We got the chance to sit down with the one and only Guillermo del Toro as part of our IGN30 Icons Series, where he let us in on his favorite games, how he made his iconic movies, and his experience working with some of the biggest stars in filmmaking.

He also chatted about Pan’s Labyrinth, which is turning 20 years old this year. To celebrate, it’s coming back to theaters this weekend — but if you’d like some extra context before you sit down to see it again, check out our conversation with del Toro, who told us about the inspiration behind the Pale Man and how he stretched the movie’s budget to create some of its massive set pieces.

We’ve transcribed the interview in full below, where del Toro explained what it was like working with Wesley Snipes on Blade 2 and how he almost made a BioShock movie.

Brian Altano (IGN): From Kronos to The Shape of Water to Frankenstein, it is an honor to be talking to the maestro of movie monsters, Mr. Guillermo Del Toro. It’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for coming. This is the 20th anniversary of Pan’s Labyrinth, which makes me feel old. I don’t know how you feel about it.

Guillermo del Toro: Older.

Brian Altano (IGN): So, you have been making crazy monsters in beautiful worlds for the longest time. You started off inspired by things like Universal’s monsters, [like the] Creature from the Black Lagoon. What is it about that era that spoke to you then, and continues to resonate with you now?

Guillermo del Toro: I think I was a monster kid, which means that the creatures are important in the storytelling of these fairytales, because I think they’re fables or parables or fairytales. And it has to be creature-centric for me to be attracted to it. Everybody says, “Oh, don’t show the creature.” I think, show it, please. I’m seven years old. I want to see it. I want to love it. I want to see how well designed it is. I want to discover the whole world that comes in with the creature design. Creature design ushers a different reality. So those are important. When Milicent Patrick — who designed the Gill-man for Creature from the Black Lagoon — designed the Metaluna Mutant on Island Earth, when they gave her an opportunity, it came from outer space. She designed the creature. She has a signature, and I can see what her design signature is. And as a kid, it’s like meeting a movie star. You say, “Oh, this was Jack Pierce designing this creature. This was Dick Smith. This was the Wesmers. This was all the makeup heroes of mine.”

Brian Altano (IGN): So when you saw the sort of less tangible horror, which it’s like a fog or a mist or something like that, you’re like, “That’s cool, but I want a monster.”

Guillermo del Toro: Well, that’s what I want to make. That doesn’t define what I want to watch. I want to watch everything that is good. But as a filmmaker, up until Frankenstein, I’m very creature-centric. I think that has changed now. I don’t know what I am or where I’m going. I have sort of a new horizon, but Frankenstein was a culmination of my creature-centric period, which is, by the way, where is it rooted at? Little Red Ridinghood. You need the wolf. The wolf is the creature in that. And you need something that embodies a concept. Good, evil, purity, tragedy. The Creature in Frankenstein is a tragic humanity. Pan is a trickster. The Pale Man is a blind veracity. It’s not just that they are cool-looking. It’s that they embody the conceptual part of the tale. They actually mean something tangible. Godzilla is absolutely a first large-scale God, the power of nature, the tragedy of atomic energy. It’s a concept made flesh.

Brian Altano (IGN): It’s not just this wrecking ball that comes in. There’s a pain behind it.

Guillermo del Toro: There is the tragic undertones of the design of Godzilla, the fact that they wanted the skin of Godzilla to look like the after effect of a nuclear blast victim. I mean, there is thought on that — the fact that he was this sort of grayish-brown in the original. There is a lot of thought. Jack Pierce designing the Grizzly on Frankenstein — he wanted to sort of retrofit the history of the autopsic work that put it together. The scars, the opening of the skull in a sort of weird, can-of-tomatoes way.

Brian Altano (IGN): You like to get your hands dirty. You like to build stuff. You make model kits. Your Cabinet of Curiosity is a very tangible thing. It feels like a lot of filmmakers are sort of moving around

or away from that, but that is something that feels so core to your philosophy of filmmaking.

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah. Each filmmaker is like, I see Chris Nolan completely going to battle for negative and he’s entrenched there. I see Jim Cameron exploring beyond capture. He’s actually melding actors’ performances with how it translates into digital. Each filmmaker is on a quest, I think. And my quest is handmade by humans for humans.

