Given that Pacific Rim is simultaneously one of 2013’s most hotly anticipated movies and one of its riskiest, Legendary Pictures no doubt wants to build a growing head of hype that will translate into big ticket sales come July. To this end, the production has been releasing a steady stream of viral content that shows off both the titanic mechanical Jaegers and the scale of their opponents, the rampaging Kaiju.
Recent images show just how much work goes into cleaning up the polluted aftermath of a Kaiju battle. These have been supplemented by a new poster and yet more images emphasizing just how much the presence of 300-foot-tall monsters would affect everyday life.
Pacific Rim has shared a number of new images on its Facebook page, including a new poster featuring the Japanese-made Jaeger, Coyote Tango. This impressively armed mecha is certainly a contrast to the bulkier central Jaeger of the movie, the Gipsy Danger.
Along with the poster, Pacific Rim has released yet more viral images of Kaiju carnage.
You can check out these photos in the gallery below:
The continued use of faux news footage reinforces that Pacific Rim will try to bring a more “ground-level” point of view to a movie that nonetheless focuses on giant robots fighting Lovecraftian monsters. An image of, “Kaiju excrement contaminat[ing] city,” brings up an issue that definitely isn’t addressed often in your run-of-the-mill monster flick.
We’ve already seen a glimpse of the “Trespasser” corpse during Pacific Rim‘s trailer and previously released viral footage. The caption for the image states, “The infamous first Kaiju, Trespasser, slaughtered hundreds of thousands.” As with the other images in this series, this one seems to mostly emphasize the massive scale of the creatures.
The image of a city being repaired around the bones of a fallen Kaiju links nicely with previously released concept art of a beast’s bones refashioned into a kind of memorial. These kinds of creative-yet-plausible details pepper director Guillermo Del Toro’s work, and is part of the reason why genre enthusiasts are so excited for Pacific Rim.
Yet, the images bring to mind an interesting question: If these Kaiju are more-or-less freshly dead, why are we seeing their skeletons? Do the extra-dimensional beasts slough off their flesh when they expire? Is this some kind of mechanism meant to more thoroughly spread their toxic blood and tissues? If so, that brings up the unnerving question as to whether the Kaiju are actually designed to be more thoroughly destructive. Are they actually living weapons – like humanity’s Jaegers, but in the thrall of some other intelligence from beyond the rift under the Pacific Ocean?
Of course, extrapolating anything from these scant few images is silly at this point (though fun). Until Pacific Rim‘s premiere, we’ll remain happy that a noted genre master is directing a film about robots punching towering horrors with rocket-fists.
–––
Pacific Rim will smash into theaters on July 12th, 2013.
