If you like giant robots punching each other, and that describes me as well as anything, then it looks like you’re going to love Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. It appears to have all the giant robot action of Transformers, with the added benefit of the story not centering around the most obnoxious family on Earth. USA Today just posted eight new stills, and AICN broke the news that the film had a special screening last night in Burbank. Hollywood is nothing if not a town built on ass kissing, and people who would skip the Super Bowl for an advanced screening are probably the type who might geek out over a movie more than others, but word seems to be positive. Though that word is mostly being collated by the studio itself, of course. At the very least, Looper director Rian Johnson liked it.

Go into Pacific Rim prepared to be transmogrified into a 12 year old. And then to pee your pants with joy. I love it so much.

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) February 2, 2013

Ooh, ‘transmogrified,’ well la di da, Professor Wordlington. Anyway, my big takeaway here is that there are some robot jox who fight Godzilla, and one of the robots looks like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Here’s to hoping that at some point he falls to the ground complaining of a flesh wound with a stump limb the size of the Chrysler building. My God, did I just type all of that? I get nerdier just being near this movie, like nerd osmosis.

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I’ve mostly been bored with Guillermo Del Toro’s post-Pan’s Labyrinth output, and the guy makes like 12 movies a year so it can be hard to keep up (he has EIGHTEEN in development credits on IMDB)… BUT, having seen this latest trailer for Pacific Rim… well, I’m listening. I’d sort of tuned out all the viral marketing crap for it (because viral marketing always feels like two ad guys jerking each other off), but things might have been different if they’d simply told me it was about ROBOT JOX FIGHTING GODZILLA. (Man, who knew Robot Jox would go on to become so influential, huh?) It’s hard to impress people with scale anymore, now that we’ve all seen the Eiffel Tower get destroyed in six trillion Roland Emmerich trailers, but I must say, I was impressed by the scale of this one. Or maybe it was the robots fighting sea monsters that did it. You know what? I might be overthinking this. Opens July 12.

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This is the first picture of Hugh Jackman on the set of Real Steel, from Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy and producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis.  The plot, as previously reported:

A Rocky-esque tale of a fighter who has to reinvent himself when human boxing becomes obsolete, replaced by 2000 pound human-like robots. Jackman plays the ex-fighter, who becomes a Robot Boxing promoter, but whose chances of success are hampered by his access to sub-standard robot parts. That is until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win. The ex-fighter has also discovered he’s the father of a 13-year old son, and they bond as the robot brawls its way toward the top.

That robot’s name?  Seabiscuit.  Anyway, USA Today, who published the publicity still, report that the scenes between robots and humans will be filmed using life-sized animatronics (not CGI), and that the fight scenes will be performance capture.  They also report (no joke) that they’ve hired Sugar Ray Leonard as an adviser.  (“So tell us, Sugar, in your expert opinion, how many ‘bots could a robot box if a robot could box bots?”)

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When Peter Berg signed on for Battleship, it meant Dreamworks had to find someone else to direct Real Steel.  They chose Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy for the project, which can basically be described as When Rocky Met Robot Jox.

The “Steel” story line takes place in a near future where human boxing has been outlawed, and heavy, humanoid robots slug it out in the ring instead. Into this world step a father and his estranged teenage son, who train an extraordinary fighter.

I can hear the pitch now: “See, it’s like Iron Man meets Terminator meets Fight Club, with a dash of f’ck it, let’s say Transformers.”  And keep in mind this isn’t a Japanese direct-to-DVD flick, it’s being produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis.  Now, please hold for a truly awful PR quote…

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Michael Bay recently wrapped production on Transformers 2 and quickly took to the internetz to publicize it. He has a message for all the haters: his robots inspire empathy, and if you watch them in IMAX, you’ll get to see them fight more.  From his

What you will notice that is strikingly different than Transformers 1, is the level of animation detail. The robot characters (42 in all), you really can feel empathy for them. What is also very different is the sheer scale of the movie. We have been very tight holding back much of the best imagery in commercials and trailers.

The way to see this movie is on IMAX. Never before has there been 4k rendered character animation shot on full IMAX 70 mm film. This is a first and the results are stunning. You will see Optimus Prime in a few shots where he is actually perfectly to scale on the IMAX 50 foot tall screens.

For IMAX, I created a slightly longer cut with more robot fighting. Four scenes were shot on IMAX cameras so the screen will fill the full IMAX screen for these scenes.

Haters beware.

Michael

God I love Michael Bay.  “Yo, I know you been tryin na hate on me, but choo won’t be hatin’ when y’all too busy feelin’ empathy for my robot.  Look at him.  You can see da robot sadness in his robot eyes.  So what’s up now?”