Brian Altano (IGN): I love that. Christopher Nolan mentioned that you were a big inspiration for a lot of his practical effects in the Odyssey, specifically the Cyclops.

Guillermo del Toro: Cyclops, yeah.

Brian Altano (IGN): Did you see it?

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, yeah. No, I saw it with him.

Brian Altano (IGN): Oh my God, that’s awesome.

Guillermo del Toro: He said, “I want to show you the movie.” And we saw it in IMAX. We talked after, we talked before. I mean, I think he’s just — there is such a signature and such a vision. I mean, the word visionary is thrown around a little too much, but I think Chris has always been. I’ve known him now fortunately for about 15 years or more. And he’s always been absolutely laser-focused.

Brian Altano (IGN): Did you like what he did with the cyclops?

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, I loved it.

Brian Altano (IGN): Me too.

Guillermo del Toro: Loved it. I mean, I love everything. I asked him, “So when Matt Damon is in the tempestuous waters, how did you do it?” He’s like, “We put him in the water on a tempestuous day.” It was so fantastic to hear him answer that. And I remember when I talked to him about his philosophy of sound mixing, because I asked him that back in the days of Interstellar, and he said, “To me, dialogue is part of the score. It’s not so much what they say, but the rhythm of how they say it and the intention.” And I thought that was… Now and then, when I mix, now and then I go, “It’s a rhythmic thing.”

Brian Altano (IGN): You worked on Mimic, which, for me, that was sort of like a Creature from the Black Lagoon for me. It’s funny to say, right? Because when I was a kid and I did the same thing, I was going —

Guillermo del Toro: It’s a monster movie.

Brian Altano (IGN): I was like, “I want to watch a monster movie.” And I saw that one and the setting. I had grown up going to the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah. Well, that’s where we went!

Brian Altano (IGN): And it actually changed that museum for me for a while, because I would go there and I’d be like, “Are we good?” All the rooms were a little dark.

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, of course. The Natural History Museum in New York, to me, is Disneyland. It’s a portal to imagination. And the exhibits are so exquisitely crafted. They are one of the places that have inspired me the most.

Brian Altano (IGN): I could spend hours looking up at that whale up there. The way that movie came together was sort of out of your hands. There were a lot of people kind of hacking it apart. Was there any time during that where you’re like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. This process is so…”

Guillermo del Toro: To a point. It’s too early to quit when you’re 33. That’s true. You don’t want to quit, but I wanted to quit that way of making movies. I was very careful to try to regain independence with Devil’s Wagon supported by Pedro Almodovar. I was lucky enough that he liked what I did. And I made it a point. I was being pushed to do Blade 2 first. I said, “I’m doing Devil’s Wagon first. I’m not going to go back to an industrial movie making environment until I cleanse my soul.” And I made it a point. Many times people say, “Oh, I would never sell out.” Well, you don’t know until someone’s buying. And I can tell you 100% sure of the many defects I have. I’ve never sold out.

Brian Altano (IGN): I believe it. I believe it. Do you think that you had to go through what you did with Mimic before you did Blade 2 and Hellboy?

Guillermo del Toro: Yes, because it makes a difference. I said, “Okay, so when I do Blade 2, I’m not going to try to fashion an auteurial [film].” I’m going to just go and say, “Okay, can I give you a six pack pizza, vox, balls-to-the-wall, fun, almost like a musical, and have it ooze atmosphere and coolness. And then you don’t have to worry about anything else. Still, there’s streaks of Frankenstein on it.

Brian Altano (IGN): Again, you’ve mentioned before the thing about sort of filmmakers making one movie. Can you explain that philosophy a bit?

Guillermo del Toro: It’s actually, ‘One life fuels a movie.’ I would argue that the range would be between Devil’s Wagon and Pacific Rim. That’s the range of the modulation of the thing. But at the end of the day, you have a style, you have a signature. And I find it amazing with, for example, Alfonso Cuarón. You can do Gravity or you can do Roma. You would say it’s not the same movie, but it is. Because I know what Alfonso’s looking for, which is the connection with reality of the earth, almost like a transcendental approach. Gravity. I remember I was in the middle of the post-production, the studio didn’t believe in the movie, and they wanted Alfonso to put helicopters coming to the rescue of Sandra Bullock at the end. I said, “No.” He said, “Well, what about the sound of helicopters?” “No.” “What about the radio saying, ‘We’re coming for you?’” I said, “No.” He said, “The only thing that she’s recuperating is her footing on earth. That’s what the movie’s about.” Because it grounds it. It’s an auteurial movie. So you have a voice and you use it for different songs, but it’s the same voice.

