We're still pretty sad that we're never going to Guillermo del Toro's vision for the H. P. Lovecraft story At the Mountains of Madness. Unfortunately budget cuts and Prometheus killed this movie, but it will live on forever in the much whispered about pages of Guillermo del Toro's sketch book.
We've seen GDT's beautiful monster-filled sketch-book images before, but never concepts showing what del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness could have looked like... until now. Get a good look at the director's early ideas for this Lovecraft adaptation.
Thanks to Reddit for the heads up, and for spotting these new pages.
At the Mountains of Madness
At the Mountains of Madness (to the right is an early version of the pale man from Pan's Labyrinth)
At the Mountains of Madness
At the Mountains of Madness (and Pan's Labyrinth)
And then we threw in a few more images, just because we love del Toro's work:
Devil's Backbone
Blade 2
Hellboy
Hellboy
Pan's Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth
Pacific Rim
Hellboy 2
Hellboy 2
Hellboy 2
Hellboy 2
Hellboy 2
More images over at Imgur.
DISCUSSION
This looks fantastic, but what is with all this Prometheus hate? I seriously don't understand how any sci-fi fan could not love that movie. Now, true, I'm in the decided minority who kinda liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine and flat-out LOVE David Lynch's Dune (dude, it's a classic. Deal with it.)... but still... I thought Prometheus was such a rare beast: a big, expensive Hollywood sci-fi flick that was equal parts baffling and visually immersive. I think it's simply the fact - observed by William Goldman - that when Americans go to movies, they want answers to questions, not more questions... and Prometheus demanded attention and thought: who were the Engineers? What happened to their clearly grand-scale genetic engineering experiment? We didn't get an answer... and that pisses people off. I did think that final tag intended to tie it together to Alien felt forced, but it was suitably gruesome, right? I don't know. Sad about Del Toro's non-starter efforts, but it's a sign of the squeamishness of an audience unwilling to put any thought into their entertainment - and I'm looking at YOU, so-called sci-fi freaks at io9, just as much as the popcorn-movie-weaned proles.