“There is one movie that should be remade”: the only film Guillermo del Toro was adamant deserved a do-over
Any filmmaker with commercial sensibilities will find themselves lured in by the revolving door of remakes, reboots, reinventions, and franchises eventually, even if Guillermo del Toro hasn’t quite dived headlong into the realms of retelling other people’s stories.
His first three features – Cronos, Mimic, and The Devil’s Backbone – were all original tales that he developed and wrote himself before the lure of recognisable properties became too much to resist. Del Toro’s first major Hollywood movie was a sequel, but at least Blade II retained the authorship of its director and his fondness for grisly creatures.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the only sequel he’s ever made, but it was balanced out by more original concepts, including Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, and The Shape of Water. However, since the latter won him Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, he hasn’t made anything 100% his own.
Nightmare Alley was a remake of its 1947 predecessor. He was hardly the first person to bring Pinocchio to the screen, and he’s since become the umpteenth auteur to try their hand at Mary Shelley’s seminal Frankenstein. That being said, although they’re not derived directly from the inside of his own mind, they were each imprinted with del Toro’s signature aesthetic and thematic sensibilities.
Adaptations are fine, but for del Toro’s money, remakes never tickled his fancy. In fact, there was only one movie in cinema history he believed deserved to be repurposed, even if it comes with a significant element of bias, considering he only went and did it himself.
“There is one movie that should be remade, and that’s Nightmare Alley,” he told Rolling Stone. “Not only should it be remade, but it should be done by somebody who understands there’s both a man and monster at the centre of it.” Needless to say, if there’s one filmmaker who knows about the thin line between men and monsters and made a career out of it, it’s del Toro.
That theme continued through to production when he enlisted Cate Blanchett to act as the Godzilla to Bradley Cooper’s King Kong, with the latter’s Stanton Carlisle beginning the story as a suave and sophisticated con artist before the creatures lurking in the shadows – which were figurative in this instance – begin to tear his life apart from the inside out.
It may have bombed at the box office due to circumstances outside of del Toro’s control, but four Oscar nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and widespread acclaim for the dark and delicious psychological noir justified his belief that not only is Nightmare Alley the only movie that deserved a remake, there was nobody else remotely qualified enough to remake it but him.
