Guillermo del Toro’s last five films have been:
1. A dark fairy tale as a metaphor for the effects of war on children, set in the midst of the Spanish Civil War
2. A superhero movie that features a war between mankind and magical creatures
3. An action movie where the heroes have to share their minds and bond emotionally so they can punch aliens from the sea better. Also Charlie Day is a scientist.
4. Basically what would happen if all three Bronte sisters got hammered and wrote a book with Lord Byron.
and 5. An adorable woman falls in love with a fish man. Not a merman. A FISH MAN.No one in Hollywood is having more fun.
okay Pan’s Labyrinth is not the only film with a political message
3. actually the aliens symbolize natural disasters brought about by climate change (it’s literally canon that they couldn’t attack earth until greenhouse grasses & industrial waste “terraformed” the planet for them)
5. she’s not just adorable she’s disabled; not just any fishman – a South American fishman, who is enslaved, experimented on and exploited by the American government and then freed thanks to the cooperative civil disobedience of a disabled woman, a black woman, and a gay man; the underlying message being that marginalized ppl must work together in solidarity against white patriarchy
2. And don’t forget that Hellboy is about a literal demon child summoned by Nazis who is befriended by the soldiers who find him, and rather than helping the Nazis, he helps defeat them and other bad guys.
Later, he grows frustrated with being kept like a slave – and angry about other non-humans being treated disrespectfully – and ignores orders from authoritarians and racists, going off on his own to the point of putting himself in danger in order to do the right thing. The show says, If a literal demon can be better than humans, humans can certainly be better than we are.
If that’s not political…
Published
queerlybeloveds 