tends to have so much longevity is bc the fans have already created this whole extensive romantic storyline using what is often some pretty minimal canonical material to work with. so when the movie franchise or the tv show ends and the shippers no longer have any new canonical material to work with, they can keep going for years because really, they were already making shit up from the start.

so compared to that, gentlebeard is way different bc everything the fans might have invented on our own the show pretty much already did for us, and anything the show didn’t do yet is probably coming for us this season (or in s3, fingers crossed). i’ve mentioned before how a lot of fanfiction seems to fall on a spectrum between “fix” and “expand,” and by the end of ofmd i doubt there’s gonna be a whole lot that gentlebeard fans feel like they need to “fix.” versus stucky, where there’s so much that needs to be fixed that you might as well just throw the whole canon out.

i don't really mean any of this as a criticism or an attack on fans of queerbait ships like this, im just pointing out fandom trends that i've noticed. i myself have been deeply invested in stucky, newmann, and the gay wizard boys at different points in my life. like there is something very fun abt putting on slash goggles and making queer content out of nothing. personally though, now that we're in an age where we're getting canon queer content, im not so engaged in a lot of the ships i used to care so much about, but i don't think it's inherently wrong** for people to still enjoy some classic fandom queerbait ships. it's just a very different thing from enjoying canonical queer ships like gentlebeard

*im using “queerbait ships” loosely to include popular gay ships in media that was never in a million years going to make these characters gay.

**a clarifying point: i don't think it's inherently wrong, however there are a lot of problematic elements to this kind of fandom activity, namely the way a lot of these queerbait ships will dominate a fandom while other characters who are important in canon get completely sidelined (and yes, the sidelined characters are often women/poc). also, less importantly, when people's primary media consumption revolves around strip mining canon for shipping content, this absolutely destroys their media literacy and critical thinking. again, im not saying this to attack ppl who engage in fandom primarily through fic/art of noncanonical gay ships, i myself have done the same thing. but i think ppl who do should also make a conscious effort to also engage with fan content that centers women/poc, or at the very least need to be aware of the issues around this kind of fandom activity.

[sailorsol]

Thinking about Pacific Rim on the way to work this morning, as one does, and how there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how nuclear reactors generate power. They would be terrible power sources for mechas, not just because of radiation concerns, but because of how much stuff they require. Like, inherently, you need the reactor but you also need a cooling system that generates steam to power a steam turbine to generate power in an electrical motor. Even a small reactor system like in a nuclear powered submarine is significantly larger than most people think.

Like, a Los Angeles class fast-attack submarine is 350 ft long. Almost half of that space is taken up by the power plant system. That's 175 ft, or over 50 m. That's roughly equivalent to a 14 story building. Gypsy Danger is 260 ft tall. If 1/3 of its height is the torso, that's ~80 ft. Not enough room for a small nuclear power plant. And that's with what we were capable of building in the early 2010s. That space also doesn't take into account all of the coolant needed, whether it's a water-cooled reactor or a sodium-cooled reactor. And that's not even considering the weight of all of that stuff. Plus the fact that, while a sodium-cooled reactor may be more efficient, it is also highly flammable. There's a reason Jimmy Carter refused to allow sodium-cooled reactors on US nuclear submarines, and he was basically considered the father of the nuclear navy.

On top of all of that, nuclear reactors are fussy. They don't like getting knocked around. There's a lot of delicate instrumentation, and the entire system is running at high temperatures and high pressures. We're talking 250 to 300 °C (482 to 572 °F) and >2000 PSI (136 atm, or 136 times normal outside pressure). You need a very robust system of pipes and pumps to handle that sort of thing, and if any of it breaks, at best you're getting irradiated water and at worst you could be looking at a hydrogen or sodium explosion depending on the type of cooling system.

All of these concerns regarding weight and size are basically why nuclear-powered jet engines never took off (hah). Yes, they were actually being designed, by both Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, the two major jet engine manufacturers in the US. While the GE design was "relatively" small, it was a direct air cycle, which means that the air powering the turbine was heated up directly by the nuclear reactor, meaning that the exhaust from the engines were irradiated. So using it meant spewing radiation behind it.

That's not even taking into account that the first nuclear-powered jaeger was built in ~2014, a time when nuclear power was especially contentious. If it had been pre-Fukushima, when the "nuclear renaissance" was still holding strong, I could believe that they may have tried for a nuclear-powered jaeger. But post-Fukushima? Not so much.

So yes, it's highly unlikely that we would have developed nuclear-powered mecha. What's more likely is that we would have seen huge advances in rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, and electric motors. We are just now seeing in the early 2020s an electric motor that can generate power on the same scale as a combustion jet engine, but the amount of power to run that motor is still beyond the capacity of what we have for battery storage. And the problem we see, of course, with the rechargeable batteries being used in electric cars is that they tend to catch on fire.

All that being said, yes, I recognize that it is a sci-fi movie and the science aspect is more or less just ignored. But this is what happens when you have a bored writer who has also been in the power generation industry for nearly 17 years.

Tl;dr. We wouldn't have used nuclear-powered mecha, we probably would have advanced electric motors and batteries by leaps and bounds.