In Guillermo del Toro’s darker, weirder ‘Pinocchio,’ it’s Geppetto learning the lessons

“I really think this ‘Pinocchio’ represents all of our life together,” Guillermo del Toro says of his mother, who recently died. “Parents wouldn’t stay, which was very auspicious for ‘Tarzan and His Mate,’” Del Toro says of the 1934 film that starred Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan wearing what was then considered a revealing loincloth. “Yes, Mom, I love Tarzan!” Del Toro usually went to the movies with his older brother, but there was one that he caught with his mother, a film that bonded the two for the rest of their lives — a re-release of Walt Disney’s 1940 animated classic, “Pinocchio.” Watching the tale of a wooden puppet yearning to become a real boy, the young Del Toro lost himself in a story that contained con men and villains, wild children turning into donkeys and a desperate hero trying to rescue his father from the bowels of a whale. “I said to Gris, ‘Why does he look like that?’” Del Toro says, remembering a conversation he had with the artist when he began developing the film in 2008.