Brief Guillermo del Toro interview on Pacific Rim!

USAToday has just released a new interview with Guillermo del Toro dealing with his upcoming giant Monster film.

"I grew up with a steady kaiju diet," the director recalls.

There's more than just that anomaly in the future world of Pacific Rim, del Toro says. "It's really creating a world that's been shaped by two anomalies: the giant monsters and the giant robots we create to fight them."

Del Toro put a spin on the humans and their robots, called Jaegers, that reflects Westerns as a key inspiration.

Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and other Jaeger pilots are deemed "riders," and when they move in the suits to put their machines in motion, "we made it a point to put the sound of spurs like a cowboy," del Toro says.

The Jaeger station is "basically the Alamo," del Toro says, and there are rangers and marshals within it — most notably Marshal Stacker Pentecost, a spiritual, moral leader played by Idris Elba. "He's not playing second banana. He's at the center of the conflict. He's the only guy who cannot give up."

The director likens the faceoffs between Jaegers and Kaiju to a pair of gunfighters in a duel — although the monsters come packing more than just a six-shooter. One of them shoots corrosive lava out of his mouth.

While it's sometimes hard to choose "because they are like my children," del Toro's favorite Kaiju outlaw is a massive, muscular, brawling battering ram of a creature he lovingly refers to as Leatherback.

"I find him very, very endearing. He has a big belly so I identify with him," del Toro says with a laugh. "He's no doubt my main man."

Del Toro is making sure the camera sees the true impact of the Kaiju attacks, even among fearful pedestrians. "We’re trying very, very hard to make the fight scenes in the movie very visceral, very much like you are there," he says. "It’s a very brutal series of battles we wage."

The Jaegers are controlled by two people connected through a neural bridge, and the fact that they have to work together to defeat a monster is a metaphor for the movie as a whole. "Once you’re in the robot you have to become one," del Toro says. "You have to put aside everything you hate or love about the other person and just work together or we will not survive. That was the idea, that leaning and relying on each other is what makes us stronger."

Raleigh, Mako and their fellow Kaiju-battling humans aren’t a fully funded army -- they're more a ragtag resistance. "No one believes in them anymore," del Toro says. "'Pacific Rim' is a movie designed to put movie fans in the middle of this grand battle and have characters that hopefully everybody can get a very good emotional grip on and enjoy the ride."