'Pacific Rim' Featurette: Guillermo Del Toro Says "I Invented A Torture Machine"

After seeing the film this summer, Pacific Rim viewers might clamor for a theme park attraction replicating some of the film's action. Based on what director Guillermo del Toro has to say while describing the production process in a new featurette, it seems like all a park would need to do is import the giant set that depicted the Jaeger head and control module.

The main set was four stories high, rigged to shake and vibrate, equipped to assault the actors with water and physical resistance, and able to drop fifteen feet very rapidly, in order to simulate one action in the film. "Every film needs to have a portion of analog practical effects to really convey the sense of physical reality," the director says, and this video shows that the production didn't skimp when the time came to build sets for Pacific Rim. He describes the set as "a torture machine." That translates to "holy crap, this looks like a hell of a ride."

Pacific Rim stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Larry Joe Campbell, Brad William Henke and Diego Klattenhoff. It opens July 12.

When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity's resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. 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.