By far, the best part of my Saturday at WonderCon was standing on the stage and watching the faces of the crowd as they got their first look at the special presentation reel that Warner Bros. brought for “Pacific Rim.”
By now, you’ve probably read accounts of it. I wasn’t able to take my sons to WonderCon, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to let them see “Pacific Rim” without them also seeing the footage from “The Conjuring,” which would pretty much freak both of them out permanently. Warner Bros. helped me make sure the kids saw the footage, though, and by the time they saw a robot dragging an oil tanker down the street then using it like a baseball bat, they were pretty much out of their minds with excitement. What made Saturday great was seeing grown adults responding with that exact same unfiltered glee.
After we walked off-stage, Guillermo and I stepped into one of the few quiet spots in the entire auditorium and we talked for a few more minutes about the movie and about where he is right now in the process.
This is a huge moment for Guillermo. More than almost any other filmmaker I know, he has struggled to keep his voice pure while working for Hollywood. His imagination is so fertile, so much fun, and he definitely thinks in terms of THE BIG IMAGE, but he’s grappled with economic constraints and creative friction any number of times. On “Pacific Rim,” it feels like he is finally being allowed to use as big a canvass as he wants, and it looks like ILM has taken the challenge he threw down for them and run with it.
I suspect that once this film opens, Guillermo’s going to take things to a whole new level, and we may see him cash in on that success with some of his more personal projects. Thankfully, we know that “Crimson Peak” is next and that he’s also hard at work developing “Justice League Dark” and a “Beauty and the Beast” update and that he has a shelf full of great scripts that he could still make, like “Mephisto’s Bridge” or “Montecristo.” It’s all been building to what happens in theaters on July 12 of this year, and I can’t wait to see the end result.