Feel free to pick and choose — you don’t need to run every question in one sitting, though you may want to keep all three versions within reach: the novel, the 1940 Disney film, and del Toro’s 2022 stop-motion. Three Pinocchios for the price of one book club meeting.

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THREE PINOCCHIOS: THE ORIGINAL, THE CLASSIC, AND THE DARK FAIRY TALE
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  1. The Source Nobody Quite Read: Collodi’s Original Novel
    Carlo Collodi’s 1883 Adventures of Pinocchio is considerably stranger, more episodic, more violent, and more darkly comic than either film version suggests. Pinocchio is not a charming dreamer — he is impulsive, ungrateful, and frequently catastrophic to be around. He gets his feet burned off. He lets Jiminy Cricket get smashed with a hammer. He is hanged. Did anyone in your group read the Collodi original before watching either film? And does knowing the source makes the Disney film’s transformation of the material feel like a softening, a betrayal, or simply a different story built from the same raw material?
  2. Disney 1940: The Pinocchio Everyone Carries in Their Head
    The 1940 Disney film has become so culturally embedded that for most people it simply is Pinocchio — the Blue Fairy, Jiminy Cricket as conscience, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” But it is itself a substantial adaptation of Collodi — sanitized, emotionally simplified, and organized around a clear moral thesis (obedience and goodness lead to reward) that the novel neither endorses nor shares. Before watching del Toro’s version: did you experience the 1940 film as the “real” Pinocchio, as one adaptation among many, or as something you loved as a child that you’ve never quite revisited critically?
  3. Del Toro’s Pinocchio: The Anti-Disney, or the More Faithful Collodi?
    Del Toro has said his film is in some ways more faithful to Collodi’s spirit than Disney’s, even though it departs from the novel in plot. He kept Collodi’s darkness, its moral ambiguity, its willingness to let Pinocchio fail and suffer and still find meaning. Do you agree that del Toro’s film is closer to Collodi’s spirit than Disney’s, even while being less faithful to its events? And what does it mean for an adaptation to be “spiritually faithful” to a source it has substantially reimagined?
  4. Adaptation by Addition: Del Toro’s Fascist Italy
    The biggest departure from both Collodi and Disney is del Toro’s setting: 1930s Fascist Italy, with Mussolini’s government as a backdrop and the pressure to conform—politically, ideologically, and physically—as the story’s explicit theme. Neither the novel nor the 1940 film comes close to this. Did the Fascist Italy setting feel like a legitimate expansion of the Pinocchio story’s themes, or like del Toro imposing his own preoccupations on material that didn’t require them? And what does setting a story about a puppet who won’t conform inside a totalitarian state that demands conformity add to what Pinocchio has always meant?

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THE VOICES: WHEN CASTING IS ABOUT SOUND, NOT FACE
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  1. Voice Casting as Artistic Choice
    Del Toro’s Pinocchio uses an extraordinary voice cast — Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket, David Bradley as Geppetto, Gregory Mann as Pinocchio, Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura, Tilda Swinton as both the Wood Sprite and Death, Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe, Ron Perlman as the Podestà. In animation, voice casting is a different art from live-action casting—the actor’s entire instrument is their voice, and the visual character is designed independently. Which voice felt most like the character you expected, and which surprised you most? And did any voice performance give you something you couldn’t have gotten from a live-action face?
  2. Ewan McGregor’s Sebastian Cricket: Not Jiminy
    Jiminy Cricket in Disney’s 1940 film is assigned to Pinocchio as an official conscience — a gentle, persistent, frequently ignored moral guide. Del Toro’s Sebastian J. Cricket is different: a writer who has lived inside Geppetto’s wooden Pinocchio for years, narrating the story we’re watching. McGregor plays him with a quality of theatrical self-regard that is both funnier and more flawed than Jiminy. Which version of the cricket character felt more interesting to you — Jiminy as designated moral authority, or Sebastian as unreliable narrator with a personal stake? And does making the conscience character into a self-interested writer change the story’s moral framework?
  3. Tilda Swinton as Both the Wood Sprite and Death: The Same Actress, Two Sisters
    One of del Toro’s most deliberate choices is casting Tilda Swinton as both the Wood Sprite (the magical creature who brings Pinocchio to life) and Death (who appears each time Pinocchio dies in the afterlife). Making these two figures sisters, and giving them the same voice, argues something specific about the relationship between life and death: they are not opposites but kin. Did this work for you as a conceptual choice? And does casting Swinton — whose screen presence is itself slightly otherworldly — add something to the mythology the story builds around mortality?
  4. Gregory Mann’s Pinocchio: The Uncanny in a Child’s Voice
    Gregory Mann was a child actor when he recorded Pinocchio’s voice, and his performance has a quality of genuine bewilderment and emotional directness that professional adult actors approximating a child might not achieve. The stop-motion Pinocchio is deliberately unsmoothed, rough-hewn, visually uncomfortable — and Mann’s voice matches that aesthetic. Did the voice performance feel unified with the visual design? And in comparison with Collodi’s Pinocchio (who is more comprehensively terrible) and Disney’s (who is more comprehensively sweet), where does del Toro’s Pinocchio land on the scale of childlike believability?
  5. David Bradley’s Geppetto: Grief Made Flesh
    Del Toro’s most significant reimagining of Geppetto is making him a man in profound, active grief — who carves Pinocchio specifically from the tree that marks his dead son Carlo’s grave, and who at first resents the living puppet for not being Carlo. This is not Collodi’s Geppetto (a craftsman who wants a son) or Disney’s (a kindly old toymaker with a wish). David Bradley plays him as a man whose love is real, whose damage is real, and who has to learn to accept the child he has rather than mourn the child he lost. Did this Geppetto feel like an improvement on the source, a justified departure, or a reimagining that changed the story’s emotional center?

