Guillermo del Toro names his favourite Disney movie
Most directors don’t tend to get the opportunity to mount a brand new version of one of their favourite-ever movies, but Guillermo del Toro has made a mockery of that sentiment by deciding to do it twice in quick succession, which makes even more sense when he considers them to be inextricably linked.
When pressed by A.Frame to name the five features that shaped him into the filmmaker he became, he couldn’t separate the animated Disney classic Pinocchio from the seminal monster movie Frankenstein. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different, but del Toro’s explanation makes a remarkable amount of sense.
Expanding on why they’ve been fused in his mind, the Nightmare Alley director clarified that it went well beyond the fact he saw them for the first time within weeks of each other: “I felt Pinocchio and the creature of Frankenstein both felt really close to me. They felt very autobiographical, and they fused in my head at a very early age,” he said. “I love the idea that Pinocchio and Frankenstein are primal experiences of what it is to be human.”
Of course, he was forced to elaborate on the differences between Dr. Frankenstein and Gepetto, noting that “one is a man creating out of grief, and the other is creating out of hubris,” although it remains true that “they are both not worried about the consequences.” With that in mind, it was only natural for del Toro to jump at the chance of making his own Pinocchio.
While the Disney version may have been seared into his brain – and was released in very close proximity to the live-action remake directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks – del Toro opted to hew much closer to the darker and more mischievous source material. Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio was first published over 140 years ago, but it’s nowhere near as well-known as the whimsical Disney fantasy.
Utilising his lifelong admiration for stop-motion, too, del Toro’s Pinocchio ended up as a huge hit for Netflix that would land him the third Academy Award of his career and make him the first person to ever win ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Animated Feature’ at the Oscars. It’s a million miles away from the Disney favourite, but it was nonetheless the fulfilment of a childhood dream simply making it in the first place.
With one down and one to go, del Toro is currently in the midst of prepping a reimagination of his other formative film, re-teaming with Netflix on a new Frankenstein story. Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Christoph Waltz are the first four names announced for the ensemble, and it’s reasonable to expect he’ll treat it with the exact same amount of reverence he did Pinocchio.
