The 50-foot automaton

With Pacific Rim well under way as being one of the big hits of the summer (I’ve yet to see it, no spoilers please!), I couldn’t help but wonder about the amount of work it takes to write a decent piece where the 50-foot monster arises. Easy enough when you have your own giant machine at your disposal to fight for you. Easy enough when you’re a superhero or a daredevil who can leap, climb, and/or pulverize the colossal man (or woman or golem-titan-robot-thing) with your bare hands (where’s Superman when you need him anyway?).

But what happens when you’re left to your own devices, without the metal and the means? Strip down to the basics, and all you have is the knowledge of the 50-foot mythos and a couple of firearms that need to be aimed just right (and even then, there’s no guarantee the bullets would even make it past the hard stone or metal).

Obviously, I did a little digging (read: skimming, I’ll go deeper later) into this whole bigger is better, gigantic war machine dilemma. Television Tropes and Idioms certainly have a lot to say about the Humongous Mecha, and there are so many examples and mentions of them in various media. But darn it, it could help if someone actually wrote down the ways they can be vanquished, besides the fact that one needs to fight metal with metal–and then some!

That said, I understand this monster battle can be done. One of the more interesting examples I picked up was the one on a rampaging 50-foot woman, which came from a film titled–wait for it–Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. When it seemed that all is lost, turns out you only need an attack at a power line. On a similar thread, all it takes to kill the gigantic bronze Talos–Hephaestus’ automaton creation–is a strike at the right ankle vein. Sometimes the myth even says Talos was taken down by a woman (whether the takedown was a good or bad thing is another story).

Conclusion: Giant robots can be vanquished without the need to fight inside another giant robot. Gotcha.

Writing Thought: I might be overthinking this, especially since I don’t want to tack on more problems on a short story that’s supposed to be romantic. Maybe I’ll go the Talos route and imagine the weakness in the wiring just to get it over with. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s incomprehensible that my characters should fight, that running–or, flying, really–away and escaping soundly is the best bet.