Small Details You Missed In Pinocchio

In Carlo Collodi's beloved 1883 novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio," Geppetto is depicted as a woodcarver of many specialties. He uses this multifaceted skill to create Pinocchio, a marionette with the appearance of a little boy. In Disney's 1940 adaptation of the tale, Geppetto is also shown to be a master clock builder. This trait is very much present in 2022's "Pinocchio." As in Disney's animated take on the story, this Geppetto builds utterly gorgeous cuckoo clocks featuring intricate carvings of people, animals, and natural landscapes. 

Geppetto's association with timepieces brings to mind a very different movie that also happens to be directed by Robert Zemeckis: The 1985 sci-fi blockbuster "Back to the Future," which stands as one of his most popular and cherished films. That movie tells viewers it's going to be about the passage of time by starting off with a slow pan of the clocks that line the walls of mad scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown's workshop. Similarly, when "Pinocchio" moves into Geppetto's workshop, viewers see a massive wall of gorgeous clocks. 

This isn't just a fun coincidence between two Zemeckis films — it's a potent symbol of the themes that distinguish them. In "Pinocchio," Geppetto is wildly obsessed with the constant loss of time. He believes his best days, which he spent with his true love, are tragically behind him. "Back to the Future" uses time travel to tell a similarly heartfelt story about the importance of days gone by.