Guillermo del Toro is one of the more inspiring creative minds working today, so it was a breath of fresh air when he told Steve back in July that he was adamantly opposed to making his next directorial feature, the monsters vs. robots epic Pacific Rim, in 3D.  That is, until Warner Bros. decided otherwise.  A couple of weeks ago, the studio announced that Pacific Rim would be post-converted to 3D, seemingly going against del Toro’s wishes.

Now the director has spoken up about the decision, reassuring fans that the post-conversion is being done according to very specific instructions from del Toro himself so as not to affect the integrity of the film.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

When del Toro told Steve in July that he was against making Pacific Rim 3D, he explained that his main issue was that doing the film in stereo would make the giant robots and monsters appear smaller than intended.  Speaking with STYD, del Toro said that he and Warner Bros. came to some agreements regarding the conversion, specifically with regards to the scale issues:

"What happened was, in the weeks and months following Comic-Con, what I asked from the studio was to agree to four points that I wanted to do. The more the ILM shots arrived, the more I realized that there were only a few shots that would miniaturize. I asked the studio, number one, that we would not hyper-stereo-lize the thing. That we would not force 3D on the beauty shots. That we would keep the giant dimensions. They agreed.”

In addressing the parts of the film that will be converted to 3D, del Toro ensured that it would be done with the utmost professionalism:

"Number two, they agreed to something very unusual. Normally a conversion takes a few weeks. I asked to start it immediately so we could take the full 40 weeks to do the conversion. As an example, Titanic took about 50 weeks to convert. The final thing that I asked that they agreed to, which was amazing, was that I asked them to give me an extra budget, which is considerable, to actually have ILM composite the shots that are CG native 3D. We're not giving elements. ILM is giving the composite in 3D from the get-go. That's a huge, huge element. Now I'm going to be involved in supervising it. What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm not running for office. I can do a Romney."

The business decisions behind post-converting Pacific Rim to 3D make perfect sense, and when news broke of the conversion I noted that the film will still be presented in 2D for fans that want to see del Toro’s pic without the added dimension.  Moreover, I was confident that a guy as earnest and passionate as del Toro would not settle for a half-assed 3D conversion.  His comments here only solidify that initial assessment, and I’m happy to see that he’ll be intricately involved in the 3D process.  That said, I’ll still likely be seeing Pacific Rim in 2D when it opens on July 12th, 2013.

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