Film fans have been waiting a long time for a peak at Pacific Rim, otherwise known as "the monsters vs. robots movie from Guillermo del Toro." Well, the first trailer for Warner Bros.' big summer blockbuster is here and it's larger than life.
Del Toro has talked a lot about getting the scale of the film just right, so that we believe these are truly giant monsters (Kaiju) and giant robots (Jaegers). You definitely get a sense of what he means: there are no shots in this trailer showing a full Jaeger or Kaiju from head to toe until the post-title "wow shot" where we see a Jaeger flying through the air.
In that sense, after just this brief 2 minute an 20 second glimpse, you already start to wish del Toro had directed Transformers. Michael Bay showed plenty of the destruction, but like most other directors who have done "aliens crushing a city" films, those movies are usually fast and sleek; Del Toro (at least in this clip) has gone for something slower and clunkier in the style to capture the weight of these immense creatures from a human perspective rather than a bird's eye view.
We don't get much of anything in terms of a story except an explanation of where the Kaiju came from and that humans underestimated their capacity to fight back by building these Jaegers manned by pilots who are joined by a neural link. Idris Elba is the only character who gets to chew up screen time with his battle speech about "canceling the apocalypse," which would have been awesome if the trailer released a week from this Friday. We get only glimpses of Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Hunnam and Charlie Day.
We have seen a synopsis thought, which reveals a bit more;
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.
So basically Top Gun meets Real Steel meets Godzilla.
What do you think? Has this shot up to the top of your summer "must-see" list?
