There’s A ‘Pacific Rim’ Convention Happening In Atlanta Tomorrow

If you saw last year's Pacific Rim, then you probably recall that all the giant monster-fighting robots were housed Shatterdomes, sprawling bases that were all set, as the title implies, around the Pacific Ocean. But when you consider the time frame of the movie and the amount of time it spends on explaining the research that humanity had to do to figure out exactly what was going on with all these kaiju, it's easy to imagine that they probably would've built a few East Coast Shatterdomes as well, just in case. Of course, given that all those monsters were, in fact, coming from the Pacific, the folks on those East Coast Shatterdomes would've had an awful lot of free time. And now they're using it to throw a convention.

Or at least, that's my theory on how Shatterdome Atlanta, a one-day convention for Pacific Rim fans being held tomorrow down in Georgia, came to be. I admit, however, that it might just be a bunch of people who really, really like a movie getting together to have fun with it.

As odd as it might seem for a convention to spring up less than a year after the debut of one (1) movie, the fan reaction to Pacific Rim has been pretty strong and more than a little dedicated, and it's easy to see why. Despite being advertised with an ominous tagline like "to fight monsters, we created monsters," it was actually a fantastically fun movie that was about as optimistic as it could be while also having dudes haunted by dead relatives and the wholesale destruction of giant cities. Plus, it had some really great background characters.

The end result was a fan base that was dedicated enough to support twelve hours of hanging out at the Marriott talking about how great the Sword Button was, anyway. In an Indiegogo campaign that ran in March, the organizers raised just under $4,000 to get the show off the ground. As for what's going on there, there's an Artist's Alley, panels about the science and sound design, and, of course, costumes.

There will also be LARPing.

For more information, check out ShatterdomeATL.org!