{"id":94008,"date":"2017-01-03T15:22:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T15:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=94008"},"modified":"2017-01-03T15:22:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T15:22:35","slug":"trollhunters-review-does-del-toro-deliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/trollhunters-review-does-del-toro-deliver\/","title":{"rendered":"Trollhunters review: Does Del Toro deliver?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has always been clear that Guillermo del Toro has an affinity with monsters, but less apparent whether he could showcase this in a kid-friendly setting \u2013 as great as <em><strong>Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/strong><\/em>, <strong><em>Cronos<\/em><\/strong> etc are, they aren\u2019t exactly suitable for all. Now we\u2019ve seen <em><strong>Trollhunters<\/strong><\/em>, we can confirm that his range has officially been expanded.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing from Del Toro\u2019s YA book series he co-penned with Daniel Krauss, it sees a boy named Jim (Anton Yelchin, adding the role extra poignancy in one of his last ever roles) become the first human to be assigned the mantle of \u2018Trollhunter\u2019, the scene is set for Del Toro to showcase all the things we take away from his work: monsters with inner lives, visually stunning settings, and a complete lack of pretension in doing so.<\/p>\n<p>Even more amazingly, it all works. If you were wondering what a dialled-down Del Toro would look like, then the answer is something akin to the Amblin era small towns inhabited by a quintessentially Spielberg-esque populace. Almost every character and story point is familiar to fans of <em><strong>ET<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>The Goonies<\/strong><\/em> et al: the confidant best friend, Tobias (Charlie Saxton), the seemingly unattainable love interest, Claire (Lexi Medrano), the absent father figure, the overworked mother (Amy Landecker), and the school bully (Steven Yeun).<\/p>\n<p>But what makes it all stand out are the added elements, like the transparently not-what-he-seems teacher (Jonathan Hyde) and the surprisingly affecting story embarked on by overlooked troll Draal (Matthew Waterson). Throw in some creatures containing references that will sail way over the heads of its target audience (there\u2019s actually a gnome called \u2018Gnome Chompsky\u2019), and you have something that\u2019s constantly and consistently surprising. Wherever you think it\u2019s all going, prepare to have your expectations bucked in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n<p>It stands as testament that even at 26 episodes long, <em><strong>Trollhunters<\/strong><\/em> never feels like it\u2019s overstaying its welcome. With a second season likely, we couldn\u2019t be more excited at the prospect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monsters get animated in Guillermo del Toro&#8217;s Trollhunters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":94010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[8,207],"tags":[4938],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SS-Trollhunters-3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}