Brian Altano (IGN): When you made Blade 2, you can just tell you had a ton of fun making that movie.

Guillermo del Toro: Actually, it’s probably that and Pacific Rim are the two most fun movies I’ve ever shot. I really had fun. It may have been held by the fact that Red Bull had just come out and I didn’t know how to use it. So I was drinking, and I’m not joking, about 40 Red Bulls a day.

Brian Altano (IGN): Man,that is amazing.

Guillermo del Toro: I was like in a cocaine movie. I was like, come on, let’s go. And I would order cases and cases of Red Bull and throw them to the extras.

Brian Altano (IGN): I want to change the IGN review scale now. Instead of one to 10, I want to be like, “This is a 40 Red Bull movie.”

Guillermo del Toro: When I went back to America, Red Bull started traveling from Europe to there. And my doctor said, “You cannot consume more than four.” I was drinking 40. The arterial damage, man.

Brian Altano (IGN): They announced a Blade reboot at Comic-Con years ago and they were never able to make it. And why do you think it’s so difficult to get a movie like that done?

Guillermo del Toro: I’m telling you, and I mean it because I know it, 50% of the bladeness of Blade is Wesley Snipes.

Brian Altano (IGN): Wesley Snipes?

Guillermo del Toro: 100%. He is not the most linear actor to deal with, right?

Brian Altano (IGN): Right.

Guillermo del Toro: But every time he stood in front of the lens, I said, “That’s a movie star. That’s Blade.” Completely. For example, I showed him a gun we designed — beautiful, [Dieter] Reinhardt, Ron Pearlman ends up using it, with a blade on the front — and he looked at it. “Not for Blade. Cold gun, but not for Blade.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because Blade is the weapon.” He said, “I don’t want the toys. I want the man. The man is a dangerous guy. You give me too many toys, and that’s the Batmobile and the Bat belt. That’s not Blade.” And I went, “Ah, this guy knows it.” And Every time [Snipes] landed, every time he turned, he’s a Neil Adams comic book [character]. And he has the natural sort of comic book [look]. I think Blade 1, Steve’s movie, changed the history of comic book movies for me, period. Because before that, you had either the cleanliness, the beauty, and sort of wholesomeness of Richard Donner’s Superman, or you had the quirkiness of Tim Burton’s Batman. But this is what ushered the ‘tude, the edge. Without Steve Norrington’s Blade, I don’t think there is The Matrix. I don’t think there is X-Men. I think what they did is monumental. And then I inherited and was completely, irresponsibly happy to do that.”

Brian Altano (IGN): So 50% of Blade is Wesley Snipes.

Guillermo del Toro: 100%. 100% is 50%.

Brian Altano (IGN): And the other 50% is Red Bull.

Guillermo del Toro: The other 50% is the filmmaker articulating. I mean, I had four or five moving boxes worth of dailies from [Stephen Norrington’s] movie. And I studied all those VHS tapes. I understood exactly how he shot it. He did some formations that were really, extraordinarily weird. For example, he had a low camera with a longer lens in front of a high camera with a wide lens facing each other. His assistant called it — very impolitely and politically [incorrect] — they called it the Polish firing squad position. I didn’t make that joke. I just repeated it. And then I started his formations and I said, “Okay, I’m going to go at it differently.” But there is one setup on Blade 2, which is 13 cameras working at the same time like a ballet. This camera is moving this way and then it crosses this one right on time for my cut. So I would cut before we shoot. So what they did is extraordinary. I know it.

Brian Altano (IGN): In your Blade 2 movie commentary, there’s a sequence where you say, “This is my Dr. Manhattan shot.” I love that so much. Obviously as a Watchman fan, a lot of directors sort of hide their influences.

Guillermo del Toro: I talk about them.

