Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pinocchio’ trailer shows off the ‘story of the wooden boy’
Netflix on Wednesday released the latest trailer for director Guillermo Del Toro’s stop-motion “Pinocchio.”
And it looks and feels exactly like what you might expect the twisted and fantastical mind of the “Pan’s Labyrinth” creator would conjure up.
The trailer begins with narration from Ewan McGregor’s Sebastian J. Cricket, who was introduced in the film’s first teaser trailer back in January.
“From my many wanderings on this earth, I had so much to say about imperfect fathers and imperfect sons. And about loss and love,” Cricket narrates as images of Geppetto’s tragic backstory and Pinocchio’s creation flash on screen. “I’ve learned that there are old spirits who rarely involve themselves in the human world, but on occasion they do.”
As the trailer continues, Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) is shown performing in a show, facing off against a swordsman, encountering a magical fairy (Tilda Swinton) and sharing tender moments with Geppetto (David Bradley).
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Other members of the voice cast include Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe, Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick, Ron Perlman as Podesta, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson.
The film will mark Del Toro’s first animated feature film, but it won’t be his first foray into the medium. In 2016 he created the Emmy-winning animated series “Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia” for Netflix, which ran for three seasons and led to a spinoff series “3Below: Tales of Arcadia.”
The “Pinocchio” trailer promises a different take on Carlo Collodi’s well-known 1883 tale.
“I want to tell you a story, it’s a story you may think you know, but you don’t. A story of the wooden boy,” McGregor’s Cricket proclaims.
In true Del Toro fashion, the Oscar-winning director drew inspiration for his Pinocchio from another tale of man playing god.
“I’ve always been very intrigued by the links between Pinocchio and Frankenstein,” Del Toro told Vanity Fair in June. “They are both about a child that is thrown into the world. They are both created by a father who then expects them to figure out what’s good, what’s bad, the ethics, the morals, love, life, and essentials, on their own. I think that was, for me, childhood. You had to figure it out with your very limited experience.”
Singer Lana Del Rey and director J.J. Abrams paid tribute to Guillermo del Toro’s work at the filmmaker’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony Tuesday.
Unlike the 1940 Disney classic, Del Toro’s movie takes place in Italy during the interwar period as fascism began to take hold of the country.
The Mexican filmmaker wanted to throw the wooden boy into “an environment in which citizens behave with obedient, almost puppet-like faithfulness,” he said in the June interview. “He is recruited into the village military camp, because the fascist official in town thinks if this puppet cannot die, it would make the perfect soldier.”
Del Toro’s “Pinocchio” is not to be confused with the upcoming Disney live-action remake of the animated film. Robert Zemeckis is directing stars Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the movie scheduled for a Sept. 8 release on Disney+.
Netflix’s take on the wooden boy is slated for a limited theatrical release in November and a December release on the streaming service.
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