Guillermo del Toro has had it with sassy animated families: 'I hate that s---'
Guillermo del Toro is calling for a rescue mission to save animation from corporate hoodlums.
During a master class at the Annecy International Animation Festival this week, the Oscar-winning filmmaker got candid about how he believes recent animated movies are getting the medium wrong. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Del Toro pointed to mainstream animation in particular, arguing that characters and emotions have been "codified into a sort of teenage rom-com, almost emoji-style behavior."
The director, whose dark take on Pinocchio won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature earlier this year, explained that he's particularly annoyed by the way so many characters share the same sassy mannerisms and personalities.
"[If] I see a character raising his f---ing eyebrow, or crossing his arms, having a sassy pose — oh, I hate that s---," del Toro said. "[Why] does everything act as if they're in a sitcom? I think it is emotional pornography."
NETFLIX 'Pinocchio' director Guillermo del Toro
Despite his complaints, Del Toro reserved praise for some recent "rule-breaking" titles pushing the boundaries of animation: "The three hits of [Across the] Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Mario are moving things, allowing a little more latitude, but there are still big fights to be had," he said. "Animation to me is the purest form of art, and it's been kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums. We have to rescue it. [And] I think that we can Trojan-horse a lot of good s--- into the animation world."
Del Toro has long insisted that animation isn't just for kids and urged the industry toward portraying "real life."
"All the families are happy and sassy and quick, everyone has a one-liner," the filmmaker groused. "Well, my dad was boring. I was boring. Everybody in my family was boring. We had no one-liners. We're all f---ed up. That's what I want to see animated. I would love to see real life in animation. I actually think it's urgent. I think it's urgent to see real life in animation."
Del Toro took special care to embed reality into Pinocchio, the stop-motion coming-of-age tale that he rooted in the real history of Italian facism, and he made an active effort to make his characters as lifelike as possible.
"In animation, everyone is very efficient," he told the Annecy audience. "If they sit and grab a glass of water, they do it in four movements. In real life, we do it in eight and we usually kind of f--- it up. So I said: Let's make things inefficient. [I think] particularly now, we need things that look like they were made by humans to recuperate the human spirit. I f---ing hate perfection. I love things that look handmade."
Given his passion for the medium, it should come as no surprise that Del Toro plans to continue working in the realm of animation for many years to come.
"There are a couple more live-action movies I want to do, but not many," the Shape of Water director said. "After that, I only want to do animation. That's the plan."
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