Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

In Italy, woodcarver Geppetto loses his son Carlo to an aerial bombardment by Austro-Hungarian forces during World War I. Twenty years later, he uses the pine wood planted in Carlo's grave to create a puppet in drunken despair. The Wood Sprite appears in the middle of the night and brings it to life, christening him Pinocchio due to the puppet being made of pine, and assigns Sebastian J. Cricket, who formerly lived inside the pine wood, to guide him morally, promising him a wish in exchange. Geppetto wakes up and is frightened by Pinocchio exploring and destroying his home. He becomes fed up with Pinocchio's antics due to his newborn lack of self-control, and he decides to send the boy to school. He gifts Pinocchio a schoolbook that used to belong to Carlo. On his way, Pinocchio is intercepted by showman Count Volpe and his monkey Spazzatura, who bring Pinocchio to their circus to perform. Geppetto arrives to take him back, resulting in a confrontation that causes them to fight over him and ends with Pinocchio being fatally hit by the Podestà's truck. In the afterlife, he meets the Wood Sprite's sister, Death, who explains that he is immortal and revives when an hourglass empties, cautioning that each time he dies, he will spend longer in the afterlife before returning to life. After Pinocchio comes back to life, an army officer hears about him and meets up with Geppetto. The officer tells Geppetto that Pinocchio may be a distraction by others and should be sent to military youth camp by law. Geppetto is conflicted over sending Pinocchio to youth camp or sending him to perform in the circus. Seeing Geppetto upset, Pinocchio decides to earn money for him by performing in the circus, and to avoid being conscripted into the Army by the Podestà, who thinks his immortality makes him the ideal soldier. A jealous Spazzatura, the former star, reveals to Pinocchio that Volpe has been lying to him about sending half their profits to Geppetto. Hearing this, Volpe viciously beats Spazzatura as a result, upsetting Pinocchio, who performs a song ridiculing Benito Mussolini while he is in attendance. Mussolini has Pinocchio executed and the circus burned down. Once revived, Pinocchio is taken by the Podestà to military recruit training, where other boys are trained for war. He befriends the Podestà's mistreated son, Candlewick. At a training game, Pinocchio and Candlewick win in a tie; the Podestà orders Candlewick to shoot Pinocchio, but he refuses and finally stands up to his father. The training camp is then bombed by Allied aircraft, killing the Podestà, while the boys flee. Pinocchio is captured by Volpe, who tries to burn him to death as revenge for ruining his career. Spazzatura saves Pinocchio and attacks Volpe, resulting in all three falling off a seaside cliff, which kills Volpe. Lost at sea, Pinocchio and Spazzatura are swallowed by the Terrible Dogfish. Inside its belly, Pinocchio and Spazzatura find Geppetto and Sebastian, who were also swallowed during their search for Pinocchio. Sebastian realizes they can escape the dogfish by climbing out of its blowhole. Pinocchio lies to make his nose grow into a large branch, forming a bridge leading out of the monster's blowhole. As the dogfish attempts to eat them again, Pinocchio sacrifices himself by detonating a naval mine inside the dogfish, killing them both. Upon meeting Death again, Pinocchio demands to be sent back early to save Geppetto from drowning. Aware that it will make him mortal, Pinocchio breaks the hourglass to return and dies saving his father. The Wood Sprite reappears to a mourning Geppetto and Sebastian, who uses his wish to make her revive Pinocchio. Pinocchio, Geppetto, Sebastian, and Spazzatura return home to live together as a family. After outliving all of them, Pinocchio decides to travel the world and find his own place in life. ==Voice cast==

• Gregory Mann as: • Pinocchio, an exuberant and rowdy living wooden puppet. • David Bradley as Geppetto, Pinocchio's father, a heartbroken Italian woodcarver grieving his deceased son Carlo. Her appearance is a humanoid with two main pairs of wings that have eyes on them (as well as three additional smaller pairs of wings that covers her face and breast), a feathered snake-like tail, and a human-like face that resembles a mask; her appearance is reminiscent of the biblical angels called seraphim. • Death (referred to as "The Sphinx" in the soundtrack), the Wood Sprite's sister who oversees the afterlife. Her appearance is similar to that of a Chimera, with a human-like face that resembles a mask, the horns of a cape buffalo with eyes on them, the lower horns of a Jacob sheep, the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle with eyes on them, and a two-headed snake-like tail. • Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura, Count Volpe's mistreated monkey assistant. His name means "trash" or "garbage" in Italian, and he is the film's counterpart of the Cat from the original Pinocchio story. Spazzatura can only speak through the puppets he operates. • Ron Perlman as the Podestà, a strict fascist government official who wants to turn Pinocchio into a soldier after seeing his revival. He is the film's counterpart of the Coachman from the original story. • Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick, the Podestà's son who bullies Pinocchio before befriending him. • Burn Gorman as the Priest, a Roman Catholic priest at Geppetto's village who's also his former client. • John Turturro as the Dottore, a doctor at Geppetto's village who examines Pinocchio after his first death. • Tim Blake Nelson as the Black Rabbits, a flock of black rabbits with skeletal bodies who work for Death. They are based on the Undertaker Rabbits from the original story. • Tom Kenny as: • Benito Mussolini, the leader of Fascist Italy. • Benito Mussolini's right-hand man • A sea captain with a hook for a hand and a peg leg who explains to Geppetto and Sebastian about the Dogfish. ==Production==

