The movie doesn’t tell the story of the monster portal which opened in the Atlantic, because Ireland dealt with it single-handedly. It turns out that “being invaded from other lands” is pretty much our entire history, cultural legacy, and best way to get us to kick your arse if you try it now we have a tech sector. On the grounds that it was how we defeat all our existing demons, we built our jaeger out of a distillery.

40% fuel ensured the pilots didn’t feel any pain, fatigue, or need to ask pointed questions about the feasibility of a 100 meter tall bipedal robot. But the real breakthrough was when it turned out that the best way to check advanced psychological compatibility for direct neural linkage was “fighting with sticks.”

We immediately drafted the Kilkenny hurling team.

Fifteen championship trained violencies of pure speed. Hurling is one of the fastest games in the world, because if you were up against over a dozen stick-wielding Irishmen, firing what’s not so much a small ball as a large bullet, with no protective padding, you’d move quickly too. Fifteen fellas to divide the load – that’s more help than Jesus had, and even He couldn’t have helped any kaiju fool enough to start a fight with a hurley team in a distillery.

They annihilated everything that dared step out of the water. If they’d been on the coast at the dawn of time, all life would still be aquatic. They learned to use large boats to beat down the monsters, because the largest boats in Irish waters are usually Spanish fishing trawlers, though sometimes they had to keep the fight going for hours until they found one.

Once Whiskey Output ran out of grain during an extended battle. The hurlers disconnected the bridge, stepped out onto the roof with flare pistols, fired them in the air to let the monster know where they were, then leapt across and beat the unholy shite out of it with their hurls. This jaeger only carried distress flares to let the monsters know when they were in trouble. It didn’t have a self-destruct; its final option was to let the kaiju bite and let a million gallons of poteen make that melting-kaiju-acid-spit look like a moisturizing cleanser.

Of course, no kaiju ever got that far. When Whiskey Output sealed the breach (by standing right on top of it and playing Whack-a-Kaiju with anything that stuck its misshapen head through, a strategy which seemed to evade the rest of the world, until they gave up) they marched back to Kilkenny, parked it, and took the lid off the fuel tank. Which was why they were too busy to turn up at the Shatterdome. And wouldn’t have been allowed to drive there anyway.

For more giant robot shenanigans, behold