3/22/2023 0 Comments Dark angel animatronicNot only does Cronos mark the beginning of del Toro’s habit of linking insects with everlasting life, it also prefigures several of the themes that will come to play in his second film, Mimic, as the villainous industrialist de la Guardia in Cronos muses, “Who says insects aren’t God’s favored creatures?” It’s a sentiment that was meant to be echoed by the protagonists of Mimic years later, though the lines wound up on the cutting room floor. Be it gold or eternal life, eternal flesh.” 4 The Device-through the living insect trapped inside it-draws out mortal blood, filters it, and replaces it, adding a drop of the alchemical “Fifth Essence” which brings with it eternal life. What most people know about alchemy is that it was the quest to find a way to transform lead into gold, but del Toro talks about the search for the “ultimate depuration of vile matter-be it lead or flesh-and turn it into the ultimate expression of itself. In his commentary, he describes his inspiration for the Device, which came from alchemy. In the commentary track for Cronos, del Toro says that he wanted the Catholic image of the archangel to hold inside itself the promise of a “more prosaic, more tangible eternal life.” 3 It’s the first time that del Toro juxtaposes insects with Catholic imagery in his films, but it won’t be the last. This similarity is only underscored by del Toro’s choice to first reveal the Device hidden inside the base of an archangel statue. The titular Cronos Device is a small, golden mechanism in the shape of an insect-with a living insect trapped inside-that grants its user eternal life by transforming them into something that we would recognize as a vampire.ĭel Toro has said that his design of the Cronos Device was inspired by the jewel-encrusted Maquech Beetles that were popular as living jewelry when he was growing up in Mexico 2, but the Device also bears an obvious similarity to a reliquary, used to house the remains of saints. 1 Shot when he was only twenty-nine, it is the director’s first feature film, and also the one that lays the groundwork for many of the insect themes that will appear later in his oeuvre. “ Cronos is about immortality,” Guillermo del Toro says in Cabinet of Curiosities. In several of his films, insects take on a more thematically dense role, their presence assuming an almost religious significance, with connections to divinity, the underworld, and eternal life. Most of the time, these insects serve a primarily visual role, lending verisimilitude to a creature design or inspiring a monster’s behavior patterns, but del Toro’s inclination toward the insect doesn’t end with aesthetic appreciation. Even Hellboy 2 and Pacific Rim prominently featured swarming tooth fairies and kaiju skin parasites, respectively. Insects and insect imagery play a major role in just about every movie in his filmography, from the fly-in-amber ghosts of The Devil’s Backbone to the Reapers of Blade 2 and the vampires of The Strain, with their hive-like social structures and insectile proboscises. It’s no secret that Guillermo del Toro loves bugs.
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