Odds are, you know the story of The Adventures of Pinocchio: a woodworker carves a boy out of pine, and a fairy brings him to life. Desperate to please his father, the young Pinocchio embarks on a quest to learn what it takes to be a real boy, finally succeeding after a series of harrowing adventures. Guillermo del Toro’s new stop-motion take also  follows this structure, albeit with a healthy helping of the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s equally macabre and romantic sensibilities. But it’s the film’s conclusion that serves as a radical yet necessary corrective to the original tale. Read on for a look at how del Toro arrived at that very different interpretation of the meaning of Pinocchio.

🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

The final act of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio hits most of the story’s broad strokes: a giant fish swallows up Pinocchio’s father Geppetto, and Pinocchio rescues him. But in the aftermath, the film takes an unexpected turn: Pinocchio dies in a land mine explosion as they escape the beast’s jaws. This is not an uncommon occurrence,  as over the course of the film, Pinocchio dies several times and is repeatedly given an audience with Death in the afterlife, where he waits for a few moments and then is brought back to life. But this time, with Geppetto drowning in the land of the living, Pinocchio has no time to waste. He makes a deal with Death: He will give up his immortality, in exchange for returning to life in time to save his father.

Watch the Cast of Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Record LinesThat puppet has pipes!

In dragging Geppetto to land, Pinocchio exhausts himself and passes away — this time, it seems, for good. As his father holds the lifeless puppet in his arms, he finds the words he couldn’t earlier in the film. “Be exactly who you are,” he tells his son. “I love you, exactly as you are.”

It’s in keeping with the film’s manic, spidery version of its title character. “We wanted to create a Pinocchio who was actually hyperactive, hard to control,” del Toro told Netflix’s Skip Intro podcast. “Right in the beginning, he is a little bit of a hard force to control. He’s not a pleasant, angelic little creature. And we wanted a Geppetto that actually was irascible, or was way over his head with this. And that makes the movie real.” This conflict comes to a head when Geppetto drives Pinocchio away with one too many comparisons to his deceased, “real” son Carlo. But unlike other versions of the tale, Pinocchio doesn’t change to win his father’s love — Geppetto does.

“It’s never been told this way,” del Toro told Netflix at Pinocchio’s red carpet premiere. “It’s never been done in favor of disobedience; instead, in favor of obedience. We believe disobedience is a need and a virtue right now. We wanted to show that you don’t have to be changed by what people tell you. You should be who you are.”

In keeping with del Toro’s famous love for ‘monsters’ of all shapes and sizes, his Pinocchio does not become a ‘real boy’. Instead, the film asserts that he was a real boy all along. “It’s Pinocchio that transforms the people around him, not transforms himself to please,” del Toro told Skip Intro. “Geppetto starts the film talking about perfection. ‘Look at this pine cone. It’s not perfect. We’ve got to find a perfect one.’ And he ends up embracing his son on the beach.”

In the film’s final scenes, Pinocchio sees the living creatures around him slowly pass away, as he lives on, undying but not quite immortal. It’s another choice inspired by del Toro’s personal philosophy, voiced by Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) in the film’s final line: “What happens, happens, and then we’re gone.”

“None of us is important. So while we are together, all of us are important,” del Toro continued. “There’s an underlying theme that is very, very profound for me, which is to understand that the metronome of life is death. There’s actually no tragedy in going. There’s a tragedy in wasting our life while we are together.”

It’s an ending not necessarily in keeping with del Toro’s other work: as his good friend and fellow director Alfonso Cuarón pointed out to him, his films often end with characters finding peace only in the embrace of the afterlife. “And I think he has a point,” del Toro said. “It was very moving for me to do Pinocchio, because he stays alive. That’s the difference with all my other movies. He stays alive after everybody dies.”

Pinocchio lives on, unchanging, and so does del Toro. Even after winning two Oscars for The Shape of Water, his work remains as off-kilter as ever. “I got there doing what I do. I did not change,” del Toro said of his unlikely status as an awards-season heavyweight. “The times I’ve been there, I’ve been there with Nightmare Alley, with Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. I’ve been there with movies that I do. This is what I do. Pinocchio is what I do. That’s the satisfaction. Like Pinocchio, you didn’t have to change to be loved.”

Go Behind the Scenes of Guillermo del Toro's PinocchioFor stop-motion animation, everything has to be built. And we mean everything.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.