Hollywood is in the Middle of a Giant Robot Renaissance

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Pacific Rim Uprising and Ready Player One, in theaters now.

For those who've spent years hoarding vintage Megazord toys, have a fondness for video games set in futuristic war zones or have long been singing the praises of Bubblegum Crisis to Blade Runner fans, giant robots and mecha will never have fallen off of your pop culture radar.

For the general viewing public, however, the sight of Pacific Rim's enormous Jaegers would have been a unique one back in 2013. In 2018, the Kaiju-smashing mecha are back for more in Pacific Rim Uprising, but this time the Jaegers are facing some big, mechanized competition company at the box office.

In a relatively brief time, cinema screens have become filled to bursting with piloted mecha of varying shapes and sizes, and with references to the manga and anime that popularized them. Pacific Rim's Jaegers, with their skyscraper sizes, varied types, nicknames, fluid maneuverability and dependency on the minds and bodies of human pilots are reminiscent of everything from Patlabor to Neon Genesis Evangelion (some of which is intentional and some only incidental).

The Easter egg celebration that is Ready Player One notably includes the Iron Giant stalking across a virtual battlefield in its trailers, and the film triples down on the giant-robot love in a fight scene that will no doubt go down as one of the most shamelessly nerd-baiting delights in pop-culture history. Not only does the film's villain pilot Mechagodzilla to take down the Iron Giant, who's rescued by none other than the RX-78-2 model from Mobile Suit Gundam, thanks to a special MSG power-up from one of the heroes.

Even Tony Stark's beefy Hulkbuster armor, which returns later this month in Avengers: Infinity War, is essentially an exoskeleton mech in the tradition of Gundam and Appleseed. Similarly, a version of the mechanized Batsuit Bruce Wayne donned in The Dark Returns popped up to give the Man of Steel a beating in 2016's Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

In that same year, Netflix's revival of 1980s animated classic, Voltron: Legendary Defender, began streaming, and a year after that, a rebooted version of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers lineup also brought the unique joy of seeing massive mechs combine to make even bigger mechs back to our cinema screens, too. Along with the non-piloted alien robots of the Transformers franchise, these properties were instrumental in spreading the love for big 'bots outside of Japan over 30 years ago, and their resurgence brings this current trend full circle.

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Is the giant robot renaissance in Western media just a happy coincidence? It's no secret, after all, that directors like Guillermo del Toro and Stephen Spielberg share a fondness of Japanese pop culture. Plus, giant robots are just really cool. Maybe mechs have also wormed their way into our collective consciousnesses again because of their increased visibility in the real world. After all, the technology for them already exists. In 2015, Japan's Dai-Nihon Giken manufactured a Powered Jacket MK3 exoskeleton modelled on the Landmate suits from Appleseed. This year, an American company called Prosthesis developed an "exo-bionic" mech racer, which a human pilot can sit inside to drive the hefty 15 foot, 8,000 pound beast.

Of course, mechs have far more practical applications than just really intimidating cosplay or fulfilling boy racer dreams. And, Mecha fans will be glad to hear that humanoid, bipedal suits are not only more achievable than you might think, but actually the most advantageous design.

"The human anatomy is incredibly efficient for clambering over rocks and walking along roads," Rob Cunningham, the director of Remote Applications in Challenging Environments at the Culham Science Center told the BBC in 2016. The biggest hinderance, however, is that walking on two legs invites stability issues, which will only get worse with an increased size. We actually glimpsed this problem occur when Gipsy Avenger had a wobbly landing in Pacific Rim Uprising. Despite this, the drone mechs that the Shao Corporation were developing in the film are actually a far less viable option because, as Professor Sethu Vijayakumar of the Edinburgh Center of Robotics explains: "Fully-autonomous systems have lots of problems in terms of sensing and contextual decision-making."

Infinity War Bleeding Edge Hulkbuster concept art Finalized

The size of the mech, however, will always be determined by the scale of its purpose. Until we face huge, alien threats from above or below the Earth, it's more likely that human-piloted mech suits will look more like Iron Man's regular-sized suits than his Hulk-beating ones. "We will get humanoid mechs," Professor Vijayakumar adds. "But, only if we find an application. It is only science-fiction writers who care whether it has two arms and two legs."

Their infeasibility in the real world only makes their appeal in fictional ones stronger. Our modern environment is filled with machines that are designed to make our lives easier by seamlessly blending into them, invisible and unnoticed. Giant robots are the polar opposite of this dull practicality. Their sheer size demands attention -- they're a spectacle, not a secret. Piloted mechs also have a unique appeal to us because, like any other vehicle, they become an extension of our bodies; giving us the rush of moving faster and hitting harder than our weaker, physical forms allow, while cradling us from harm. As an older, grizzled Bruce Wayne knows, what an ageing and broken body can fail to do, a mechanized Batsuit can make up for.

Perhaps most crucially, though, giant robots capture our imaginations because our perception of them can shift so quickly. Mitsutero Yokohama, the creator of Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor) -- one of the earliest Mecha manga -- cites growing up in WWII-era Japan and witnessing first-hand the devastation of Nazi Germany's long-range bombers as an influence on his work. He was also profoundly impacted by seeing the 1931 Frankenstein film; a towering monster with an expressionless face who could both protect and take life. Again, that brief moment in Pacific Rim Uprising when Gipsy Avenger has to recover from a bumpy landing is incredibly evocative of this: one moment, the fear of being squished to death spreads through the crowd below, then -- as the robot self-rights itself -- it dissipates in the next, turned to appreciative elation in the presence of one of Earth's mightiest defenders. From monster to friend within seconds, depending on the will of the person with their finger on the trigger.

Spectacle, nostalgia, fear and heroism all rolled into one? It's no wonder giant robots are the current big thing in Hollywood.