‘Pacific Rim 2’ Star Charlie Hunnam Thinks Guillermo del Toro Should Use Less Robots, More Humans

While his honesty is quite admirable, perhaps Charlie Hunnam shouldn’t be biting the hand that feeds him — but that’s what he did in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. While discussing his upcoming role in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur movie (where he apparently plays a Knight who sells Levi’s jeans in catalogs), the conversation turned to effects, which then turned to Pacific Rim, which then led to Hunnam sticking his foot in his mouth and then trying unsuccessfully to remove it.

Speaking of working on a film that doesn’t rely too heavily on effects, Hunnam talks about the difficulties of working on a CGI-heavy project, noting that “When it becomes very technical, those technical aspects create a rigidity to the process.” Hunnam goes on to complain about Pacific Rim leaning too much on effects:

I think world creation and monster creation and all of that stuff is exciting as a secondary element of storytelling. When it becomes more important than storytelling, I get very nervous, and you sort of lose me a little bit. Although we tried very hard on Pacific Rim to marry those two elements, I do feel like ultimately it got weighed heavier on the side of spectacle than storytelling.

The actor then explained that while he likes the first movie, he hopes the second movie is more character-focused:

I hope that we are able to remedy that a little bit going into the second. Not to say I wasn’t proud of the film. I really liked it, and I felt like it delivered exactly what it was supposed to. But I do feel like we could have maybe plumbed the depths of the character and the storytelling a little bit more.

And that basically reads like one of those non-apologies that starts out with “I’m sorry, but…” It’s reasonable for an actor in an effects-heavy film to feel a bit sidelined by what Hunnam calls “spectacle,” but Pacific Rim was a film about giant robots fighting giant Kaiju, not a real character piece — though del Toro did manage to find some heart with Rinko Kikuchi’s character in the process.

Del Toro previously revealed that not all the characters from the first film would return for Pacific Rim 2, so perhaps with a reduced cast, Hunnam will get his wish.