Ewan McGregor is a cricket with a story to share in first teaser for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
The teaser gives a first look at the stop-motion musical adaptation
Aux News Guillermo del Toro
The first look at Guillermo del Toro’s stop-motion musical adaptation of Pinocchio starts as all good stories do: With a dapper, accented narrator telling a story to a viewer by candlelight. In this case we have a cricket named Sebastian J. Cricket voiced by Ewan McGregor.
According to Mr. Cricket, he’s got a tale we all think we know, but don’t. The elderly, mustachioed, and wise cricket knows all about this adventure because as it is revealed at the end, he himself “lived, actually lived, in the heart of the wooden boy.” The teaser offers a glimpse at the whimsical and quite beautiful stop-motion animation fitted for the film.
Mark Gustafson, who served as the animation director for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, joins del Toro as co-director, working from the screenplay written by del Toro and Patrick McHale. Based on the original classic story by Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio of course tells the tale of a wooden puppet boy who becomes a “real boy” in order to mend the heart of a grieving carver named Geppetto.
The star-studded cast features McGregor as Cricket, David Bradley as Geppetto, and newcomer Gregory Mann as Pinocchio. The rest of the cast includes Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, with Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton.
“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,” del Toro said in a statement in 2018. “In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I’ve wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.”
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is set to arrive on Netflix in December 2022.
42 Comments
he himself “lived, actually lived, in the heart of the wooden boy.” With all due respect to Ewan McGregor, any insect that boasts about living inside people can fuck right off.https://www.insider.com/new-zealand-man-cockroach-ear-removed-three-days-2022-1
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/man-with-earache-goes-to-hospital-and-discovers-26-cockroaches-living-in-his-ear-10476498.html
https://www.newsweek.com/beetle-lived-boy-ear-1-year-doctors-wax-plug-1594948
Huh. So there will be TWO Pinocchio movies this year, as Disney is also making one with Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring as Geppetto. If I have to see one, I’ll watch Delo Toro’s weird take on it rather than another one of those soulless Disney “live-action” (but not really, with all the CGI) remakes.
Hopefully, this will make him more money than “Nightmare Alley” did.
Mommy, why is the cricket dropping trou and showing us his ass?
I just realized that ‘Jiminy Cricket’ is a Disney trademark.
Apparently so did a lot of us.
Yeah… but the character of Jiminy really is more of a Disney creation. In the original story the cricket is just referred to as “the talking cricket”, who Pinocchio kills immediately with a hammer for trying to give him advice.The joke is on Pinocchio however, as the ghost of the dead cricket still shows up from time to time to give him advice anyway.
Holy crap, now it makes sense why they used Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Never read the original story so I had no idea was a ghost cricket.
A lot of cursing-averse Midwesterners are about to get the Hell sued out of them by Disney.
As long as you don’t spell it the same way…
I just realized “Jiminy Cricket” is the Disney version of the cricket. That makes so much more sense now.
You ever look at that character design? Looks nothing like a cricket. You barely see he has two small antennae most of the time.
Didn’t he wear a hat?
He sure does, which really just makes him look like a little man.
“It is not a cricket, it is a blob. It is a little man-creature with no ears, and he wears little English outfits, and the only reminiscence of a cricket’s wings are the tails of his coat!” He added, “The audience accepts him as a cricket because the other characters say he is.”That quote is from Ward Kimball, the animator who designed Jiminy Cricket.
Hey, awesome! So it was…intentional in some way. I guess because back then, adding more cricket features was difficult or not as kid-friendly. I dunno.
I like the cricket being a cricket, though.
Well, Ward’s initial designs for Jiminy were based on the grasshopper character from Disney’s “The Grasshopper and the Ants”, so he started out looking more cricket-like, but Walt kept asking Ward to make him cuter to avoid potentially upsetting viewers who couldn’t stand insects, and eventually the “blob” resulted.In case you couldn’t tell from the tone of the previous quote, Ward wasn’t fond of the final design, either.
