Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - A puppet comes to life during Mussolini's reign

Co-directed by Mark Gustafson.

This article from 2012 explains the story.

Sigh. I remember when I used to get excited at the prospect of a new del Toro movie. But then Pacific Rim, Shape of Water, and Nightmare Alley happened. :(

-Tom

We’ll always have Blade 2.

Dear Lord. Shape of Water. Brrr.
Actually, excepting for Pan’s Labyrinth, I can’t think of a single really interesting movie he worked on?
Or maybe that was Tom’s point. He always gets me!

The Devil’s Backbone is even better than Pan’s for me. It’s a merciless coming of age fable.

This Pinocchio teaser does nothing for me. The premise sounds awesome but the art direction looks incongruously bright and cheerful.

Crimson Peak is a guilty pleasure of mine.

I was so hoping for another Crimson Peak when he made Nightmare Alley. :( In fact, Crimson Peak is what bums me out most that he didn’t get to do a Mountains of Madness movie. If he could be that faithful to the trappings of Victorian ghost stories while still lavishing them with fancy visuals, imagine how faithful he could have been to Lovecraft’s early 20th century cosmic horror. Because I’m pretty sure that if most directors get their hands on a Mountains of Madness production, it’s going to be more Indiana Jones than H.P. Lovecraft.

-Tom

Wait, we’re supposed to hate The Shape of Water now?

I liked Shape of Water. It was quite affecting.

I see that Robert Zemeckis is releasing a live action Pinocchio for Disney this year with Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiminy Cricket. I would imagine that’s going to be fairly faithful adaptation compared to Del Toro, but who knows. Henry Selick also has a huge Netflix-backed stop motion movie arriving in 2022, his first since Disney wrote-off his last feature a year or so into production because it was going to be difficult to sell to kids, so it’s neat to see streaming services helping to keep this form alive.

I quite liked the Shape of Water too! It wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth, but I really enjoyed the acting. Sally Hawkins was so emotive that the story swept me away. If you judged the story purely on the plot (and not acting, music, etc) then I could see why you’d be disappointed.

I liked The Shape of Water, and while Pacific Rim wasn’t good it was great dumb fun.

I suppose if you have trouble coming up with your own opinion, you could borrow mine. That’s not normally how it works, though.

-Tom

I couldn’t enjoy Pacific Rim, sadly. There were many factors, but one pretty unique to that movie is the cockpits. In 99.99% of movies (every movie except that one, basically), even though I know intellectually that it’s just an actor sitting in a chair somewhere, or in front of a green screen being filmed head on, I don’t think about that when I’m watching the movie. But something about the Pacific Rim cockpits, that’s all I could think about when they switched to their cockpits. It just felt like one scene is between a robot and a monster, and then they switch to a shot of a guy in a weird suit somewhere. That disconnect has never happened to me in any other movie.

I never saw the film, but I completely understand what were you’re coming from. Unintentional artifice can really undermine characterization and my investment in a film’s world.

It was a knee jerk reaction to the pulse of the Qt3 Hivemind which was rapidly beating towards loathing it in the opening hours/early salvos of this thread. It wasn’t only your post. There was at least two. So the tone was established: Del Toro…not this guy again…

I guess I was taken by surprised because I really liked it a lot and though it was generally well received (heheh). A 1950’s period piece where a mute janitor(?) working in a top secret underground compound falls for a deep one. What’s not to love? It’s like a weird inverted Shadow of Innsmouth set during the Cold War only it’s a love story and the Feds are the bad guys. Instead of swooping in to save the day, blasting away at Devil’s Reef/Y’hánthlei with artillery and submarines, the girl and deep one escape together and give them the laugh. (and live happily ever after. It’s cute, like a Shaggoth)

Now you’re trolling me and it’s not going to work. It’s not, I tell you. It just won’t. Nuh-uh, so siree! I refuse to correct your egregious misspelling of shoggoth. In fact, I refuse to even acknowledge it. That’s how much you haven’t trolled me! Good day, sir!

-Tom

P.S. I’m pretty sure most people liked Shape of Water. It was a perfectly inoffensive and sweet adult fable with fine performances by Sally Hawkins and especially Richard Jenkins. It was saccharine and slight and not at all the dark violent fable I would have expected from the director of Cronos and Mimic and Pan Labyrinth.

I am not that clever(or devious) nowadays. A simple typo will have to suffice I am afraid.

Anyway I already know lots of people like THE Shape of Water. It won best picture.

But why are you guys omitting the The…?

Is this like when people who went to OSU insist on calling it THE Ohio State University?

Not really. I just mind naming conventions at lot. It is a professional habit.