{"id":76012,"date":"2025-09-20T22:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T22:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/76012\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T22:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T22:40:10","slug":"guillermo-del-toro-on-frankenstein-being-inspired-by-korean-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/76012\/","title":{"rendered":"Guillermo del Toro on Frankenstein, Being Inspired by Korean Cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGuillermo del Toro<\/a> wowed the 30th Busan International<\/a> Film Festival Thursday night by sharing the Imax cut of his $120 million take on Frankenstein<\/a> in all its gore and its glory. He followed up the next morning by winning over the hearts of anyone who had missed out on that experience here in South Korea by sharing his finely-tuned knowledge of the local cinema industry and its heroes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s been a cinematic bond, the filmmaker said, that\u2019s been forged shared by similarities between two cultures.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think Korea and Mexico have many things in common,\u201d said Del Toro, on meeting the press Friday. \u201cWe are very repressed, very drunken, and we are attracted to chaos. I like that very much because when we tackle a genre, we tackle it through the prism of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Mexican filmmaker then name checked two of the biggest auteurs Korea has in directors Park Chan-wook \u2014 whose new thriller No Other Choice opened this year\u2019s BIFF \u2014 and Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), who credits the festival with first discovering his genius.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey bring the chaos, the ridiculous, the sublime, the poetic, and the horrible all in the same room,\u201d said Del Toro, who then name-checked Bong\u2019s debut Memories of Murder (2023) as among his favorite movies.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGuillermo del Toro (left) and Oscar Isaac on the set of \u2018Frankenstein.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is not an American procedural,\u201d said Del Toro of the film, which follow a hapless cop (Song Kang-ho) as he bungles an ongoing case. \u201cIt\u2019s an existential deep meditation and an imperfect investigation. It\u2019s so beautiful to not have this Manichean idea of good and evil that American cinema [has]. [Bong] is the master of this science.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe more you become familiar with Korean cinema, the more you feel the instinct, the manner, the culture. They make [films] unique to the way they do it. Every time I want to feel a little more alive, I watch a Korean movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe more than 400 tickets to Thursday night\u2019s debut of the Imax version of Frankenstein were snapped up in seconds, according to fans who missed out but still gathered outside Busan\u2019s CGV Centum City cinema complex on Thursday in the hope of somehow sneaking in.<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Toro later treated the faithful to 30 minutes of Q&A in which he shared the themes he had wanted to explore in his adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s classic novel, which stars Jacob Elordi as the monster and Oscar Isaac\u00a0as the not-so-good doctor. \u201cI think the message that while there are tragedies in life, we still have to live is a message that really resonates with me and inspires me,\u201d told the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lucky ones on Thursday also a received copy of a limited-edition Frankenstein poster designed by Del Toro\u2019s longtime collaborator James Jean, while the filmmaker vowed to stay back until every autograph requested had been signed. The good news globally broke overnight that there would now soon be a limited release of the movie across a few Imax markets, Netflix<\/a> is meanwhile rolling a small theatrical rollout from Oct. 17 before Frankenstein makes its streaming debut on Nov. 7.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked Friday why he thought audiences were so attracted to monsters, there was a little chuckle from the director, who revealed he had wanted to make this movie since he was a small boy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe monsters are almost like pagan saints of imperfection,\u201d said the director. \u201cThey allow us to make peace with the darker sides of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guillermo del Toro wowed the 30th Busan International Film Festival Thursday night by sharing the Imax cut of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[2786,18,117,11489,19187,19,1452,17,327,127,20674],"class_list":{"0":"post-76012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-frankenstein","12":"tag-guillermo-del-toro","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-netflix","18":"tag-thr-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}