Exclusive Interview: Pacific Rim Writer Beacham On Tales From Year Zero

Today is the release date for Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, an anthology of short comic book stories that take place before the film Pacific Rim, coming to theaters in a few weeks from Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures and Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro. Beacham wrote the screenplay before turning his attention to the comic book, which fills in gaps in the film’s timeline with information that he and del Toro put together but never used onscreen.The book is segmented into five sections, with different artists working on each; the story begins with the first kaiju attack and moves through the founding of the Jaeger program and the training program for Jaeger pilots. It features a cover by Alex Ross and art from Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet and Pericles Junior, among others.Beacham joined ComicBook.com for a talk about the movie, the graphic novel and what’s next for Pacific Rim.ComicBook.com: There’s a truism that you could do all kinds of things visually with comics that you can’t do onscreen. Do you think that’s true anymore?Travis Beacham: Oh, yeah. I’ve had that question a few times: “What can you do for the comic that you couldn’t do in the movie?” And I think the answer is, not a lot. The movie has some of the most eye-popping effects that I’ve ever seen. So really in writing the graphic novel I wasn’t thinking so much in terms of how to think of something even more insane than the movie. It was really thinking about, what are the details that we don’t get in the movie? And sort of thinking more in terms of the story than in terms of what would make really great sequences. I think part of what makes a great sequence a great sequence is the context in which it happens.