Friday 12 July 2013

South Pacific Rim (musical)

From Wiki and Wiki:

In the near future, on a South Pacific island during World War II, two half-Polynesian giant monsters, Ngana and Jerome, identified as "Kaiju" have risen from a portal in a crevasse beneath the Pacific Ocean and happily sing as they play together ("Dites-Moi").

Ensign Nellie Forbush, a naïve U.S. Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, has fallen in love with Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French plantation owner, resulting in a war that takes millions of lives and quickly consumes humanity's resources ("A Cockeyed Optimist").

Even though everyone else is worried about the outcome of the war, Nellie tells Emile that she is sure everything will turn out all right. To combat the monsters, a special type of weapon is designed at the officers' club dance.

Emile also loves massive robots, known as Jaegers, and Nellie is controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge which prevents the mental strain which would overwhelm a single pilot ("Twin Soliloquies").

Nellie, promising to think about their relationship, is initially successful in fending off Kaiju attacks ("Some Enchanted Evening") and returns to the hospital, but as more and more Kaiju cross through the portal, Emile expresses his love for Nellie, recalling how they met and instantly were attracted to each other ("There Is Nothing Like a Dame").

Emile calls Ngana and Jerome to him, revealing that the Jaegers are becoming less and less effective and the united governments of Earth begin to lose faith in the Jaegers' ability to defend humanity ("Bloody Mary").

Meanwhile, the restless American Seabees, led by crafty Luther Billis, lament the absence of available women after they cut funding to the program and the remaining nurses are redeployed to Hong Kong ("I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair").

5 comments:

Derek said...

Is it my imagination or do I remember a song from that show?

A hundred and one
Tons of fun.
That's my little Honey Bun;
Get a load of Honey Bun tonight.
I'm speakin' of my sweetie pie,
Only sixty metres high,
Ev'ry metre's packed with dynamite.


Or was that from The Sound of Godzilla?

John Pickworth said...

Quite brilliant :-)

I've stood on the very beaches where the original musical was filmed... strangely, unlike the Alps, none of the songs you remember seem to fit the real location. I know that's a weird observation but it struck me as strange at the time.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JP, do you mean you can't see a snow capped peak without thinking that the hills are alive etc?

I get that when I'm at a station and I can see the tracks disappearing into the distance, I always think of "Train coming round the bend" by the Velvet Underground (even if it's a straight track).

John Pickworth said...

I exactly that Mark.

I defy anyone with a soul to stand on a grassy mountain and not hum at least a couple of lines.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JP, I wouldn't be able to because I only know the first line of that song :-)

I'm not really into musicals if truth be told, never have been.