Guillermo del Toro was swamped in waves of applause when he took to the stage in Hall H to introduce Comic-Con attendees to the first footage from the eagerly awaited monster movie, Pacific Rim.

In what sounds like box-office gold, the crowd-pleasing conceit sees humans piloting staggeringly large robots to see off an alien onslaught.

Scale is key here, and in the brief clips we were shown, both monster and robot looked unbelievably large. If any 2013 film is going to demand to be seen on the big screen, this’ll surely be it.

Each of the six robots requires four humans to operate it (and apparently we’ll see how difficult they are to manoeuvre when manned by a single person). The robots and beasts that we saw were fully CGI, though del Toro claims that there are plenty of practical FX in the movie.

And although the special effects budget is clearly monstrous, del Toro was keen to emphasise the emotional core of the story, leaving us hopeful that this won’t be another empty-headed Transformers clone.

In a refreshing antidote to a lot of modern reveal-everything-before-the-film’s-out marketing, del Toro also claimed that it would be going quiet on the Pacific Rim front for the next six months. So don’t expect a trailer any time soon.

For more on Pacific Rim, head to totalfilm.com/pacific-rim