comment #1

cinefan says ...

I like Del Toro's work as a director but that quote makes him look like a complete hypocrite who is just taking the Hobbit job because of the large amount of money he was offered to direct it.

comment #2

Walter Sobchak says ...

I agree with Del Toro down the line about fantasy crap, which is why I think he'll be good directing the Hobbit films. He'll reign in the "magical fantastical" shit and probably make them grittier and less unicorny.

comment #3

Craptastic says ...

When I read that quote I thought, "Brother!". Being into sci-fi and horror, I must've corrected people a million times when they confused my interests with flying unicorns and pixies.

However, I don't think he's backing that quote up with his work. I'd say "Pan's..." is 75% fantasy film. A little girl immerses herself into a world filled with magical creatures, legends, kings and queens, etc. That's the definition of fantasy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to the Anti-Narnia webpage to show those nerds what's what.

comment #4

lazarus says ...

DId it ever occur to anyone that Del Toro may have taken the job so he could sniff out Jackson's weight loss secret?

Since we're so obsessed with the subject of obesity lately (well, always) around here.

comment #5

nemo says ...

Del Toro may not be into heroic fantasy, but he's certainly into other forms of fantasy. No question about it, he's deeply into monsters.

"I think there is a point in our lives when we are kids, when literature, and magic, and fantasy have as strong a presence in our soul as religion would in later days. It's a spiritual reality, as strong as when people say I accept Jesus in my heart. Well, at a certain age I accepted monsters in my heart."

From a Jan 24 2007 Fresh Air interview with Guillermo del Toro on Pan's Labyrinth.

comment #6

DarthCorleone says ...

"A less kind way of saying this is that any 'Hobbit' sequel won't really be a Tolkien adaptation; Jackson and Walsh and Boyens and del Toro and Ordesky and, I don't know, some guy in the Warner Bros. lunch room will be making the shit up."

Yeah, I agree 100 percent with this. What's the point? I've read enough Tolkien - including those Lord of the Rings appendices - to know that the time between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings does not have a compelling narrative or protagonist as Tolkien wrote it. The whole idea of doing that sequel/prequel is just insane. I'm down with a Hobbit movie, but this other thing - what the hell is it? It sure won't be Tolkien.

comment #7

JohnCope says ...

Walter, I don't understand what you're talking about (unless you're trying to be sarcastic). First of all, why would del Toro's cinema ever be considered the antithesis of "magical fantastical shit"? It's all about that.

And as someone who values Tolkien I can speak for those of us who were not enthused by Jackson's adaptations and found them lacking precisely because they were not transcendent enough. With the exception of Return of the King, in which his imagination was allowed to go slightly more unconstrained, Jackson or someone in his party worked to diminish the heightened mythos of Tolkien's established worlds and how they represented archetypal reality by constantly feeling the need to qualify every damn thing to make it all "believable". We were treated to the kind of numbingly boring faux-reality you seem to want more of. We got fashionable gender politics and a lot of depictions of Aragorn as a relatable presence; at least relatable in respect to early twenty-first century notions of "real" conceivable masculinity. It was reduced in that way. The quest was constantly made banal due to the insistence on representing the pseudo-grittiness of the terrain and conditions of exhaustion, etc. Still, this emphasis has its appeal to this period's cultural sensibility (see CSI's body-centric mindlessness) and that may explain the series' otherwise unfathomable popularity.

For my part I kept waiting and hoping for Jackson to go ape shit and break out the rubber monsters from his greatest works, Meet the Feebles and Brain Dead. That kind of wickedly unapologetic and irreverent approach would have been a worthy fusion of Jackson's own sensibility and Tolkien's towering, elevated prose.

comment #8

storymark says ...

Yeah, their making up a story to fit between THe Hobbit and LOTR is totally going to blow the credibility of their "Based on a true story" claims....

And how dare tha director of Mimic, Blade 2 and Hellboy degrade himself by taking the reins on the biggest franchise of the last decade, which has millions of fans.

Seriously, lighten up, folks. No one is going to force you at gunpoint to see the damned thing.

comment #9

DarthCorleone says ...

"Based on a true story." Cute.

I'm a fan of the films and the books, and I'm excited about The Hobbit adaptation. But I think a little skepticism about the potential quality of something created out of almost completely thin air and slapping the name of Tolkien's Middle-Earth on it is more than warranted. Frankly, as protective as Tolkien's estate as been about the property over the years, I'm a little surprised that they are letting the studio get away with this - ludicrously excessive cash-grab or not.

As always when it comes to skepticism, I eagerly hope that I am proven wrong.

comment #10

MovieBob says ...

It reveals so much about the old-guard critical press that "Pan's Labyrinth" gets exempted from their never-take-scifi/fantasy-seriously rule EXCLUSIVELY because it has subtitles. They don't even carry it over into Del Toro's NON-Spanish films - "Hellboy" and "Pans" are first cousins, cinematically: Same overall look, most of the same overall tone, same mashup of monsters, WWII-era facism and mythology.

And yet they continue to miss both this AND the much-larger picture: Neither Jackson nor Del Toro has "sold out." Making giant-scale movies about monsters and dragons and warrior-elves and whatnot aren't something Geek filmmakers do for clout - it's what they do WHEN they get clout."

comment #11

BurmaShave says ...

It's a shame. No one really wants to see this movie that badly, especially two. Not to mention SATURN AND THE END OF DAYS sounds like a fucking awesome idea. I'd love for him to finish his 'Children Processing War/Trauma' trilogy. Isn't one franchise enough?

comment #12

actionman says ...

What a waste of Del Toro's time

comment #13

Feathers McGraw says ...

While I'm intrigued to see what Del Toro does with the Hobbit, I'm bitter that it means we have to wait that much longer for his At The Mountains of Madness adaptation. Maybe he could convince Jackson and WETA to do it with him?

comment #14

storymark says ...

"No one really wants to see this movie that badly"

Maybe no one (or at least, not many) around here wants to see it, but the geek sites are tripping over themselves with joy, and plently of people out in the "real world" are excited at the prospect of more Middle-Earth movies. Many of whom don't know or care who Del Toro is, and whether or not online sourpusses are displeased with his choice in projects.

comment #15

CinemaPhreek says ...

Walter - in order to write "reign in the 'magical fantastical'" shit, that must have been a great year in the Peace Corps you spent , otherwise did you NOT see Pan's Labyrinth???

Folks need to stop losing their shit over this. Del Toro must have other personal projects (not to mention family obligations) down the road he is concerned about. Afterall, even though he looks like some 30 year old film school geek, the man is 43 now and has yet to have a break out hit that will let him coast over more than one bad film.