Guillermo Del Toro names the “best creature” he’s ever created
When it comes to visionary, practical effects, there are few filmmakers that can rival Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican director known for his love of imaginative gothic creatures. Truly, only the likes of Peter Jackson’s dedication to practical effects during the making of his Lord of the Rings trilogy and the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger on the seminal 1979 movie Alien can compare to just how influential the work of Del Toro has become.
Establishing his style given his first opportunity in 1992 with his feature debut Cronos, Del Toro made sure that contemporary critics remembered his name, telling a graphic tale of a fantastical device that promises its owner eternal life. Featuring fantastically disgusting special effects layered in imaginative ingenuity, the film led Del Toro to further success with Mimic in 1997, The Devil’s Backbone in 2001 and the comic-book flick Hellboy in 2004.
Yet, it was in 2006 that the director would truly find success, releasing Pan’s Labyrinth, which achieved critical acclaim, winning three Academy Awards, including ‘Best Cinematography’. The gothic tale tells the story of a young girl who escapes the glare of her sadistic army officer grandfather into a world of dark fantasy in the Falangist Spain of 1944, announcing Del Toro’s iconic style to a global audience.
One of the film’s most memorable aspects was its practically-made creatures, a passion that Del Toro had also explored in many of his previous movies, including Hellboy, Mimic and Marvel’s 2002 film Blade II. Whilst such movies included terrifying vampires and a humanoid amphibious man, Pan’s Labyrinth seemed like a step-up, featuring the elegant Faun and the disturbing Pale Man.
Speaking about how he goes about creating his creatures, Del Toro once stated: “The first thing you have to resolve is the silhouette. Once the silhouette captures the gait and personality of the character, then you define colour. Then you define the details. The mistake a lot of people do is they start with the details. A lot of people say, ‘I want a creature with five wings and huge tentacles and teeth,’ and they start accumulating. And I think a great creature is never done by accumulation but by doing each element very, very carefully”.
Whilst the filmmaker adores each one of his creatures as if they were his own children, he did admit to naming one as his very “best” in the same interview.
“If you watch the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth—which I think is perhaps the best creature I’ve done—you see his environment,” he exclaimed, “The Pale Man is colour-coded in flesh tones and deep, deep red. And everything around him is colour-coded in red. Every piece of food on the table is red. The checkered flooring is red, the walls are red. The shapes are round and sort of rhyme with him; we sculpted the table and chair so they would feel of a piece with him. When you enter, you’re not entering a set with a creature, you’re entering a world”.
The director continued his fondness for creepy creatures as his career went on, with his 2017 ‘Best Picture’ winner The Shape of Water featuring another amphibious creature, the second of his career. Spectacularly crafted, the film effortlessly contained the fantastical being, winning the Oscar for ‘Best Achievement in Production Design’ for the film crew’s efforts.
