Christopher Webster [Celluloid 03.12.11] movie news scifi horror action



Guillermo del Toro has been all over the news lately. If you've been under a rock, the basic gist is that his At the Mountains of Madness project with jim Cameron fell through due to lack of support from Universal and he's signed on to direct a flick called Pacific Rim instead - which I understand has been fast trakced.

Until tonight, details about the Pacific Rim project have been scant. Now, some details about the film's plot have emerged and it sounds fricking epic.


Thanks to movieweb we now know that basically, the Hellboy filmmaker will create two worlds. The breakdown is extremely dense, so I'm not going to bother re-writing it. Here's what they say:

"The first is an alternate version of Earth in the near future, decades after a historic date in November 2012 when the first Kaiju, a towering Godzilla-like beast, emerged from a hole in the Pacific Ocean and attacked the city of Osaka, Japan. The second is "The Anteverse," another universe on the other side of that gaping portal, 5 miles below our ocean's surface.

Since the first attack, the rim has been "spitting out" a variety of gigantic monsters at an increasing rate, which then stride out of the ocean and begin destroying sea-bordering cities, like Tokyo and Los Angeles. In order to combat these monstrous, otherworldly menaces, the military developed the "Jaeger" program, which trains teams of two pilots to jointly operate massive, building-sized mechanized suits of armor and high-tech weaponry.

Within the first act alone, we are given enough detailed background on the god-like Jaeger systems, its shared neural piloting system (called "pons"), and the relentless beasts. But Beacham is an absolute master at immediately establishing characters and their conflicts.

The central character is Raleigh Antrobus, 23, a skilled Jaeger pilot still wrestling emotionally with the loss of his co-pilot and biological brother, Yance, during a mission a year earlier. The ordeal has wreaked havoc on his mind spirit, leaving him with ghostly nightmares of the battle from the shared "pons" experience. After the initial setup, the damaged hero is recruited to re-join the task force in Tokyo, where pilots are in demand, and team with a fellow "leftover," 22-year-old female Japanese pilot Mako Mori. Naturally, the language barrier (among other things) presents an issue for the out-of-sync duo, meaning an even steeper learning curve for the unprecedented pairing.

Meanwhile, Felicity "Flick" Kincaid, a journalist and Yance's former fiancée, circles the globe (ours) to discover answers about this mysterious rift and the origins of its intensifying threat.""

The project is said to be budgeted at $150 million and Guillermo del Toro is eyeing an R rating (I'll beleive that when I see it).

Guillermo del Toro will direct from a script by Travis Beacham. Production will start sometime this summer, for a 2013 release date.

Pacific Rim comes to theaters in 2013.

Insane, no?

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Rook (12 years ago) Reply

I agree with QE, this sounds frikin awesome! Looks like giant mechs are going to be the big new thing for Hollywood.

soma (12 years ago) Reply

They'll be remaking Robot Jox next. nice

Chris (12 years ago) Reply

Hmm sounds suspiciously like a live action version of the anime neon genesis evangelion in which weta had been developing some years ago...interesting

Marc McKenzie (12 years ago) Reply

Sounds a bit like EVANGELION mixed in with GODZILLA and Dan Brererton's GIANT KILLER...and you know what, I'm interested!

I'm saddened that ATMOM isn't going to happen yet, but this will hopefully fill that void....

Anonymous (12 years ago) Reply

Wonder how this'll screen in Fukushima? Any word on whether it's still green-lit?

ReplicA (12 years ago) Reply

This makes me very sad, and pretty excited at the same time. Mountains would have been the movie I've been waiting 20 years for. And yes, I can safely say that as Guillermo hasn't disappointed me a single time.

But this Pacific Rim movie sounds pretty cool too. I'd really like to see some decent mechs in live action films. Not those transformer abortions, but something that looks like something. And ANYTHING with Guillermo's monsters in it is gonna be great too.

I HATE anime, and it's cookie cutter emo characters, shitty dialogue, overwrought plot lines, and plain old childishness, so I REALLY hope this isn't as close to an anime as it sounds like it could be. But even if it is, I'm gonna watch it.

Jonas (12 years ago) Reply

It's been way too long since I got my GDT-fix. The poor man is getting screwed right and left now. As I just recently read ATMOM for the first time I was so damn dissapointed that it just died of suddenly.

Pacific Rim sounds amazing so let's hope it actually gets made now.

MrSatyre (12 years ago) Reply

I find the hive mentality of Hollywood producers fascinating. They killed 'ItMoM" for this? Don't get me wrong, this sounds like a gigaton of fun, but what the thought process? "Horror movie based on classic, proven master of the mind-fuck...No, that will never work. Let's do alternate universes with giant monster and mecha! That'll sell!"

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