Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was a kid when he first became fascinated with Japanese animated films featuring giant monsters like Godzilla. Monsters and the supernatural have been a recurring theme in his movies throughout his career. In Pacific Rim, del Toro's eighth film, he realizes his biggest childhood fantasy facing off ferocious creatures called Kaiju against massive robots called Jaegers. The film features an international cast lead by Charlie Hunnam (TV’s “Sons of Anarchy”), Idris Elba (“Thor”), Rinko Kikuchi (“Babel”), Charlie Day (“Horrible Bosses”), Rob Kazinsky, Max Martini, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, and Ron Perlman (the “Hellboy” films).

Entertainment Affair had the chance to sit down with the talented director. Check out highlights from the Q&A below.

Del Toro has many favorite kaijin films, having seen them at the right age, but few blew his mind. “My favorite movies are actually two that are not the most famous ones. Sentimentally, my favorites are Frankenstein Conquers the World and War of the Gargantuas because they have a lot of pathos and they made me weep. But I know them all and I live in a house where one entire section of the house is just dedicated to Kaiju,” he said.

The director was largely responsible in shaping the towering Kaiju. A group of artists and illustrators were hired to flesh out his vision. When he was asked about the process of creating the monsters he said, “In my garage I have a design room that accommodates 8-10 artists, and I had all the artists in my garage and I was in another room writing all of my own stuff. Every Kaiju, every robot, every Jaeger was designed in my house.”

The Jaegers are 25 story high robots operated from inside by two pilots. Production took up two of the largest shooting stages in the world to recreate these. One set, called the Conn-pod, was constructed on a large gimbal to make the actors actually feel like they were engaged in battle. Dealing with actors having to use their imagination to react to what’s supposed to be in front of them is a difficult task in itself, we asked del Toro about how he came up with the idea to use a Conn-pod and if it helped the actor get in character: "I wanted them to really, really have an impact on the fight and I felt that the only way to do that was to attach them to a real machine because I like analog. I like things to be analog and I thought it's great if we give people something visual to say ‘oh that's how they do it,’ then you don't have to explain that much, you know?”

The Jaegers and Kaiju were brought to life onscreen by the visual effects wizards at the renowned Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Del Toro worked closely with the effects team at ILM to create the battle sequences between the giant robots and creatures that make up much of the film. “From the beginning the deal we struck with ILM was very special. It necessitated me to be very linear and very controlled in delivering the effects; to be highly involved in each stage of the effects progress in order to stay on budget. Happy to report we stayed under budget not on budget under budget and they became really creative partners for me because directing VFX is a little like directing animation. You need to be involved in everything that looks accidental in the frame you are provoking that it happens. I think it’s one of those rare movies that everybody at ILM was galvanized to do because the dream of every FX animator is to create robots or monsters or both of them”.

Del Toro is very familiar with special effects having worked with them professionally for over a decade. He’s very familiar and comfortable with every tool and knows how to use them to his advantage. “The easiest thing is to just shake the camera and put in a digital effect. I think that you just have to not be lazy, and anything you need comes from a real need. We built one hundred physical sets in this movie, and completely overtook Pinewood Studios in Toronto and spilled over into two more studios. Normally in a movie like this they don't build, they just put in digital effects. I think that doesn't inform your actors. Your actors end up saying ‘what am I looking at? What am I supposed to feel about this place? What does it look like?’ We did two things. Whenever there was a green screen, we would have a tablet with a program with the design that joined it with the trackers on the set. We would show them the set virtually in the tablet. We would say ‘if you look that way that's a Jaeger over there, that's the door,’ they would look off and see the shatter dome, they would turn around. They would never have to look at a tennis ball and not know what they are looking at, you know?”

Particular emphasis was made so everything would look as real as possible while recreating the city for the final battle sequences. “We went to Hong Kong for about 8 days and we photographed everything. We photographed the signs on the streets, we photographed the signs in the shops. I wanted the Hong Kong signs to be perfectly accurate. Sometimes in American movies you see Chinese signing that doesn't make sense and we checked them 3-4 times with Chinese designers that the font was the right font for the stores. That the names like Golden Lockie Meat Shop or whatever, the names were really auspicious names. Out of the research those 8 days in Hong Kong came the fight in the docks. We went to the docks and I said ‘let's do a fight here’ because I love this! Then a ship went by and I said ‘let's use that ship as a baseball bat.’”

When asked which monster he feared most as a child and even now as an adult he jokingly replied, “Fear? I fear politicians. I think the worst monsters in the world have nice suits. I don't fear monsters.”

Mesmerizing visual effects, jaw dropping action, robots fighting, monsters destroying cities, what else can you ask for in a summer blockbuster?

Warner Bros' & Legendary's Pacific Rim arrives in theaters everywhere starting July 12th.