Vs. Massive Mechas Versus Monstrous Monsters - Comic-Con 2012

Me? Hose down this thing? After the shit we just survived? Why you laughing? *shoves other dude off bigass robot* That's right, not laughing anymore, bitch.

So here we go! My first vs. versus post. What better way to start a profound post like this with a subject involving robots and sea monsters. Wait, to be more precise, Japanese-like robots versus Japanese-like sea monsters! You can't go wrong when these two are in the picture! 

 Everyone loves behemoth like creatures; Roland Emmerich's American Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra, Balrog, and the creature from The Host just to name a few. Gigantic robots you ask? Michael Bay's Transformers, Voltron, Voltes V, Daimos, Gundam, Robotech/Macross, Evangelion, Escaflowne, Gobots, Metal Gear, Zone of the Enders; kids and adults (both man-child and woman-child?--these ones are keepers) alike go insane in the membrane for this stuff.

With the many projects he's been tinkering with, director Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy series, Pans Labyrinth) decided to give the finger to Universal Pictures with their refusal to green-light his adaptation for the Lovecraft novel, At the Mountains of Madness, due to budge constraints (and thanks to Prometheus probably shelved for good), and consequently push forth with Pacific Rim. Del Toro has commented that the film pays homage to the anime Mecha and giant monster genre he grew up on. You want some epic, slam-bang, balls to the wall giant robot-monster action, Del Toro is your man.

Where there's  giant robots, there's always a Japanese girl in mecha gear to be found.

     

Queue official synopsis: When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity's resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes—a washed up former pilot and an untested trainee who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind's last hope against the mounting apocalypse.

The plot sounds pretty run of the mill, but at the hands of a visionary director like Del Toro, I bet my balls you can expect an epic-worthy execution. My take from the description is they even have an Evangelion vibe going on with the pilots maintaining a neural like attachment to the robots they are maneuvering. The comparisons can go on and on, but I'd rather not get ahead of myself as Guillermo has stated in interviews that he made it a point not to reference other movies deliberately just for the sake of praising the robot-monster genre, but set out to create something new. Whatever the approach, this film is in good hands folks. 

The robot-on-monster spectacle opens July 12, 2013.