Encouraging
DEL TORO: Well, I didn’t want to marry the monsters with the landmarks, which is what normally people do. Like if the monster goes to Paris it destroys the Eiffel Tower [laughs]. I didn’t want to do that, the scene in Tokyo is seen from the point of view of someone on the street. So you don’t get a super complete view of the monster in that sense. I didn’t want to do the big aerial shots. I wanted it to be experienced with the character on the street. So we actually go to any street in any neighborhood in Tokyo, rather than going for the landmarks. The only place where we marry the landmark and the background was Sydney, because the Opera House happens to be in the harbor [laughs], and the monsters come from the sea so…and in San Francisco we do violence to the Golden Gate. But I didn’t want to continue the check marks, you know, “Now, let’s go to Hong Kong and destroy the Bank of China.”
You didn’t want to make a Roland Emmerich film.
DEL TORO: I didn’t want to make it like post cards, post cards from monster-land.