Apart from the epic set pieces, which saw huge robots fighting huge monsters from the deep, one of the best things about Pacific Rim were Charlie Day and Ron Perlman’s exchanges. Day - an eccentric scientist whose brilliance is only hampered by his own shortcomings – and Perlman – an imperious black-market oligarch with the gold-tipped shoes and outlandish outfit to match – enjoy possibly the best-scripted scenes in the film, so much so that they’re featured heavily in the trailer.

Ron PerlmanPerlman at the Pacific Rim premiere

"I got the impression that that character was supposed to be played by someone of a different ethnicity," says Perlman on the role to The Guardian, "and when Guillermo took over, he thought how about if we went with a completely oversized Jew from New York who dressed like PT Barnum, a purveyor of all things materialistic? It took a character that's completely full of shit to start with, then added a whole other layer of full of shit-ness, a double dose."

Check out the trailer for Pacific Rim

Perlman enjoys a close working relationship with Guillermo Del Toro, who directed Pacific Rim as a lover letter to his anime influences and Asian Kaiju films. He appeared as Hellboy when the Mexican director took on the comic book franchise, and starred as Angel de la Guardia in del Toro’s Cronos, shot two decades ago.

Pacific Rim opens tonight in both the U.S and the U.K, so we’ll get an idea of how it fairs financially on Monday, but given the positive reviews and pedigree from the director to the actors –Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam – you can expect a healthy return from this robot v monsters epic.

Guillermo del ToroGuillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is out tonight