Brian Altano (IGN): Explain that, because obviously some people, I think they’re sort of a little ashamed of jumping off of an idea that they may have seen before, that they might have inherited. But you’ve always been —

Guillermo del Toro: Because you’re not rephrasing. When you take something and change it, it’s a permutation. I mean, for example, the classical compositions are only so many. When you’re doing a format, for example, you’re doing a tango. It has to be a tango. It’s on a certain tempo. When you’re doing a waltz, there is a tempo. So you’re taking a form and you’re completely remixing it. Every chef in every restaurant, in every part of the world, whether it’s a fast food service or… the hot cuisine of Michelin star restaurants, they’re using the same ingredients. And you’re not ashamed of pepper. You’re not ashamed of a carrot, or what they call the mother sauce in France in the cooking — You have celery, carrot, onion. Ingredients are ingredients. And when I say, “This is my Dr. Manhattan shot,” well, I’m saying it’s my Jack Kirby shot. Because that shot is very Jack Kirby. And then Jack Kirby, you have to talk to him to [see] where it comes from, but you are probably influenced by Milton Caniff. It’s a lineage of storytellers. There is not such a thing as an ingredient you should not mention, because as we were discussing, I think for chefs coming up, it’s important to disclose how you cook, how you bleach, how you blanch the potatoes. It’s good to say this is what I did and it’s very different.

Brian Altano (IGN): I appreciate that because I think that the making of stuff, the behind the scenes stuff, it is exactly the kind of thing that inspires new filmmakers.

Guillermo del Toro: Yes, 100%.

Brian Altano (IGN): And you made The Making of Frankenstein, which I watched immediately after Frankenstein. And it was fascinating to me, because I think coming from an era where you grew up looking at magazines of like, this is how they’re making movies or watching the DVD actuals and Blu-rays and stuff like that, that’s the stuff that people see and they go, “This isn’t impossible anymore. This is something that I can start doing myself.”

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah. I mean, as of lately, the last few releases on Blu-ray, I paid for the totality, or most of the behind the scenes content, because I wanted it to be in the disc. And I don’t want it to be in the disc to sing our praises — I want it, because if you live in a part of the world or in an economic condition where you cannot afford film school, but your local library has the discs, you can learn how to make movies. If you come at it sincerely, it’s not from the beginning. You want to talk about how hard it was and how you were thinking [about] this thing, but you went that way. So, I think they’re very useful sort of substitutes for film school.

Brian Altano (IGN): Is there sort of like a scene in the movies you’ve made where every artist knows how difficult it is to translate the idea that’s in your head to something that exists finally in real life, whether that’s a drawing or a painting. It always filters and changes in some way. Is there a specific scene or collection of scenes that has come the closest from being like, “This is the idea in my mind. This is the scene in the film.”

Guillermo del Toro: The Pale Man.

Brian Altano (IGN): Yeah?

Guillermo del Toro: The Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth. It changed a lot, but once the creature was set, once I found the creature in pre-production, I looked at a photo of a manta ray face up. And I saw the poster of Phantasm where the woman is screaming and you can see her eyes. And through many permutations, it ended up being that creature. But the moment I saw that creature, the scene was exactly what it is. And Pacific Rim, I knew exactly what I wanted to do to give the scale to the robots. I knew I wanted them in the rain. I knew I wanted them in what I call Goth-tech. And finally, I would say Frankenstein. But Frankenstein changed a lot when Jacob Elordi came in. So I mean, to some degree, those would be very close.

Brian Altano (IGN): Because at a certain point it is out of your hands, especially when it becomes part of an actor’s experience.

Guillermo del Toro: It’s never quite that simple. People think filmmaking is chess. It isn’t. It’s a contact sport. Or you’re playing tennis. They serve, you return. Directing is knowing how to serve, but you also know how to return. If you think it’s all about control, then this is a problem. People think that filmmaking is like multitask prompting, like AI. “Oh, I want this.” No, you’re really building. It’s a very, very dirty, non-linear business. And that’s why one of the many reasons I’m against generative AI, is because it’ll get you to mediocrity really quick. It’ll get you to the middle really quick. And that may be an image. It’s not film. It’s not cinema.

Brian Altano (IGN): I think it’s a very cynical approach to creating stuff where you only want the results and not the process. And the process is the fun part.

