'Pacific Rim' Featurette Explains Jaeger Design

The shroud of secrecy has long since been pulled away from Guillermo del Toro's new film Pacific Rim. We're at a point now where there's a new featurette every couple weeks to explain some facet of the film. The last one we saw was a fantastic breakdown of how sets were created to give a sense of realism to the action.

This one talks about designing the Jaegers — the giant robots that humanity creates to fight massive monsters besieging civilization. We've seen images that break down some of the different designs, but the few minutes of the featurette below tell us a lot more. And the director insists that the design principle was always to create something that feels right for the world, rather than making stuff that exists just to reference other designs from popular and cult stories. 

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.