Pacific Rim Made Guillermo Del Toro Change Everything About His Directing Style

With waves of critical and commercial success to his name, and a handful of Academy Award statues lining his trophy case, Guillermo del Toro ranks amongst the most celebrated filmmakers of this (or any) generation. But just like any filmmaker in the game, del Toro has endured a career bump in the road or two. One of those bumps even led him to undertake one of the biggest films of his career, 2013's sci-fi spectacular "Pacific Rim."

The giant monsters vs. giant machines bonanza was, of course, the film del Toro put together after his epic adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness" unexpectedly fell apart. And according to the director's comments to Variety during a 2013 interview, he went into the production of "Pacific Rim" looking to shake things up dramatically in terms of how he ran a set, claiming, "I made a life decision that this movie needed to be huge in scope but run very, very tight on the production, and the first person to change was me." 

Per del Toro, first and foremost that meant changing how he handled actors, telling Variety, "I had an obsession that was really, really all-consuming with making the actors move in an extremely mannered way that matched the camera moves." He continued, "But on 'Pacific Rim' I needed to allow the actors to breathe a lot more. I wanted to shoot a lot looser and even allow for improvisation, which I had never done."

Per the Variety report, Guillermo del Toro played particularly loose with "Pacific Rim" star Charlie Day, even allowing the funnyman to run through scenes with minimal blocking. But as much as del Toro changed his style on "Pacific Rim," it seems he was still very much the film's number one taskmaster, admitting to Variety, "Everything, 100% goes through me sooner or later," before adding, "I do not delegate anything. Some people like it, some people don't, but it has to be done that way."

That approach no doubt proved necessary given the sheer scope of "Pacific Rim," with del Toro going bigger on the film than he ever had before. And the filmmaker's detail-oriented ways made the "Pacific Rim" production a bit of an endurance test as it reportedly required del Toro to work 17 to 18 hours a day for seven days a week.

The production was apparently tough on its cast too, particularly those whose characters operated the film's giant human-driven mech suits, as the so-called Jaegers were conceived largely using practical effects. Max Martini was one of those performers, and the actor told Variety, "For me that was the most challenging thing, acting in this full-body armor, attached to this machine, and at the same time trying to visualize what's happening on the outside of this robot." 

Struggles aside, del Toro would go on to tell Variety, "Incredibly, this has been the most fun, the most satisfying shoot I've ever had, on any movie." And you can really see that unbridled sense of joy in the final product.