Guillermo del Toro: Let me put it this way: I can tell you, “Look, I’m faster than Usain Bolt.” I said, “Really?” I go, “Yeah, in my car.” “Okay, well then, you’re not a runner. You’re in a car. It’s not a f**king sport. That’s not art. You’re in a car.”

Brian Altano (IGN): I think that’s my favorite thing anyone has ever said about AI.

Guillermo del Toro: And you’re in a f**king Volvo.

Brian Altano (IGN): Thank you so much for that. I’m very much against generative AI, and that is the best way it could possibly be put.

Guillermo del Toro: Look, the risk is this. Every single bad idea in the history of totalitarianism comes involved in a concept that sounds reasonably beneficial. The mother, the motherland — sounds really nice. Democratization of the arts. It’s not that. They want your money. They want you to buy their app. They don’t care about that. The discourse between the soul of mankind and the arts is a very sacred discourse. It’s very intimate. It’s molecularly important to stay human. Please, please. Don’t give me an app. Please.

Brian Altano (IGN): I will not. Your unmade filmography is legendary.

Guillermo del Toro: Yes.

Brian Altano (IGN): Somewhere it exists in your brain. How do those sort of stories, those movies, live on? Do you ever go back through your sketchbooks? Can you watch them in your mind?

Guillermo del Toro: No. They’re in the sketchbooks, and sometimes I repurpose ideas. For example, the wings of the Angel of Death came from a project that I was writing in ‘98. Partially, the Pale Man came from a sketch I did in ‘99. So you repurpose. Your diaries with drawings become a sort of catalog and you go through them and go, “Oh, I’ve never done that. Let me do it now.” There’s a sketch for a thing that I designed for Pan’s Labyrinth that is coming out in a stop motion movie I’m doing now.

Brian Altano (IGN): That’s awesome. I love that. So, you find a way to reincorporate these old ideas even if —

Guillermo del Toro: Well, it’s a dialogue with yourself.

Brian Altano (IGN): Yeah.

Guillermo del Toro: You’re talking to the time when you were a very different person. So you reactivate yourself.

Brian Altano (IGN): We talked about Pan’s Labyrinth turning 20 this year. This was definitely the first movie that kind of broke over the crust of the usual people that were coming to your movies. All of a sudden, you had film critics and stuff like that [who] were really paying attention to you. Did that change you, having these new sets of eyes on you?

Guillermo del Toro: Well, Chronos and Devil’s Backbone had that, but they had it in a very, very arthouse niche. What Pan’s Labyrinth did is, the first movie that I willed to do my way with a slightly larger scale — The Shape of Water. And Pan’s Labyrinth cost exactly the same, $19.3 million, both movies. And [I looked] at the scale. And I said, “I’m going to will…” Alejandro González Iñárritu one day said to me, because I said, “How the hell did you do Birdman for that money?” And he said, “A budget is a state of mind.” And you know what? It is. If you can find a way to scale the movie, you need a few things. For example, I was watching Pan’s Labyrinth when we were re-timing the color and I saw the huge locomotive, the rail locomotive, which is a real set. Now it took an inordinate amount of money to build that out of a budget that was very small to build that locomotive. But I said, “We need it. We need it for people to…” There are two or three or four gestures in Pan’s Labyrinth where people go, “Oh, it’s a big movie.” It’s almost like you want to impress somebody and you pick up the check a couple of times. Not every time. Same with the movie. You have to pick up the check every so many minutes.

Brian Altano (IGN): I mean, I think the audience sees it and they connect with it. I think that people get that. I do believe that when audiences have this feeling that something is real, it washes over them, and they invest.

Guillermo del Toro: They absolutely do. I mean, look, I’m not going to go back to AI gratuitously. I will go for a point. Everything I’ve seen, the eyes are dead. It’s like watching a flowerpot in the shape of a human. There’s nothing inside. There’s just air. How do you substitute a treasure as precious as an actor’s eyes? You can’t. With craftsmanship, if you see a set and you know it’s made by humans, there’s a nobility and there’s a lineage and there’s an elated feeling you get. “Oh, I didn’t know that was possible.” It’s so beautiful.

Brian Altano (IGN): You are a huge fan of video games, which I’ve always loved about you. I think that’s so cool. And you sort of famously tried to get a couple of games going.

