#also collodi set the story in toscana! the movie doesn't!

[silverloreley]

Trying to watch Del Toro’s Pinocchio.

Ten minutes in and I already hate it as much as the Disney one for how disrespectful it is to the source material. So I’m going to write down all my thoughts as I watch it.

First of all, it’s set in between the two wars, when Collodi lived before the first World War, so the whole fascism thing is out of place. The story about the dead son was shoehorned in, the one dead was Geppetto’s wife, and the two didn’t manage to have children.

Geppetto was very very poor in the book. Like piss poor and that was a major plot point. Here? Carlo asked for chocolate, something that was for super-rich people, while Geppetto couldn’t afford meals or even firewood, let alone luxuries.

Also, he was a good man who always was meek in front of his disgraces, the drunkard was his friend, Mastro Ciliegia, incidentally the one who gave Geppetto the wood he carved Pinocchio from, but the wood was already alive and asked to be carved, so that’s uh, not that.

The Turquoise-haired fairy (yes, that’s what the Blue Fairy was supposed to be translated) is something impossible to tell... or watch here.

The Cricket has a different story but that’s less important in comparison to the rest.

Lucignolo (Lightwick or whatever it’s called in the English version) wasn’t a model boy by any means, not even for the fascist standard. He was a little petty thief and son of poor people, not the bully son of a powerful man, but he was a genuine friend for Pinocchio.

Mangiafuoco is unrecognizeable, plus he didn’t have a circus but was a mere puppeteer, he had other living puppets but none like Pinocchio. Oh, no, he’s the Fox, this doesn’t make sense, where’s the Cat? Why is there a monkey? The Fox and Cat were supposed to teach kids to not to trust strangers, while Mangiafuoco was a different thing. They also conflated the Pleasure Island into the Mangiafuoco subplot, wtf?

The point of Pinocchio going to school was to teach children to be responsible and correct in times when people refused to send kids to school to exploit them to work, so Geppetto wanting to send his son to school was for the boy’s own good, not to make him comform to the standard, quite the opposite. The fact Geppetto is depicted as a wrongdoer drunkard is heavily disrespectful to the original message.

In fact, Geppetto was the representation of the struggles of a nation, and the wish of a new generation being more cultured, rightful and happier.

And then Pinocchio dies? Under a car? And that’s when I know I’m not watching Pinocchio anymore, so Del Toro may as well have written his own character and not grabbed a famous Italian tale. I mean, he doesn’t need to use something already existing, he’s famous enough on his own that everyone would have watched whatever new he made.

Moreover, the depiction of fascism is not the Italian version of it anyway, maybe that’s how it happened in Spain or Mexico, so, really, Del Toro should have done his own thing and left Italy and its national fairytale alone.

And I’ve had enough, I’m not even mid-movie but I’m tired of it already. So I’m going to forget all of the above and try to see where the movie wants to go, but, honestly, I wish the world would leave our tale be.