It came as a shock when it was recently revealed that Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim would be converted for 3D, mainly because the director has been so vocal against it. He's more than once stated that the film was not intended to be in 3D, and certainly wasn't shot that way, and when the report came down we were all led to believe that it was Warner Bros. who put their foot down. Well, that wasn't totally accurate, at least not according to Del Toro who explains he agreed to it but only if it was done to his liking.
Talking to Shocktilyoudrop, Del Toro revealed the factors that played into changing his mind, and even manages to take a jab at a certain robotic Presidential candidate in the process....
Del Toro: "What happened was, in the weeks and months following Comic-Con, what
I asked from the studio was to agree to four points that I wanted to
do. The more the ILM shots arrived, the more I
realized that there were only a few shots that would miniaturize. I
asked the studio, number one, that we would not hyper-stereo-lize the
thing. That we would not force 3D on the beauty
shots. That we would keep the giant dimensions. They agreed. Number
two, they agreed to something very unusual. Normally a conversion takes a
few weeks. I asked to start it immediately so we could take the full 40
weeks to do the conversion. As an example, 'Titanic' took about 50
weeks to convert. The final thing that I asked that they agreed to,
which was amazing, was that I asked them to give me an extra budget,
which is considerable, to actually have ILM composite the shots that are
CG native 3D. We're not giving elements. ILM is giving the composite in
3D from the get-go. That's a huge, huge element. Now I'm going to be
involved in supervising it. What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm
not running for office. I can do a Romney."So...bigger budget...extra time....ok, I'm not concerned anymore. Honestly, Del Toro is such a perfectionist that we probably shouldn't have been worried in the first place. He's not going to do anything to jeopardize his creative vision, and now I feel justified in spending a few extra bucks to see how those gigantic monsters measure up in 3D. Pacific Rim stars Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, and is expected to hit theaters on July 12th 2013.