Guillermo del Toro: I’m the albatross of video games.

Brian Altano (IGN): You worked on P.T., you were working with Hideo Kojima.

Guillermo del Toro: It was a great game.

Brian Altano (IGN): Our audience, everyone and all my friends, we were ecstatic when we found out that you were working on a horror game with Kojima.

Guillermo del Toro: And that was Kojima. I mean, I’m glad to get on the ride for free, but everything that ended up being P.T., it was him.

Brian Altano (IGN): But around 11 years ago, I think at Comic-Con actually, you said you never wanted to work on a video game again.

Guillermo del Toro: No, never.

Brian Altano (IGN): Has that changed at all?

Guillermo del Toro: No, not at all.

Brian Altano (IGN): Wow.

Guillermo del Toro: It’s simply too – we developed Insane, and then that went down. A lot of the ideas later, I saw stuff that was done in other video games that was similar. And I went, “Well, somebody did it. That’s great.” But we were aiming really high.

Brian Altano (IGN): Were you ever able to sort of, in the same way [with] your unmade movies, cherry pick some of those video game ideas and put them into your movies?

Guillermo del Toro: No, not on that. I mean, with Kojima, I had an idea that he didn’t use that I hope to use in a different media someday. But with Hideo, the great thing is to go to karaoke and Shabu-shabu. If the game happens or not, it’s immaterial. He knows very good restaurants.

Brian Altano (IGN): Dinner and karaoke is number one.

Guillermo del Toro: I love that man. He’s one of those guys you meet that you go, you might as well be in the Renaissance. You are in front of a pure artist, and he cares about one thing: stories. That’s it.

Brian Altano (IGN): I love that.

Guillermo del Toro: Jim Cameron, same thing. But with two guns and a belt of bullets. Jim is like, I’ve never met nor will I ever meet, nor mankind will ever have, somebody with a will like he has and the intelligence.

Brian Altano (IGN): You’ve created tons of original stories, but you’ve also played in other people’s sandboxes sort of with adaptations, classic stuff like Pinocchio and Frankenstein. You don’t want to make a video game ever. We’ll close that door for good, but would you ever adapt a video game story into a movie?

Guillermo del Toro: You know, I tried. We had a very contentious call about a couple of games. I find that the dynamics of a video game are very different than a movie. They may be cinematically similar in terms of the camera moving and this and that, but the storytelling is very different, because you’re not solving puzzles. You’re not assembling. When we made the structure for Insane, we created what I call a mandala. You have to give the illusion of an infinite sandbox and you lead audiences to the right or to the left through their ‘own decisions,’ but you sort of have to corner them. So it’s a very different thing. So adapting it, BioShock, we had a couple of calls. They are probably one of the most disastrous calls I’ve ever had. So no, f**k no.

Brian Altano (IGN): I want to talk to you a bit about creating your own world versus adapting someone else. Do you go into those things with the same philosophy, when you make an original story?

Guillermo del Toro: I have to.

Brian Altano (IGN): You have to.

Guillermo del Toro: You have to. I mean, my Pinocchio is not, and it is, Pinocchio. My Frankenstein is as referential, but as different as it needs to be to the text. You want the text by the book. You do the movie. Read it and make your own movie. That’s easy. It’s on the shelf. You’re not altering it. You’re not going and saying every book now has to reflect my movie. No. And the book exists, and it’s so intimate. So what you do is a very interesting process. For example, what I do is I take the entire book and I drop it on final draft. Then I accumulate research material and I drop it on final draft. The Crimean War and Atomy Lessons, all of that. Then I lay all my books pertinent to that on a table. Then I do notes. And then finally, I ended up with Frankenstein, and it was like a 700-and-something-page working document, originally. And then you go line by line and you say, “I am out. I don’t need it. I don’t need this. I need this.” You write on the side of a piece of paper. And little by little, you sort of get into the DNA of the story, and you wear it and you zip it up and then you take a walk. You say, “Okay, now I exist in this world. Where do I want to go today?” And then the rule is, “Am I interested or am I bored?” If you are bored when you’re writing it, the audiences will be bored when they’re watching it. But if you are intrigued, and then you say, “What are the fundamental questions the audience has about this material? What are the fundamental set pieces?” Pinocchio or Frankenstein both have to have a creation scene. You want to see them being put together. So you must. Pinocchio must join a carnival. He must declare what it is to be human. If it’s the original thing, he has to become a boy. If it’s in my story, he just has to be himself and sacrifice himself, and so on and so forth. And then you are wearing the world. When my kids were young, we would go and I would say, “Look, we’re not going to have an agenda. When we’re in Paris, we’re not going to say 10 to 10:15, Eiffel Tower. 10:30 to 10:45, the Arc de Triomphe. No, because that’s being a tourist.

