When Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim hits theaters in a week or so there’s one thing the director and the man who headed up his flick’s visual effects—Industrial Light & Magic’s John Knoll—can’t wait for audiences to see: the battle in Hong Kong.

The spoiler-free version of what happens is this: It’s a nearly 20-minute kaiju-versus-mecha brawl that, of course, takes place in Hong Kong. According to the men who spent months on the face-off between the kaiju and robots (known as Jaegers in the movie), it’s epic.

“Battle for Hong Kong some has got just crazy, over-the-top stuff in it,” Knoll tells Wired in this exclusive video (above) about the making of the film. “[My] favorite moment is when [Jaeger] Gipsy [Danger] picks up a boat out of the harbor and uses it as a club to just wail on one of the creatures.”

While Knoll was in charge of making sure all the VFX worked physically, del Toro made sure the battle adhered to his beloved red and blue color palette – often going “full Italian” and using hues like those favored by directors like Dario Argento. The director also took cues from Hong Kong itself.

“When you go to Hong Kong the thing that is so impressive and beautiful is the sort of neon-color night,” del Toro says. “There is literally a time when the night is falling in Hong Kong that there is a light show that all the buildings do and the night becomes almost like a living comic book.”

Pacific Rim hits theaters July 12.