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<\/p>\nAnother San Diego Comic Con has come and gone, bringing some of pop culture\u2019s best to Hall H and beyond, with a smattering of worthy updates this year. Avengers: Doomsday still feels like a desperate Hail Mary. The announcements that Ryan Gosling will don Ghost Rider\u2019s flaming skull (stealth Drive sequel?) and that the excellent David Jonsson is set to play T\u2019Challa\u2019s son in Ryan Coogler\u2019s Black Panther 3 showcase why casting directors deserve an Oscar. We\u2019re also getting another Air Bud and Coyote vs. Acme screened for attendees, making for a solid Con for all attendees.<\/p>\n
Top-shelf moments for cinephiles aren\u2019t always a comic-con staple, but this year had a stellar one. It\u2019s been 20 years since the premiere of Guillermo del Toro\u2019s masterful Pan\u2019s Labyrinth, and the monster maestro reminded us why it was such a special film. Labyrinth will be released theatrically by Cineverse and Fathom on October 9, presented in both 3D and HDR versions. Del Toro promises \u201cAbsolutely no goddamn AI\u201d was used in the film\u2019s 3D reconstruction.<\/p>\n
He noted that he and Cineverse are paying for the 3D conversion, and del Toro insisted that human artists make the changes. He said:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re protecting is the beauty and the redeeming power of art\u2026 it\u2019s about [how] we\u2019re protecting a lineage of art. If we cut a generation of people from learning their craft, you\u2019re cutting the rest of the history of that medium away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He acknowledged that a human-led process takes longer, but details how James Cameron advised him to take the time the process needs. \u201cIf you take less than 300 days, I\u2019ll kill you,\u201d Cameron said. As del Toro summarizes, \u201cWhen you convert to 3D, here\u2019s the two ways you can do it: quick, or you can do it good, and I chose good.\u201d<\/p>\n
To commemorate the rerelease (timed to the auteur\u2019s birthday, no less!), Cineverse pulled out all the stops, complete with roundtables, a Hall H panel, and an after-party debuting key scenes of the new release. Among the scenes screened in gorgeous 3D are Ofelia\u2019s first encounter with the otherworldly Faun, and a harrowing scene with the infamous Pale Man (both creatures performed by Doug Jones). In both scenes, the 3D added beautifully set-apart layers, giving greater depth to the scene. (It didn\u2019t hurt that we viewed the 3D scenes through 3D goggles shaped like the Pale Man\u2019s hands).<\/p>\n
In the roundtable interviews, Doug Jones described his process for capturing such distinctive creatures for the film:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a sit-down with Guillermo del Toro before a movie starts filming, you get notes from him, and he also trusts my instincts. God bless him for that, \u2019cause they\u2019re not always right\u2026 I don\u2019t know, but he seems to think so. \u2029So he\u2019ll give me a couple of bullet points. Like for the Faun character, he wanted me to study the hind quarter of barn animals, so look at the back of a cow and a goat and see how their hooves meet the ground\u2026 Pale Man, when I came to that scene, I went into it being floppy and disjointed. He said, \u2018Dougie, no, give me George Romero zombie.\u2019 \u2029I tightened it up, and I made it more stiff. He\u2019s been asleep for a long time, of course. Collaboration is everything with Guillermo del Toro, and I love that he trusts us actors with what we bring to the table.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Director of Photography Guillermo Navarro (who won an Oscar for his work on the film) discussed the secret to making the ever-popular Pale Man so memorably frightening: \u201cYou see, a horror movie would have been dark, sketchy,\u201d he explains, \u201cand this is a feast of color, the banquet, so that those grapes\u2026 you want to eat them, all those things. It\u2019s living the experience to her, so it\u2019s her that is navigating, and then you\u2019re seeing it how she sees it.\u201d Navarro went on to discuss how del Toro\u2019s filmmaking instincts were unique relative to the Hollywood standard. \u201cIt\u2019s actually the opposite way of how another filmmaker would have done it. \u2029This is like a luxury suite, right? With a fire behind him, all the elements. And then we used elements of the presentation of the Pale Man with the captain later.\u201d \u2029<\/p>\n
At the Hall H panel, del Toro explained that subtle changes made in the process of conversion will enhance the story. Like Navarro\u2019s choices that play with the distinction between the natural and supernatural worlds, these distinctions will be amplified. \u201cI think we can make it so that it is expressively powerful, so the real world is a little flatter, and the fantasy world has a huge depth,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo thematically it will add to the movie. I was honestly not expecting how it was going to affect me seeing it. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detailing some of the choices made, del Toro added, \u201cI think that we always color-coded and shade-coded the real world as cold, straight lines, and the light is a lot more cold, and then the fantasy world has warmth, and uterine colors, and it has rounded shapes. Well, this adds to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pan\u2019s Labyrinth re-release is set for October 9, in both HDR and 4K 3D versions, from Cineverse.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jeff Ewing is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and critic in Los Angeles. He has bylines in Forbes, Collider, Gold Derby, Inverse, The Playlist, That Hollywood Show, and elsewhere, and is an RT-certified critic and Critics Choice member. His latest film is a documentary about the studios and artists keeping stop-motion animation alive in our increasingly digital age.<\/p>\n \t\tContinue Reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another San Diego Comic Con has come and gone, bringing some of pop culture\u2019s best to Hall H…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-721337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/90abb26263fd0fcdd7a27bfb99e8bfbdd0375144546d48b3be47824976ed2e03.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/a>Latest posts by Jeff Ewing (see all<\/a>) <\/p>\n