Development conceived initial ideas for his own Pinocchio adaptation in 2003 and has been working on the film since 2008 In 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced that his next project, a darker adaptation of the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), was in development. He has called Pinocchio his "passion project", stating: "No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation, and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio", and "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember". When he was a child, del Toro saw and liked Walt Disney's 1940 animated film adaptation in Guadalajara, Mexico, partially because he felt it was like a "horror movie" in its own way due to a few intense moments it included. Since his teen years, he had longed to make his own version of the story. In 2003, del Toro discovered Gris Grimly's illustrations for the 2002 edition of Carlo Collodi's book, portraying Pinocchio as a puppet with a long, pointed nose and spindly limbs, with gestures that del Toro felt captured the energy of an unruly but otherwise goodhearted puppet. He concluded that Grimly's illustrations reflected the setting he had in mind for his own, more somber version of Collodi's tale. When del Toro asked Grimly why Pinocchio looked the way he did, Grimly said it was because Geppetto was drunk when he made him. This thought evolved into an important part of Geppetto's backstory. On February 17, 2011, it was announced that Grimly and Mark Gustafson would co-direct a stop-motion animated Pinocchio film written by del Toro and his long-time collaborator Matthew Robbins, and that it would be visually based on Grimly's designs. Del Toro would produce the film along with The Jim Henson Company and Pathé. Grimly devised Pinocchio's look for the film, depicting him as unfinished wood. He collaborated with Gustafson, a stop-motion veteran who had experience in similar stop-motion features like Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), to assist him in achieving his ambitious vision for the project. On July 30, 2012, it was announced that the film would be produced and animated by ShadowMachine. It was originally scheduled to be released in 2013 or 2014, but went into development hell, with no further information forthcoming about it for years. On January 23, 2017, Patrick McHale was announced to co-write the script with del Toro. On August 31, 2017, del Toro told IndieWire at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film would need a budget increase of $35 million or it would be cancelled. On November 8, 2017, he reported that the project was not happening because no studios were willing to finance it. At one point, Matthew Robbins considered making a 2D-animated version of the film with French artist Joann Sfar to bring the costs down, but del Toro decided that it had to be stop-motion, even if the higher budget made it harder to get it greenlit. On October 22, 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix acquiring it, and Pathé no longer involved. Almost all the years of development were spent by del Toro and Gustafson defining the designs for the principal characters, basing them on either Grimly's designs or letting del Toro's frequent collaborator Guy Davis, who joined the project as co-production designer with art director Curt Enderle, to design them. They then gave the animation models to England's Mackinnon & Saunders stop-motion puppet firm, which is considered by del Toro to be the "best in the world", and they fabricated the designs of Pinocchio, Geppetto, Sebastian J. Cricket, Count Volpe, and Spazzatura the Monkey. The antagonist Count Volpe is a combination of Mangiafuoco and the Fox from the original story. Mangiafuoco was originally supposed to appear in the movie as an antagonist, but he was removed halfway through production as del Toro disliked the character and thought he was a cliché; as a character model had already been made for Mangiafuoco, to not waste the model, Mangiafuoco's original design was used as a background character for Volpe's circus as a strongman. The Cat, who was shown in a concept art, was replaced by Spazzatura, while the Land of Toys was replaced with an Italian kids training camp. At first, the fairy with blue hair was a dead girl from the same cemetery where Carlo was buried. This was changed into two angel-like beings, which ended up as the two sisters of life and death, and Carlo was no longer buried in a cemetery; their design as supernatural winged beings with multiple eyes harkens back to the biblical seraphim as well as to the Angel of Death from Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Early on during the film's development, del Toro first approached John Hurt, with whom he had worked on Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, to voice Geppetto, but Hurt eventually died in 2017 long before any recordings for the film could begin. On January 31, 2020, it was announced Ron Perlman, Tilda Swinton, Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz and David Bradley had joined the cast of the film. Bradley was chiefly cast due to his previous collaborations with del Toro on the television series The Strain and Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia. He considered his role as Geppetto to be a "real emotion rollercoaster" of a part, feeling it to resemble more King Lear than the Pinocchio story he had heard as a child. For Pinocchio, del Toro sought a child actor who sounded like an ordinary boy instead of a cute one, which led him to cast Mann for his phenomenal vocal range that made him sound like a natural child, yet one absolutely emotional. Blanchett approached del Toro about joining the film as they worked together on Nightmare Alley (2021); he told her that all roles had already been cast minus that of Spazzatura the Monkey, which Blanchett gladly accepted as long as she could work with del Toro again. She also suggested that the monkey was her spirit animal as del Toro prepared to commence production of Pinocchio to ensure her casting. Blanchett recorded her voice-over shot-by-shot instead of making different emotion sounds to be edited later on like it is usually done in other productions. Filming Filming commenced at the Portland, Oregon offices of ShadowMachine by January 31, 2020. The afterlife sequences and the end credits scene were animated by studio El Taller de Chucho in Guadalajara, Mexico. Visual effects The film's production quality was formed through the ornate detail of the sets and characters with their own textures in order to reinterpret Collodi's work in a way that differed from the Walt Disney animated version. Del Toro told Vanity Fair: "I have been very vocal about my admiration and my great, great love for Disney all my life, but that is an impulse that actually makes me move away from that version. I think it is a pinnacle of Walt Disney animation. It's done in the most beautiful, hand-drawn 2D animation". Music On January 8, 2020, Alexandre Desplat started composing the film's score and original songs. It is Desplat's and del Toro's second collaboration, after The Shape of Water. ==Release==

