Yesterday a new trailer for the upcoming sci-fi epic Pacific Rim hit the Internet, and although it was generally received with positive interest, concerns have arisen over how it will perform at the box office upon its release on July 12th. This debate was kickstarted by an article in Variety magazine which revealed audiences are more interested in Grown Ups 2 (also opening the same weekend) than Guillermo Del Toro's story of human piloted robots fighting alien sea monsters. That's quite alarming when you take into consideration Pacific Rim had a budget of around $200m and Grown Ups 2 less than half that.
Some have blamed the film's marketing campaign for the disappointing lack of interest, which has targeted promotion of the film to 'hardcore' fans at events such as Comic-Con since 2011. But, with the enormous success of similar films such as the Transformers and Iron Man franchises, it is still way to early to right it off as a flop. The combination of the intrinsic appeal of the story and the enormous scale of the visual effects makes it a likely candidate to be one of the summer's biggest movies.
In a recent interview with Fancy Dress Costumes, the film's costume designer Kate Hawley talked about how she, Guillermo Del Toro and the rest of the team conceptualized various parts of the film, the highlights of which are below:
"Guillermo has an extraordinary visual sensibility. We started with the key moments he had concepted and we built and developed the world from there – layer upon layer.
Pacific Rim felt very much more organic in its design journey. GDT was very specific about colour and the texture of the world. We look at everything as part of a process, but I think we created our own unique language.
I think for the most part, it was about keeping the look fairly classical and timeless… with the exception being [Ron Perlman's black market dealer] Hannibal Chau's world, where we had a bit more fun. For the main part, the tone had to be kept fairly real, so that GDT could play against this with his monsters.
We had so much fun, for something that could have been more pedestrian, there is some quirky stuff in there! Definitely heightened in a delicious, operatic way."
Ultimately, it is Guillermo Del Toro's vision and personal touch that should ensure the success of the film. After all, in recent years the 18-35 crowd can't seem to get enough of mega budget sci-fi action flicks with superstar directors. Kate Hawley explains, "We all contribute – that's why we, as part of his team, are invited to play, but he is the director. He knows the pizza he's making – down to the last detail!"
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