While people have waited years for a new adaptation of Pinocchio, 2022 managed to deliver two very different iterations of the little wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy. Earlier this year, Disney added the live-action remake of its second animated feature to Disney+. While the Tom Hanks-starring movie was a pretty decent remake, without trying too hard to stray from its source material, this December brings a second take on the story from the spirit of Guillermo del Toro. However, unlike Disney’s upbeat, singsong flick, del Toro’s Netflix movie isn’t necessarily aimed at the kind of happy family viewing that’s the norm.
Guillermo del Toro has become synonymous with dark, fairytale films such as Pan’s Labyrinth and The shape of water. With Pinocchio, the director has created an all-new take on the wooden boy in stop-motion animation that he says is something adults can enjoy. He said SFX Magazine:
“It wasn’t made for kids. Kids can watch it. But it’s not made for kids. It’s made for us.
Del Toro noted that his film only saw the light of day after finding a 2002 version of the classic 1883 novel. The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The version in question was illustrated by Gris Grimly, and without it, del Toro says the film wouldn’t have been made. He continued:
“I think that was the moment the movie could be made. The moment we found Gris Grimley’s Pinocchio. [It’s] not exactly the one we ended up with, but the basics of it [are there]. I think otherwise we wouldn’t have tried at all. Without it there would be no point in striving, but it embodies an undisciplined and elemental nature, a beauty, a roughness, a kind of tactile, woody feel…it really is the key to everything.
Guillermo del Toro wanted to show more Geppetto than others Pinocchio Movies.
In most adaptations of Pinocchio, Geppetto is above all an invisible character. Once the story sees Pinocchio come to life, everything centers around the misadventures of the wooden boy. Still, del Toro didn’t want to lose the woodcarver after his initial creation of Pinocchio. After explaining that the puppet looks a bit off in Grimly’s artwork, as he said Geppetto was drunk while doing it, the director said:
“It sounds like a fun, flippant response, but it gave us a portal to make Geppetto irascible, somehow intolerant, a bit of a perfectionist, or grumpy at times. When we were talking about one of the toughest moments in the movie – where Geppetto says, “You’re such a burden” – some of the crew was saying, “That’s too much.” And I said, “No, no, no, no, no. Keep it as is. We need the worst time in the relationship. Patrick and I thought we shouldn’t make a parfait, Saint Geppetto and a very boring Pinocchio.
Pinocchio was released in select theaters on November 9, 2022 and is set to stream on December 9 from Netflix.
