One of the things that has rekindled my love of the anticipatory period before a film is released is having kids in the house who go absolutely bananas at every new glimpse they get of the things they are interested in the most. My boys are giant monster fanatics, and they adore robots of all types, so from the very first moment I described “Pacific Rim” to them as “a movie about a war between giant robots and giant monsters,” they have been positively rabid to see anything from it.
This is one of those movies that seems like it should already exist. It is hard to believe there has never been a real big-budget treatment of this sort of material. True, it would have been difficult to pull off with any degree of photo-realism before now, but it still seems surprising that it has taken this long for Hollywood to realize that there will most likely be an audience for two hours of robots that do kung-fu laying a beating on giant monsters that breathe fire. Actually, there’s a wide range of things that both the Jaegers (the official name for the giant robots) and the Kaiju (the official name for the monsters) are capable of, and we’ll see quite a few examples of both in the film.
It feels like today is the real kick-off for the movie’s campaign. First, there’s a one-sheet for the film now, and it’s a pretty cool image that gives you a sense of the scale that the Jaegers are built on:
In addition, there’s an official synopsis now, and it does a pretty good job of setting up the premise in a very short amount of time:
When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity”s resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge.
But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes-a washed up former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi)-who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind”s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.
The cast for the film includes Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Larry Joe Campbell, Brad William Henke, and Diego Klattenhoff, and you’ll catch a glimpse of many of them in the trailer, which basically just turned both of my kids into howling coyotes, running wild through the house, desperate to see the finished film right this instant.
Looks awesome, and at this point, we’re just barely getting a glimpse of what Guillermo’s got in store for audiences. They’re going to be rendering out the amazing world of “Pacific Rim” till the last possible moment, and I can’t wait.
“Pacific Rim” will flatten the competition starting July 12, 2013.