In Guillermo del Toro’s darker, weirder ‘Pinocchio,’ it’s Geppetto learning the lessons of life from the great Pinocchio.
If you’ve paid attention to the ongoing Pinocchio film debate, you’ll know there are all sorts of arguments and opinions about this particular Disney classic. Was it a total rip-off of the classic children’s story The Wizard of Oz? Should the new movie have been called Pinocchio (A Musical)? What was the point of bringing Pinocchio back to life and teaching him a lesson?
“I think there’s an argument to be made that when you are making a movie of a book about a man who doesn’t have any sort of inner guidance … this movie is really saying that when your guide is gone, you’re really going to have to find a way out,” del Toro said to Entertainment Weekly during a recent interview. “And it’s not only Pinocchio. That’s a metaphor for all of us.”
Though he hasn’t seen the new movie yet, del Toro told the magazine that he’s “excited” with where the story line is going: “We always have a story to go forward, and we always have the characters to go forward with. It’s a good story, it’s a good movie. I just think [director] Tim Burton has done it again, and I hope it’s this time with better characters.”
The key to the ending of The Nightmare Before Christmas that doesn’t seem to be appreciated by the hardcore fans is that Christmas is so over at the beginning of the movie, and then Christmas turns into a nightmare by the end. And I think that works not only because of how iconic the story seems to be, but also because of how the “over” part of the story works.
The problem with the ending of The Nightmare Before Christmas is that Christmas is so overdone. It’s so over the