I’m not an animator but if I saw my design being made more and more generic, I’d be unhappy too.
I also feel really silly for not clocking “Jiminy” as a distinctly not Italian name
Can Del Toro actually do a single movie without Ron Perlman?
Nothing against the guy, love his work. But does Del Toro actually know how to work without him being on set or something?
Perlman’s not in Pan’s Labyrinth or The Shape of Water, so… yes?
Or Devil’s Backbone!Which, y’know, is REALLY worth a watch for folks who haven’t seen it.
Perlman was originally cast as ‘TSoW’s fishman, but the sheer eroticism he brought to the role was too much even for del Toro.
Anyone who has been in any sort of project-based career in their lives would totally understand filling your team with people you already know, trust, and like working with.
Do you, ehm, watch movies?
“Wait. Where am I? What’s going on? Who are all you people? Why are there all these cameras around?”“Aw, crap, Guillermo’s forgotten he’s a filmmaker again. Someone get Perlman.”
Whatever this movie is like, I’m sure the filmmakers are just fine and free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment.
I wish I liked stop motion animation, because as an artform it’s very cool and takes impressive amounts of work and talent. But if I ignore the process and just look at the result – it’s just so offputting. Straight to the uncanny valley every time.
In which case, I’d recommend the work of Jan Svankmajer, where that is 100% the intended effect.
Fantastic stuff, I love the ending
I’m 100% with you – I don’t care for it at all.
MMV on stop motion, but the uncanny valley refers to emotional responses to replicas of human beings, e.g. “Peter Cushing” in Rogue One. Stop motion for the most part doesn’t attempt to replicate reality. It creates its own aesthetic. This is why, at least for me, old school Ray Harryhausen effects are timeless: they don’t look real, they look fantastical, often creepy in an effective way. I like that in a special effect, the emphasis on looking cool as opposed to looking real. Enjoy or don’t enjoy what you do or don’t of course.
It’s funny that I’m completely unimpressed by lifelike 3D computer animation that represents a tremendous amount of work and talent not to mention incredibly fast-moving technological advancements, but show me a good stop motion film with little puppets moving around and I’m in awe.
I mean, you are a silent-era movie star.
I’m with you. I want to love it the way I love other practical arts like puppetry, but something about the motion makes it really difficult to be comfortable with. It’s both too slick and not enough, somehow.
On one hand, Guillermo del Toro doing a stop-motion animated fairy tales sounds f*cking amazing. But on the other hand, any movie whose trailer, opening, et cetera features any narration or such going “You may think you know the story…” is putting out a big red flag in my book. No, movie, we do know the story. Or the basics of it, at the very least. At this point, the only way to surprise us with any of these takes on classic tales is to change so much that you basically just create an original story in the process.
Christ, that looks like shit. Steam punk cricket without a mouth?If that’s what the character design is going to look like, hard pass. Though, to be fair, Del Toro hasn’t made a watchable movie in years, so hard pass either way. Who keeps giving him money?
Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John
Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman, with Christoph
Waltz and Tilda Swinton.Wow, the cast of Stranger Things sure is stacked!
I’m just hoping that a del Toro Pinocchio has a scene with the cigar-smoking kids turning into donkeys that’s so disturbing it gives a generation of kids nightmares for years.
Disney’s Pinocchio is obviously a masterpiece but it’s not remotely a faithful adaptation of the book, so I would be interested in seeing a much different take.
TEASE?!?!?
YES the DEFINITION OF A TEASE HERE
“In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father…”So, the exact inverse of the original story, then?I mean, I’m sure to watch this, but I’d love to see a faithful adaptation where the Pinocchio kills the talking cricket right away. And bites off the cat’s paw. And…
“It’s a story you may think you know, but, heh, you don’t.”Don’t tell me what stories I think I know, you creepy fucking insect!…Sorry, sorry, that was out of line. It’s just … it’s just been a rough couple of years, you know?