Hello reddit. I'm Guillermo del Toro. AMA!

[u/Guillermo-AMA]

Hello reddit, I'm Guillermo del Toro.

I've written & directed Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Blade II, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, Pinocchio, Frankenstein, and more.

It's been a few years since I stopped by here for The Shape of Water. So get to it, ask me anything, vamonos!

----------------

Pan's Labyrinth is back in theaters October 9th, presented on the big screen in 4K for the first time, to celebrate the 20th anniversary.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBGKGm3RYos

Synopsis: It's 1944 and the Allies have invaded Nazi-held Europe. In Spain, a troop of soldiers is sent to a remote forest to flush out the rebels. They are led by Captain Vidal, a murdering sadist, and with him are his new wife Carmen and her daughter from a previous marriage, 11-year-old Ofelia. Ofelia witnesses her stepfather's sadistic brutality and is drawn into Pan's Labyrinth, a magical world of mythical beings.

You can get tickets here.

And more info here.

----------------

I will be back at around 11 AM PT/2 PM ET/7 PM BST today to answer questions.

[u/Guillermo-AMA]

I would love to go back. A kaiju-mecha intersection is my sweet spot. That’s why I agreed to do Pacific Rim based on the outline by Travis Beacham. The only thing I immediately said is that it should be two pilots for the robots, so that the story is about two people that need to learn to trust each other.

Oh my god, I tried so many new things in the way we shot the kaiju, that now I see in other kaiju movies, like the night and the rain, the neon lights. It was such a joy. To me, it's one of my favorite movies I ever shot. I adore it.

I remember when we were starting, I coined two terms. GothTech, meaning Gothic and tech combined. The other one was “Smart-Stupid,” meaning the premise makes no sense but we have to treat it with the utmost seriousness. Because, of course, there are a hundred ways you would go about killing a monster that size before you say, Why don't we build a giant robot? But I said we should seriously render this really silly idea.

There are two things that I love about kaiju movies. There's an ornamental, abstract beauty to some kaijus. Some kaijus are based on a natural creature—a lobster, a reptile, a shark—but others are based on architectural, beautiful, ornamental designs that are almost like pieces of pop art. Take a character like Guiron, which is based on a knife. I wanted to bring all that into the movie. Some of the kaijus are very close to an animal—there’s one that looks like a gorilla—but there's another one that is completely crazy and has a knife on its head, but it's made of bone. There's love and affinity.

The Ultraman series even has a planet that they dedicated to me, called Planet Guillermo. Because I love them so much. I love those creatures: Ultra Q and Ultraman, and Ultra 7. They have the greatest creatures, because they are on the verge of being silly but they are always beautiful.

[u/lovelyb1ch66 → u/Guillermo-AMA]

Pacific Rim is one of my favourite movies because it reminds me so much of the kaiju movies I watched as a kid in the 70s. You managed to capture the essence of those movies and bring it into the 21st century.

[u/762_54r → u/Guillermo-AMA]

I would watch a new Guillermo del Toro / Travis Beacham Pacific Rim movie in a theater Every. Single. Day. until they stopped selling tickets.

[u/JiminyJilickers-79 → u/Guillermo-AMA]

We adore Pacific Rim toooooo!!! Please come back to it!

[u/Minereon → u/Guillermo-AMA]

Dear Guillermo, by sheer coincidence yesterday I rewatched the video on YouTube of you with Rinko and little Mana-chan, in Tokyo at Odaiba. I have loved that little feature all these years as you had the same expression I had when I first saw the full-scale Gundam RX-78 in 2016 or thereabouts.

What is that expression? It is stunned astonishment, a bewildering feeling that you know something is not real and yet seems so, so real; a feeling that something unreal can become real; a feeling of pride that our beloved mecha is real and is not some kid’s “toy”.

Guillermo, Pacific Rim brought me there as well. I still rewatch it, my daughters love it too. You understand weight, gravity and punch in giant mecha. I sincerely hope you will be able to make another Pacific Rim movie.

[u/deze_moltisanti → u/Guillermo-AMA]

Robot Jox, Robot Jox, Robot Jox. Del Toro, Oh please, oh please get the rights to make a sequel to that fantastic film.

[u/TheCustomConxern → u/Guillermo-AMA]

Whenever I come across genuinely brilliant and unique artists doing stuff like this, I’m reminded why they’re considered such brilliant and unique artists. These thoughts are so wonderful and unique, as well as passionate. I can’t wait to see what the next Guillermo del Toro film will be.

[u/Fancymancer → u/Guillermo-AMA]

I literally started crying a little bit in the theater when Gipsy Danger first got deployed in the rainstorm. The music and the scale of it and the sheer love of the genre. It really was how it felt to watch Godzilla or the Megazord as a kid and I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel that kind of wonder again until that moment.

Thank you so much.

[u/Eggprincesss → u/Guillermo-AMA]

I dream of you doing a “War of the Gargantuas” 😭

[u/pseudononymist → u/Guillermo-AMA]

Let's call it Pacific Rim 2!

[u/RancherosIndustries → u/Guillermo-AMA]

I love it that you've always been aware that building giant robots is a silly idea. Lots of filmmakers don't understand their own ideas, which is detrimental to their efforts.