Brian Altano (IGN): That’s a terrible way to vacation.

Guillermo del Toro: I said, “We’re travelers. Wherever we are, at any given time in the day, we’re in Paris. That’s it. So relax, breathe in, breathe out.” Same with this. Wherever we are, if we are wearing the world, you are in Frankenstein. You are in Pinocchio. People may have an issue. Why wouldn’t I have done it like that? Good. Take 20 years of your life and show me your version.”

Brian Altano (IGN): And you know what? I would rather see something like that and feel something than see an adaptation. And there’s been so many, even recently of Pinocchio where you feel nothing.

Guillermo del Toro: It’s about, does it evoke the latent potency of the myth? I mean, when I saw the Odyssey, did it make me feel that it was oomph filmmaking? Was I watching something that was monumental, epic, completely intended? Yes. Was it exactly what? I don’t care. I’m there to see what he did. If you go and if you listen to the Sex Pistols singing my way, you don’t talk about Frank Sinatra. You would be absolutely remiss to say, “Well, Sinatra did it different.” Of course he did it different, moron, it’s Sinatra. These are the fucking Sex Pistols. Listen to them. Don’t listen to a thing that is not playing on the fucking radio.

Brian Altano (IGN): I love that. Yeah. I think that’s the way it should be, right?

Guillermo del Toro: That’s the way it is.

Brian Altano (IGN): It is the way it is. I think my beef with a lot of stuff now is that people want a literal one-to-one adaptation of a thing that they already experienced.

Guillermo del Toro: Well, I don’t think it’s even that. I mean, I think that we — There was a joke. It used to be about the French, the joke. Two Frenchmen are arguing on the street and a third one comes in and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I disagree.” That’s the internet. Two people arguing on something, and somebody has to come in and put both of them in their place.

Brian Altano (IGN): Yes.

Guillermo del Toro: There’s no need. The universe is not binary. The universe is diverse. There are so many answers that suit so many people, that the fact that we want to enthrone black-and-white existence instead of a delightful myriad of great possibilities, which are suited to your moment, to your soul, it’s dictatorial. I think that the level of human discourse after COVID got noticeably low. And I think now we came out of it a little crazier, a little meaner, and we cannot — there’s the Zoolander Center for people that can’t read good. That’s where we are. We exist in the Zoolander Center for people that can’t read good.

Brian Altano (IGN): I think, obviously, there’s a little bit of hope I guess, on the optimistic side, is that this year there’s been a really interesting resurgence or surgence, of younger filmmakers making original horror movies.

Guillermo del Toro: And a younger audience going to it. I mean, look, it is the horrible duty of the young to prove every f**king moron that came before them wrong. That’s historically the duty of the young. That’s why it’s so hard to be young. I’m 62, I take anticoagulants. I’m past that. But it is the duty of the young to say, “We won’t stand. This aggression will not stand, dude.” They have to. And I think every now and then — I’m old enough that I was there when Blair Witch rephrased a certain way — I mean, I was there as a kid when George [Lucas] or Steven [Spielberg] came in with Jaws or Star Wars, and we’ve never seen anything like it. I was there when. So every now and then, things have to get rephrased. But storytelling is what makes us what we are humans. So it needs to be rephrased. You cannot hold the academia of it all only. There are two functions that are very different: The academic tradition exists not as a gatekeeper, but as a gate opener. Now, come on in and rearrange the room. That’s the way I see or work. That’s why I like the extras on the Blu-rays. It’s not, “Look at how it’s done.” No, it’s like, “These are the tools. What are you going to do with them?”

Brian Altano (IGN): You can make it, too. So you’re optimistic for the future?

