Pacific Rim Viral Video Wants To Sell You Monster Guts

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

People will find a way to make money off of any situation, no matter how tragic or destructive it may be. Wartime profiteering is practically a national pastime, a trait that seems to have carried over to the world Guillermo del Toro created for his upcoming sci-fi adventure Pacific Rim. Sure, giant monsters have emerged from the depths of the ocean, and the human race is pretty much done for, but that’s not going to stop enterprising entrepreneur Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) from making a few bucks before the end. He’s got something to sell you, and it’s slimy and gross.

Throughout time, and across the globe, exotic animal parts have been used to heal just about every ailment you can think of, from baldness and anxiety to cancer and erectile dysfunction. Whether or not they work depends on whom you talk to, but that’s never stopped people from trying. In the future, when the Kaiju arrived on the scene, some of those cartoon dollar signs must have appeared in Chau’s eyes. He took to harvesting every spare scrap he could lay his hands on, claiming to have the cure for whatever troubles you.

This video, latest piece of viral marketing from Pacific Rim, is brilliant on its own, illustrating just how completely del Toro’s world is rendered in the film. But the coolest part is the extreme to which Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are taking this gag. The studios have sent out sample cases full of various Kaiju bits and pieces to a bunch of film sites. Thanks to places like IO9 and our big sister Cinema Blend, we have an extensive gallery of detailed photos of the contents of these cases. They look expensive.

I don’t know what any of these individual chunks are, but the detail and appearance is fantastic. They look like real internal organs. You probably assume that Chau carries a similar case in the movie, which he uses to hawk his gooey wares to the sick and dying. I’m curious to see how legal his trade is. From the look of the video, his commercial could be some sort of pirate broadcast, breaking in to your regularly scheduled programming.

This is just the latest piece in Pacific Rim’s extensive marketing push. Over the past year we’ve seen absurd amounts of posters, trailers, toys, comics, and more. If you can slap a logo on it, or shape it like a giant monster or robot, Pacific Rim has done it, probably more than once.

After what seems like forever, Pacific Rim finally punches into theaters on July 12. That’s next week for those of us who have been marking the days off on our calendars.