Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro's sci-fi blockbuster, Pacific Rim, cost $180 million to produce. That's because the movie features 25 to 30-stories tall manned robots - known as Jaegers - going toe to toe with Godzilla-esque creatures from another world (Kaiju), in a battle for the survival of humanity on planet Earth.

That sci-fi premise alone has managed to generate serious buzz online (for obvious reasons); however, the film's marketing got an unexpected boost yesterday, thank to Warner Bros. and del Toro deciding to release the WonderCon trailer for the general public to see (generating a very enthusiastic response, among our readers anyway).

Prior to that trailer premiere, del Toro spoke with the LA Times about the pop culture influences that helped to shape the aesthetic he favored on Pacific Rim. To quote the director:

“What I wanted to do was to make gothic tech. What we went for is a very, very romantic look. I wanted to have a lot of crazy rain, wind, all the drama of an Emily Bronte movie in a high-tech movie.”

Some of the other Pacific Rim stylistic inspirations that del Toro has mentioned in the past include historical footage and imagery from World War II, in addition to tropes from the western genre that can blend together organically with certain elements from the Japanese sci-fi tradition (i.e. those which involve giant manned-machines and Kaiju).

The WonderCon trailer nicely illustrates what del Toro means when he compares the robot-monster brawls to western-style bar fights:

“The monsters are more powerful than I’ve ever designed,” he said. “We use cars and buildings as you would use walls in a bar fight or glasses and tables in a bar fight.”

Pacific Rim Trailer (2013)

Such complexity, in terms of the visual effects demands and the work necessary to post-convert the grand visuals to 3D, extends to other aspects of Pacific Rim. That also goes for the story and the film's universe mythology, which was created by screenwriter Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans) and refined by del Toro - who got some creative input from writer friends - as well as the sheer scale and scope of the proceedings.

“Normally in a movie of this size, you’ll get one spaceship, one or two aliens,” Del Toro said. “The challenge with this movie was to create all those robots, all the technical stuff we needed for them, all these kaijus, the depths of the ocean. The complexity of the movie was huge.”

If Pacific Rim attracts a sufficiently larger audience at the box office, then del Toro and Beacham will get to further explore the world they have created during a sequel (which they have already begun to develop, just in case). Some of that complimentary narrative material has been alluded to in the film's viral marketing to date, including the new recruitment posters for the Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC): the organization that battles Kaijus in the film.

Check out those Pacific Rim one-sheets in the gallery below:

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Pacific Rim opens in U.S. theaters on July 12th, 2013.

Source: LA Times