CraveOnline: There’s a lot of hope that this movie will spawn a franchise. God knows it has the potential. I think we’d all want to see your character in a Jaeger.
Charlie Day: I think so. I think that’s the next step.
What do you want for your Jaeger? Do you have anything specific?
First of all I want a big, comfortable couch in there. Just nice, big, round buttons to push, and maybe like a cup holder. Because those poor actors in those Jaegers, it was really sort of an athletic endeavor filming the movie, for them.
Did you get to be on set for those parts? It looked really uncomfortable.
It looked terrifying. I walked by and saw it, and then I don’t endorse torture so I left right away.
How much of the set was practical? Because it looked like it could have been a combination…
Well, on the human scale of things – because there’s this monstrous and robotic scale, which is obviously gigantic – but then there’s so much of the movie which is us…
I’m thinking of the Shatterdome, specifically. How much of that?
I’d say 80% of things were practical.
That must have been fun.
It was amazing! And certainly my sets, at least 80%. If I was in that Kaiju bunker, I was in an actual sort of bunker with a ton of extras and the ceiling would shake and dust would come down, and it was dripping and wet everywhere. There are all sorts of exquisite practical sets that he built. And then of course there’s this entire movie beyond that which is animated on top of all that stuff that was filmed practically.
Did Guillermo show you animatics ahead of time? How clear was your vision of what the movie would turn out to be?
Well, he showed me a lot of drawings, and I would always try to sneak into the art department and just see what they were working on. But it was really tough for me to stomach how large it was going to be and really digest the scale of this movie. So even the things that he showed me didn’t quite translate in my mind to what the movie wound up eventually becoming.
Guillermo was talking at the event at ILM yesterday, and he said they were trying to realize the monsters but there’s nothing alive that’s that size so they had nothing to work with. All they had to work with was other movies. Did have movies he wanted you to watch to work your enthusiasm up or get a sense of it?
He didn’t. You know, that was his job moreso than mine, to really capture the scale of things. For me, he wanted me to listen to punk rock music. [Laughs] He wanted me to listen to Kraftwerk and Daft Punk, because he liked to imagine that this guy desperately wanted to be a rock star but was a nerd at heart. And then… I’m blanking on the names of the scientists, but he had me read the works of a lot of conspiracy theorists. People who believed in aliens. But he didn’t give me good movies to watch, and I think he’s a good guy to probably ask what movies I should see.
It’s interesting to talk about your character as a rock star. Because he’s got the big glasses and he’s very passionate and everything, but he also has the arm sleeve tattoos.
Yeah.
Did you talk about them specifically? Because they’re of Kaiju, aren’t they?
Yeah, they are Kaiju. I think that has to do with who this guy is as a person, [which] is that he’s sort of this… He’s this ornery, kind of arrogant guy when you meet him at the beginning of the movie, and I think he spent his life rebelling against that stereotypical lab coat, bowtie-wearing scientist mentality. I would imagine that his parents were scientists like that, and he didn’t want to be like that. He said we get these Jaegers and we fight these monsters, and then the guys driving the Jaegers get all the credit and the scientists who built the Jaegers don’t get any credit. So I think he desperately wants to be as much of a cool guy and a rock star as our heroes of the movies, but of course he’s nerdy. He’s much more brains than brawn, so it’s this funny character where he’s covered in tattoos, and you can cover me in as many tattoos as you want… I’m never going to look like Ron Perlman. So it’s this sort of struggling character.
You’re rebelling against that bowtie-wearing scientist and yet you’re stuck with one for the entire film.
And then I’m stuck with one, which is the bane of his existence.
And you get to learn a valuable lesson, I think, about working together.
There is a good lesson about working together, that both sides are valuable, but it’s not until the character goes out on the streets and becomes a little bit more heroic and a little less all talk, and goes through a harrowing experience… It’s not until he gets a sort of beat down that he’s able to work together.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
