It's really interesting that he felt the need to address this before the complaints and worries started coming in. Any thoughts?As the opening of "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" draws near I feel the urge to reiterate a fair warning. The Aesthetics of the film are quite "Pop" and colorful and -obviously- more influenced by the hyper-saturated palette of a Kirby comic book than a Fairy Tale or a Fantasy work.
Please do not get confused by either the palette of the film or its tone. It uses the comedic and interpersonal banter from the first film and the monster design is quite outlandish and colorful. We made a deliberate move away from the Celtic / Nordic aesthetics present in most Fantasy films because we knew we could NOT out do bigger productions (like LOTR) at that game.
We are a $85 m dollar film and we tried to find our own "look" so we endeavoured to create a very idiosyncratic melange of Arabic architecture and design and Oriental motifs. We took Japanese suit of armour patterns allowed it to be imbued by Celtic motifs, etc- you can see some of that in the trailer.
Our Elfland is more akin to Dunsany or perhaps even Moorcock in its aesthetics, using the stark contrast of dark against white skin and golden eyes.
Our magical world is broader and freer -even surreal at times- and suits the tone of this film.
I am exceedingly aware of Genres and moreso when I mix them and / or mix them together. Most of Hellboy will give you almost no indication of what will come to pass with the HOBBIT. There is, however a PROLOGUE done with Old Wooden Puppets that will share some faint traces that eventually you will be able to find in certain passages in the forthcoming movie. But even then, please do not take this as a verbatim through line.
When I started HBII I had NO inkling that the HOBBIT would really come my way and I wanted to use the Fantasy Worlds that lie beneath as a metaphor of all that mankind is extinguishing with its unedning greed.
It is my dearest hope that this message will prevent speculation of what in "Pan's Labyrinth" or "Hellboy II" will indicate what the HOBBIT will be. In time there will be definite aesthetic choices that will guide the film towards a yuxtaposition of PJ's and my visual proclivities but I think it will only be visible in retrospect and it would be almost impossible -and rather perverse- to try and divine it at this stage.
The same goes for tone and theme. Nevertheless, if some of you enjoyed the first :Hellboy" or "Pan's Labyrinth" for that matter I would love to have you grace a theater with your derriere and allow our tale to find you-
All the Best
GDT
del Toro and Different Aesthetics for Different Films
- Voronwë the Faithful
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del Toro and Different Aesthetics for Different Films
GdT has made the following post at TORN. He actually started a new thread to do so (which I think is a first), so I think that I can justify starting a new thread here for it (we really shouldn't just post everything about the Hobbit movie in one thread):
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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I liiiike his style. "Yuxtaposition." "Grace a theater with your derriere."
We are lucky to have a filmmaker with his humane wit for The Hobbit.
(I never really went back on TORC to read what people said when PJ was announced as the LotR director—at the time I wasn't connected with any boards. I imagine it was rather horrific. Heavenly Creatures is not a bad prelude, but everything else he had done was so tackily grotesque! )
We are lucky to have a filmmaker with his humane wit for The Hobbit.
(I never really went back on TORC to read what people said when PJ was announced as the LotR director—at the time I wasn't connected with any boards. I imagine it was rather horrific. Heavenly Creatures is not a bad prelude, but everything else he had done was so tackily grotesque! )
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Re: del Toro and Different Aesthetics for Different Films
I just love this man's thoughtfulness and elegant style of expressing himself.Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:It's really interesting that he felt the need to address this before the complaints and worries started coming in. Any thoughts?
And the way he is wooing the fandom.
Oh, and thinking about the pre-film reaction to the news about PJ helming LotR, I was extremely enthusiastic about the news. Which I heard in August 1999 (that is such a scary thought ). The only film of his I'd seen, or even heard of, was Heavenly Creatures, which I'd been impressed by, despite its harrowing content.
The fact that he was an indie director, chosen to direct THREE films of LotR, really got me excited about the LotR movie news!
I chose to ignore the fact that he'd apparently done these other, really tasteless, films.
"Frodo undertook his quest out of love - to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could ... "
Letter no. 246, The Collected Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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Letter no. 246, The Collected Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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That makes perfect sense to me.But I don't care about The Hobbit very much. If it's good, that's good. If it's not, it won't break my heart like LOTR did.
And yet ... I do hope they get it right. The Hobbit was a beloved book to me years before LOTR was, and though LOTR has since eclipsed the Hobbit ... it's like a first love, you know?