Pacific Rim is about skyscraper-sized robots and monsters fighting to the death in the Pacific Ocean. But there are people in the movie too — after all, the monsters, or Kaiju, are looking to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. In a new featurette released today, director Guillermo del Toro and actors Idris Ebala, Charlie Hunnam, and Charlie Day explain how civilization is pushed to the point of building massive mechs to take on the Kaiju threatening the planet.

Pacific Rim is set to open on July 12th, and it'll be coming to IMAX as well as standard theaters. Check out the featurette below.