Kaiju have crept out of the depths of the ocean to wreck havoc on our planet, with the damage stretching from Philomath, Oregon to Tokyo, Japan. To fight this scourge, the nations of the world have gathered to create giant metal monsters of their own, known as Jaegers. We have two new shots from director Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, which offer an up-close and personal look at these monsters and their 'Monster Big Fights'.

Pacific Rim Photo 1
Pacific Rim Photo 2

Speaking with Empire, director Guillermo del Toro teased his lifelong obsession with monsters and the occult.

"There was something weird about me from the beginning. I don't know exactly when I started loving monsters so much, but it was definitely early. When I was 4 or 5 years old, I would ask my mother, 'Can I sleep in the coffin tonight?' and I would lie down in a drawer or I would sleep in a toy box. There's even a recording of me, aged three or four, asking for a mandrake root, for Christmas, to use in magic rituals."

He then went onto talk about the inspiration behind the two fight scenes as hinted at in the above photos.

"In creating Pacific Rim, I wanted the fights to have structure, like the wrestling matches of my childhood, so each fight brings a very different kind of aesthetic and a different dynamic. The first fight is very operatic, theatrical: Wagnerian. It happens in the middle of an iceberg-strewn sea, in the middle of a storm, with huge waves crashing on the Jaeger and Kaiju. We worked really hard at making water a character in this movie, frequently referring to Hokusai or the Fuji wave, and trying to make the water enhanced and add to the drama. This fight tries to quote the majesty of a painting by Goya called the Colossus."