Pacific Rim: Guillermo del Toro’s monster gamble

For a self-confessed workaholic, Guillermo del Toro doesn’t direct many movies. Five years have passed since his last film, ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’, and he’s had two projects collapse dangerously close to production.

The first was his version of ‘The Hobbit’, which he walked away from because of MGM’s financial troubles. Then came ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft novella starring Tom cruise that was scrapped partly because of it’s similarity to ‘Prometheus’.

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We spoke to del Toro in the bowels of a vast Toronto warehouse housing the ‘Pacific’ set. During our chat, the set was on the verge of flooding thanks to the rain-swept Hong Kong scene that’d been filmed that morning. Despite the chaos around him, del Toro was relaxed as he described how he was suddenly thrust into the director’s chair.

“’Pacific Rim’ was shaping up so beautifully and as a producer I was really envious of who was developing the visual style. Who was the lucky guy who was going to come in and play with all this? Then one Friday afternoon ‘Mountains’ collapsed, and Monday afternoon I was green-lit on ‘Pacific Rim’.”

Despite coming onto the project late in the day, as a director at least, Pacific Rim is a still a passion project for this most passionate of directors.

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An homage to the classic mecha (giant robots) and kaiju (giant monster) genres, this totally original story revolves around the hideous kaiju, who emerge through an interstellar “breach” under the sea and wreck human cities. The humans fight back by building giant robot monsters of their own called Jaegers. But by the time of ‘Pacific Rim’, the monsters are winning and there is just a few Jaegers left. Plus, the monster attacks are becoming more frequent. Del Toro is obviously an expert in both genres, and they brought out the child in him.

“When I was a kid I used to, you know, grab my monsters, and grab my robots! And the dreams you have as a kid that no movie provides fully is how would it be in real life? Not just from the aerial point of view but to see things like that moving.”

After Tom Cruise reportedly dropped out, del Toro filled his cast with mostly unknowns. ‘Sons of Anarchy’ hunk Charlie Hunnam plays the lead, an ex-Jaeger pilot seeking redemption after the death of his brother. Babel actress Rinko Kikuchi plays his new co-pilot/love interest, while our very own Idris Elba, of ‘Luther’ and ‘The Wire’ fame, is the ball-busting commander – the superbly named Stacker Pentecost.

Producer Mary Parent told us that del Toro cast actors “for the stars they would become” and she hopes the films lack of big names won’t hurt the film.

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In any case, it’s del Toro who’s the star here. In the hands of most directors, ‘Pacific Rim’ would just be ‘Godzilla vs. Transformers’. Del Toro has tried to add his own touches though that elevate the film above B-movie fare.

For example, he’s thought really seriously about the reality of constant kaiju attacks. “I wanted to shape the world into the reality that would be [like] World War II. We talk about food rationing, what happens with port commerce. What happens with politics, real estate value, beachfront property. What would happen with kaiju excrement? All the mundane realities of dealing with the fact that if you have a gigantic earthquake every few weeks. The entire politics would change.”

Another subtext from his previous work – especially his Spanish civil war horrors ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ – is his distrust of authority in any form.

“I just hate everything that is organised institutions, I hate them. Everything that is organised, I have a phobia too. The Police, banks, the organized religions, I get very anti about it. I think that really when anything is systematic, and is ruled and pacified, it suffocates human life.”

Because of this he avoided a jingoistic tone in the material. There’s none of the flag-waving fetishising military hardware that you see in Michael Bay movies, for example. “I didn’t want to have the Anglo Saxon leaders. I have Australians, I have a Peruvian Chinese guy. Japanese girls. An African-American guy. I wanted to say we’re not being saved by a particular country.”

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The huge challenge for ‘Pacific Rim’, sadly, is not the incredibly mixed reviews that have ranged from mediocre to ecstatic. It’s that it’s not a sequel or based on a comic.

The failures of ‘The Lone Ranger’ and ‘White House Down’ have shown that audiences just aren’t going to see blockbusters that aren’t franchise flicks. These costly failures mean that soon studios won’t stump up the kinds of cash ($100million+) to make movies like ‘Pacific Rim’ any more.

Del Toro is defiant. “I think every movie is a big risk. I’m in favour of less reboots and more robots, that’s for sure. But I think that it’s a movie that at the same time is honouring other movies. Two of the greatest genres in film: the mecha and the kaiju. I think it has a good balance.”

‘Pacific Rim’ is out now.