The movie of the moment is the recent project by Mexican Guillermo del Toro who has collaborated with Netflix to launch Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. It premiered on December 9, 2022, on the American streaming platform Netflix. Guillermo del Toro’s brilliant mind has been creating this concept for years, working on creating a Pinocchio in his style. In addition, the film’s animation has stopped speaking to the audience. This is a different Pinocchio compared to the original Disney movie and all the adaptations that the character has had.
In Italy during the Great War, the carpenter Geppetto loses his son, Carlo, during an accidental aerial bombardment. Geppetto honors his memory by planting a pine cone near his grave and spends twenty years mourning his loss. Geppetto later meets Sebastian J. Cricket, a cricket that takes up residence in the pine tree. Geppetto cuts this pine down in order to use the wood and make a new son with the material, this is how Pinocchio is born.
The voice cast is formed by Gregory Mann as Pinocchio a living wooden puppet, he also lends a voice to Carlo, Gepetto’s deceased son who was killed during the Great War, Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket, who is a traveling cricket and the narrator of the story who lives inside Pinocchio as his guide and conscience, David Bradley as Master Geppetto, Pinocchio’s father, also a heartbroken Italian grieving for his son Carlo, Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe who is an ambitious former aristocrat-turned-puppet master and ringmaster living in poverty, Tilda Swinton as The Wood Sprite, a wise magical fairy who gives Pinocchio life, Swinton is also Death, the Wood Sprite’s sister who oversees the afterlife, Ron Perlman as the Podestà, Candlewick’s father and a fascist government official who turns Pinocchio into a soldier, Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick, the Podestà’s son who bullies Pinocchio.
Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura, as Count Volpe’s mistreated monkey assistant, Burn Gorman as the Priest, John Turturro as the Dottore, Tim Blake Nelson as the Black Rabbits, and Tom Kenny as Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Fascist Italy, and also he lends a voice to Benito Mussolini’s right-hand man and a sea captain.
In 2018, del Toro announced he wanted his next project to be a darker adaptation of the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio and called it his “passion project” since the Mexican director always liked Pinocchio since he watched the 1940 Disney animated film adaptation as a kid. Filming started in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Portland, Oregon around January 31, 2020. In addition to the plot, what also caught the audience were the visual effects of the film. It is a film that has also been critically acclaimed and if you like Guillermo del Toro, then it is a must-watch film.
Andrea Rich