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THREE VERSIONS, THREE MORAL UNIVERSES
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  1. What Each Version Thinks Pinocchio Must Learn
    The three versions of the story teach different lessons through the same character. Collodi’s Pinocchio learns that obedience, hard work, and deference to authority lead to reward — a conservative, didactic moral. Disney’s Pinocchio learns that wishing, goodness, and conscience (represented by Jiminy) lead to transformation. Del Toro’s Pinocchio learns something more complicated: his flaws and distinctiveness are not problems to be corrected, and mortality is not a punishment but part of what makes life meaningful. Which moral framework resonated most with you? And does the lesson a Pinocchio story teaches reveal something about the cultural moment it was made in?
  2. The Real Boy Question: Should Pinocchio Become Human?

Collodi’s Pinocchio earns humanity through good behavior — a moral reward. Disney’s Pinocchio earns it through love and bravery — an emotional reward. Del Toro’s Pinocchio becomes human to save his Papa and then dies in a land mine explosion. The Wood Sprite gives him life at the urging of his Papa and Sebastian, but he remains what he is — wooden, mortal in the delayed way that he outlives his loved ones but will eventually pass on, with a human soul. Did the refusal of transformation feel like the most interesting version of the story’s central question? And is there something about the cultural moment of 2022 — in which identity, authenticity, and the refusal to conform to external standards are live issues — that makes del Toro’s ending feel specifically contemporary?

  1. Death and What Happens After It: Three Approaches
    Collodi’s Pinocchio is nearly killed multiple times, presented primarily as punishment for bad behavior. Disney’s 1940 film uses death as a threat to raise the emotional stakes. Del Toro’s Pinocchio dies repeatedly and visits a liminal realm between life and death presided over by Death herself, and the film makes mortality — the fact that Pinocchio’s immortality is a burden rather than a gift — one of its central themes. Which version’s engagement with death felt most honest to you? And does del Toro’s decision to make Pinocchio’s immortality a tragedy rather than a gift change the story’s meaning from either of its predecessors?
  2. Lying and Its Consequences: The Nose Across Three Versions
    The growing nose is the single most famous element of the Pinocchio story — perhaps the most famous symbol in children’s literature for the physical consequences of dishonesty. Collodi deploys it with a moralistic directness. Disney uses it for comedy and moral instruction. Del Toro uses it sparingly and somewhat differently — Pinocchio’s nose grows when he says things he wishes were true, not merely when he lies. Did that distinction feel like a meaningful update to the symbol? And is “saying what you wish were true” a more interesting or more compassionate framing of Pinocchio’s relationship with truth than simply lying?
  3. Fascism and Conformity: A Theme Neither Collodi Nor Disney Touched
    Del Toro uses Mussolini’s Italy to make the story’s theme of nonconformity literal and political — a puppet who will not perform obedience in a state that demands it is not just unusual but genuinely dangerous. The 1940 Disney film was made during a period of rising European fascism, but it conspicuously doesn’t engage with it. Did del Toro’s political setting feel like it deepened the story’s themes or like it added a layer of historical specificity that occasionally overwhelmed the fairy tale? And is there an argument that the 1940 Disney film’s silence about the political moment of its production is itself a kind of statement?