In November 2018, Netflix set the film's release date for 2021. In January 2021, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that the release could be moved to 2022 or later, with Netflix's notion of releasing six animated films a year. In December 2021, del Toro stated it will be released in the last quarter of 2022. In January and July 2022, with the release of the film's first teaser, it was announced for a December release. Over its first seven days of digital release, the film logged over 10.91 million hours viewed worldwide. Pinocchio premiered at the 66th BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2022. It debuted in the United States at the 2022 AFI Fest on November 5, 2022. It was released in select theaters on November 9, 2022, and began streaming on Netflix on December 9, 2022. One of the theatres scheduled to show the film on November 11, 2022, was the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Ontario. In Mexico, the director's country, the Cinemex movie theater chain – one of the largest exhibitors – suspended the screenings that were scheduled, causing protests by del Toro, who wanted most of the people in his country to see the film. In response, on November 25, the filmmaker made a call on his Twitter account to show the film in independent theaters throughout the country. Some thirty independent theaters and clubs joined the call to show the film, including the country's Cineteca Nacional, where an exhibition of the figures used in the film was also set up in its central courtyard. On December 18, it was announced that, on December 30, a massive screening would be held in Mexico City's main square, the Zócalo. The event was attended by 1,400 people. From December 4, 2022, through January 4, 2023, the film played at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in the Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center. This coincided with a multi-floor exhibition at the MoMa called "Guillermo Del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio", which ran through April 15, 2023 and showcased various aspects of the film's inspiration and production. The Criterion Collection released the film on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on December 12, 2023. ==Reception==

Critical response The Hindu's Gautam Sunder wrote, "Having more in common with del Toro's own ''Pan's Labyrinth'' than any Pinocchio adaptation before this, the modern-day Mexican auteur reimagines the children's tale into something much more sinister, serious and politically inclined." The BBC's Caryn James said, "You've probably never seen a Pinocchio who dances for Mussolini, but Guillermo del Toro's dark, stirring, yet life-affirming take on the classic tale of the puppet who becomes a real boy has more in common with ''Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water... than with the familiar Disney version." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian'' gave the film 3/5 stars, saying it "certainly has its moments of poignancy and sadness and McGregor's droll tones as the longsuffering cricket provide some grace notes of fun." Brian Lowry of CNN was more critical, writing, "beyond answering the streaming giant's wish for another marquee attraction carved from a beloved property, any praise comes with a few strings attached, depriving it of the consistent sense of wonder that would qualify as a dream come true." The New York Times Manohla Dargis wrote, "As weird as the story is, it's been made all the stranger by the decision to turn it into a metaphor about fascism, a conceit that is as politically incoherent as it is unfortunately timed." In December 2024, Collider ranked the film at number 5 on its list of the "10 Best Fantasy Movies of the 2020s," with Robert Lee III calling it "a story all its own while still adhering to the same magic and strengths of the original novel, creating what can easily be considered one of the best adaptations of the fairy tale. The stop-motion animation is a breathtaking sight to behold, with exceptional character design and charm exuding from each setting and facial expression." Accolades Pinocchio was the first animated film from a streaming service to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The animation studio Netflix Animation previously competed with three previous nominations for the same category. It was the seventh non-Disney/Pixar film to win and the first non-Disney/Pixar film since Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the second stop-motion animated film after Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and The Adventures of Pinocchios second adaptation to win any category from the Academy Awards after Disney's animated Pinocchio. ==Notes==