Guillermo del Toro: I’m optimistic about the possibilities, yeah. Very much so. When you talk about the medieval [period], when people say, “The Middle Ages were very dark.” Well, in Europe, not in Mesoamerica, not in the North of Africa. There were cultures where they were flourishing. When I talk about movies and cinema, I don’t just talk about American large-scale cinema. There are so many interesting movies in Europe, in Asia, and there’s really interesting movies in Latin America. There’s always great stories being told somewhere, so look for them. And the other day, the daughter of a friend of mine, she’s listening to Karen Carpenter and her favorite song, We’ve Only Just Begun. I go, “What kind of maze do you have to go to be 12, 13, and like Karen Carpenter?” Well, the world and the library of the world is there to be rediscovered. Peter Bogdanovich used to say, “There are not old movies, just movies you have not seen.” So when I discovered The Maltese Falcon for the first time, when I discovered Ikiru, the Kurosawa movie for the first time, it didn’t matter when it was made. It was fresh for me.

Brian Altano (IGN): I think that’s the perfect place to end. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Del Toro. I hope you get to keep making cool monsters forever.

Guillermo del Toro: I hope I take a vacation. That’s really what I want.

Brian Altano (IGN): Can we do a quick lightning round? And then I’ll let you out of here.

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, man.

Brian Altano (IGN): Okay, here we go. I’m going to have to keep you as quick as possible here.

Guillermo del Toro: Let’s do this.

Brian Altano (IGN): What is the first thing that ever scared you?

Guillermo del Toro: The Outer Limits, an episode called The Mutant. In terms of audiovisual scares. The first thing that scared me was my dad.

Brian Altano (IGN): What’s the most recent thing that scared you?

Guillermo del Toro: Oh, the news.

Brian Altano (IGN): Same. What’s the scariest movie ever made?

Guillermo del Toro: Well, it’s personal. I mean, I think it really is. I would say for me, if I’m experiencing it in the theater, Alien and The Shining and Jaws. Those three had me on the edge of my seat.

Brian Altano (IGN): What’s your favorite movie monster of all time?

Guillermo del Toro: That’s hard, but the creature of Frankenstein or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, it’s a toss up.

Brian Altano (IGN): What’s the best video game ever made?

Guillermo del Toro: They’re so different. I mean, I love Left 4 Dead. Death Stranding made me cry. Shadow of the Colossus made me introspective about so many intangible things. There’s not only one. BioShock! It’s a world I could get lost in for ages.

Brian Altano (IGN): What’s the most recent great video game that you’ve played?

Guillermo del Toro: I’m more into, not necessarily console games. Dead Cells was really interesting to me. I just hate respawning because you get all the way there, you go all the way to 35 levels, and then you start again, and you get faster! But please, please do a version without respawning. For the older, elderly players, please give us a way to come back.

Brian Altano (IGN): Life is short. I don’t want to keep responding.

Guillermo del Toro: I’m available. Contact me and send it to me, please. I beg you. I like the world. Great design.

Brian Altano (IGN): I think you’d like Castlevania. That’s kind of –

Guillermo del Toro: Yeah, I’ve never played Castlevania.

Brian Altano (IGN): That’s what you’re looking for. It’s Dead Cells, but you don’t have to start from the beginning every time.

Guillermo del Toro: Really? Well, there’s a lot of games I have not played. So if you can recommend, yeah.

Brian Altano (IGN): I’ll get you a list.

Guillermo del Toro: Journey.

Brian Altano (IGN): Journey’s amazing.

Guillermo del Toro: Amazing. Oh my God, what a bite. Monument Valley.

Brian Altano (IGN): Yes.

Guillermo del Toro: These are worlds that I love. And then every day of my life, every moment I have free, I’m still playing Angry Birds.

Brian Altano (IGN): Angry Birds?

Guillermo del Toro: I’m really good at it. I’m really good at it.

Brian Altano (IGN): Guillermo, you could have given me a thousand guesses, and I would not have pinned you as an Angry Birds guy.

Guillermo del Toro: It’s not exactly a connoisseur choice, but every day, every day is ridiculous. It’s like I just go, let me hit this. I want all the stars, a perfect game on every level they ever put out.

Brian Altano (IGN): I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for your time today. This is a blast. My

Guillermo del Toro: My pleasure. Thank you. Best of luck.