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ANIMATION AS ADAPTATION: WHAT EACH MEDIUM ADDS
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  1. Stop-Motion as Aesthetic Argument
    Del Toro chose stop-motion animation for a specific reason: it is a medium where you can see the seams, where the maker’s hand is visible in every frame, and where the figures are neither realistic nor cartoonish but occupy a specific uncanny register. This was itself an argument about Pinocchio — a creature that is made, that shows its making, that is neither human nor fully artificial. Did the stop-motion aesthetic feel appropriate to the material? And how does it compare to the 1940 Disney animation — which was itself revolutionary for its time — as a formal choice about how a puppet story should look?
  2. The 1940 Disney Animation: What a Classic Looks Like
    The 1940 Pinocchio is widely considered one of Disney’s greatest technical and artistic achievements — the animation of Monstro the whale, the crowd scenes, the atmospheric depth. Watching it now, does it feel like a film from 1940, or does the artistry transcend its era? And does seeing it alongside del Toro’s deliberately rougher stop-motion make you appreciate the 1940 film’s smoothness as a deliberate aesthetic choice, or feel the limitations of its visual approach to difficult material?
  3. Dark Fantasy vs. Family Friendly: What Each Film Is For
    The 1940 Disney film was designed primarily as a family film—something children and adults could watch together, with the darker elements softened to allow the experience to be shared. Del Toro’s film is rated PG but has content — the grief, the Fascist violence, the meditation on death — that some find heavy going for young children. Which version do you think serves the Pinocchio story’s themes most honestly? And is there an argument that a story about the hard lessons of mortality and individuality should be difficult to watch, rather than comforting?

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PAGE VS. SCREEN VS. SCREEN: WHO UNDERSTOOD PINOCCHIO BEST?
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  1. What Collodi’s Novel Gives You That Neither Film Can
    Collodi’s prose has a specific quality — episodic, moralistic, darkly comic, genuinely strange, written in installments for a children’s newspaper and not fully planned as a coherent whole. Were there elements of the novel — specific episodes, Collodi’s particular voice, the darkness of the original punishments and rewards — that neither film quite captured? And is there a version of this story that a reader could get only from the original Italian novel, irreplaceable in either film form?
  2. Scenes That Del Toro’s Film Achieved That Neither the Novel Nor Disney Could
    Name one moment in del Toro’s film that felt like it could only exist in this specific form — stop-motion animation, this setting, this cast. The Geppetto-Pinocchio reconciliation, the afterlife sequences, the war scenes, the puppet theater. Which single moment felt like the ideal version of something the story had always been reaching for?
  3. What the 1940 Disney Film Does That Neither Collodi Nor Del Toro Can Match
    The 1940 film has something both the novel and del Toro’s film lack: the capacity to generate uncomplicated childhood delight. “When You Wish Upon a Star” is not a complicated experience. Jiminy Cricket is not a morally ambiguous narrator. The Blue Fairy’s promise is not hedged. Did you find that unambiguous warmth a limitation of the 1940 film — too simple, too reassuring — or did it do something for you that the novel’s dark comedy and del Toro’s grief couldn’t?
  4. Three Versions, Three Recommendations
    If you had to recommend one version of Pinocchio to a friend with no prior exposure to any of them, which would it be and why? Would your answer change depending on the friend’s age, their tolerance for darkness, their interest in animation as an art form, or their relationship to the stories they grew up with? And is there a correct order for experiencing all three — the one that gives each version its due and lets each surprise you in turn?

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OVERALL ADAPTATION VERDICT: WHICH PINOCCHIO EARNED ITS WOODEN HEART?
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  1. Del Toro’s Pinocchio as a Career Statement
    Del Toro spent years developing this film as a passion project, and it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It is also, unmistakably, a del Toro film — the preoccupation with outsiders and monsters, the grief and the fairy tale, the hand-crafted quality of the stop-motion matching the handcrafted quality of all his work. Does the film feel like a definitive version of the Pinocchio story, or like del Toro’s version of it in a way that foregrounds the director’s vision as much as the source? And is that foregrounding appropriate for an adaptation described as “losely based” on Collodi, or does it risk making the film more about del Toro than about Pinocchio?
  2. What Each Version Does Best
    One gold star each for Collodi’s novel, the 1940 Disney film, and del Toro’s 2022 film. They don’t have to be for the same thing. (Suggested categories: Best Darkly Comic Original Vision of a Misbehaving Puppet; Best Technical Animation Achievement of Its Era; Best Meditation on Mortality in a Film Ostensibly for Children; Best Unreliable Narrator Who Is Also a Cricket; Best Argument That Conformity Is the Real Villain.)
  3. The Pinocchio You’d Show a Child
    If you were introducing a child to the Pinocchio story for the first time, which version would you choose and at what age? The Collodi (strange, episodic, moralistic)? The 1940 Disney (warm, reassuring, technically dazzling)? Del Toro (grieving, political, morally rich but genuinely heavy)? And is there an argument that children can handle more complexity and darkness than we typically give them credit for — that del Toro’s version might be the right first Pinocchio after all?
  4. Final Club Gut Check
    On the dial from “perfect adaptation of a classic” to “loosely inspired by a famous puppet with a complicated relationship to truth,” where does del Toro’s Pinocchio land — and where does the 1940 Disney, for comparison? And the question all three versions keep asking in their different ways: what makes a person real? Is it obedience, goodness, love, the willingness to grieve, the refusal to conform, the acceptance of mortality, or simply being loved by someone who needed you? Did any version give you an answer that felt definitive — or did all three leave you somewhere that felt more honest than an answer?

Use, tweak, or mash these questions as needed — your club, your puppet.