Guillermo del Toro describes his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio as a “journey of a lifetime.” A decade ago, the Oscar-winning filmmaker made a vow to start concentrating more on animation. Pinocchio joins del Toro’s animated Tales of Arcadia franchise in working toward fulfilling his vow.
“The two essential fables that define my childhood and teenage years were Pinocchio and Frankenstein,” explained Guillermo del Toro during a press conference hosted by Netflix. “It’s this idea that you’re thrown into a world that you barely understand, and you try to make sense of it as you grow. And they’re definitely father-and-son…or they’re stories that deal with that link and that bond.
They were of primal importance for me. And I always felt Pinocchio is one of those handful of characters – there are maybe 10 characters in the history of human storytelling that are capable of being universal and completely adaptable to anything. There’s Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes. These are characters that, even if you haven’t read the story, you know the story, or you think you know the story. And therefore, you can use them as metaphors for science, for human emotions, for many, many things.”
Guillermo del Toro continued: “I’m 58 and when we started this process, it’s about 15 years ago or more. I thought it could be a great tool to talk about how precious and fragile we are as humans, and how much we need each other.”
Every other Pinocchio has been about obedience. Del Toro’s flips the script and is about disobedience.
“Disobedience being a primal factor in becoming human and how becoming human doesn’t mean changing yourself or others, but understanding,” said del Toro. “You know, I think the first step towards a conscience and the soul, for me, is disobedience. It’s the difference between ideas and ideology. An idea is an idea that you construct form experience and compassion and understanding. And an ideology is something that is given to you and you’re told to obey it blindly. And those are things that help us craft the tale.”
Guillermo del Toro describes his Geppetto as the one who learns from Pinocchio, unlike other interpretations of the story.
“Normally in Pinocchio, he learns to obey, and he learns to be a good boy, and then he turns into flesh and blood. What I wanted very much is for everybody to learn from Pinocchio. The Cricket is stodgy and strange, and he has a picture of Schopenhauer on the wall. He makes great pronunciations, and he learns humility, and fragility, and fallibility from Pinocchio.”
“Everybody loves Geppetto because Geppetto does what everybody wants. When his child reincarnates in Pinocchio, he cannot see it. And what I’ve learned as a father and as a son is the greatest treasure for a son or a father is to be seen, to be able to be seen by the other. It’s so eloquent and moving. I want just to tell that little story in which Geppetto learns to love him, through the course of the movie, for who he is.
And Pinocchio’s such a pure element that he changes the alchemy of everybody around him – for good or worse. He irritates the figures of authority, and he wins the heart of his father when he recognizes his essence. So those are things that were important for me.
I think the movie’s a beautiful movie. It’s not a movie catering to what people expect for a movie for kids, with little asides, and ‘Whoa,’ and skateboarding,” said del Toro.
Gathering a Voice Cast to Bring Pinocchio to Life
Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson directed from a screenplay by del Toro and Patrick McHale. During the press conference, del Toro revealed they wrote Geppetto with David Bradley in mind. He also knew Ron Perlman had to be part of the cast, since Perlman is almost a prerequisite in his films.
“Tilda Swinton, from the beginning we wanted. She has this otherworldly quality that we thought would be really a tremendous help. Ewan McGregor, who is the cricket character and narrator of the film, we thought has one of the warmest voices,” explained del Toro. “His personality…he came in first day and we didn’t even talk about the character. He was into the recording session immediately.”
He added: “Cate Blanchett, who plays the monkey and has no lines… We were doing Nightmare Alley and she says, ‘Oh, I want to be part of Pinocchio.’ I said, ‘The only part left is a monkey.’ And she goes, ‘I’ll play the monkey.’
She’s fantastic in it and one of the main characters. Christoph Waltz, we thought had the incredible charming, charismatic, and also intelligent and cruel elements that make Volpe such a great villain and manipulator. I mean, (John) Turturro has a very small part, but significant. And I think, little by little, we assembled, fortunately, the ideal cast.”
The cast also includes Gregory Mann, Finn Wolfhard, Tim Blake Nelson, and Burn Gorman.
The Animation of Pinocchio
From the get-go, Guillermo del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson were determined the acting should feel naturalistic and not pantomime.
“A lot of micro gestures on the actors. We jokingly said, ‘Let’s take these puppets and not do silent film animation, but Actor’s Studio level,’” said del Toro. “They age. They are weakened. They are tired. They have failed acts. They try to close a door and it takes three tries to close a door.”
He continued: “24 frames a second, you have to ask the puppeteer to go for the water and it takes three tries or he moves it around, he moves a cup. You know, different little things that we do in daily life. The way the camera moves, it moves and the staging of the puppets is the way you would stage with actors.”
If they’ve done their job right, the audience should feel as though they’re watching real actors and not puppets. “You just say, ‘Wow, this character is a human,’” said del Toro.
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Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio will have a limited release in theaters in November followed by a release on Netflix on December 9, 2022.
