In Guillermo de Toro’s latest film in the near future monstrous creatures come from another world through a portal in the pacific ocean and threaten to expunge humanity from the world, but in Pacific Rim humanity comes together to fight back to protect themselves and their home.
Mexican director Guillermo de Toro’s, 48, reveals his inspiration for his latest movie and how he as a Latino director broke into Hollywood as a Latino filmmaker.
“The film has a great sense of humor but tries to also be a film with beautiful, emotional moments between parents and their children, brothers. There are times when, I hope and believe, the death of a human being will hurt,” said del Toro about his intention for the film.
The film’s monsters, named Kaiju, are dealt with when humans creates powerful robots known as Jaegers, that require three humans to pilot them. While it makes up the plot of the film, del Toro is presenting his personal views on the role of humanity and how we should all treat each other.
“Although the plot revolves around robots and monsters, I wanted the movie to be about humanity, about how we have to learn to trust one another because in the end the only thing that will save the world is the world, nothing and no one is going to come and save us. The idea is that we are all inside the same robots.”
Another inspiration for Pacific Rim came from a painting by “Francisco de Goya called The Colossus. It’s a colossus moving past a town. It’s part of the Black Paintings, and the scale… the almost disregard for human scale. I knew, “That’s the fights. Those were going be the fights.”
With such films as Crónicas, Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro has always managed to take fantasy or non-fantasy films and bring out true human emotion, something that may not have happened and we would have not been exposed to.
“When I first came to the United States, in ’93, there was a lot of prejudice and barriers,” said del Toro, reflecting on his past and his rise. “Right now there’s Fede Alvarez, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo,”
“a lot of Latino directors working in Hollywood and making movies as diverse as 21 Grams, Babel, Children of Men, and Harry Potter. When I arrived there was none of that, there weren’t any Latino directors as active as there are now, that made stories that weren’t about protest, dramas, or Latino melodramas.“
While del Toro has had his hand on films that didn’t involve science fiction or fantasy genres he is overly known for the two being his specialty.
“ I come from Mexico, and I have had a couple of weird things happen to me. When you see something or experience something extraordinary…I think that that’s the way I see the supernatural—as happening in mundane circumstances or to people who are unprepared.
Pacific Rim premiered Friday, July 12 and stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Clifton Collins Jr and Ron Perlman so check out and enjoy del Toro’s latest film.
