At the Mountains of Madness-The Screenplay

by Guillermo del Toro, Matthew Robbins (Co-Author)

The official, non-greenlight script for Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness., based off of Lovecraft's famous novella of the same name.

108 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director mostly known for his acclaimed films Pan's Labyrinth, The Devils Backbone, Crimson Peak and the Hellboy film franchise. His films draw heavily on sources as diverse as weird fiction, fantasy, horror, and war. In 2009, Del Toro released his debut novel, The Strain, co-authored with Chuck Hogan, as the first part of The Strain Trilogy, an apocalyptic horror series featuring vampires. The series continued with The Fall in 2010 and concluded with The Night Eternal in 2011.

Reviews

[Erin the Avid Reader ⚜BFF's with the Cheshire Cat⚜ · Rating 1 out of 5]

FINAL RATING: 1.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

While I don't find At the Mountains of Madness to be among Lovecraft's best work, it definitely holds an exemplary position in the category of Weird Tales horror, and I respect it as both a fine piece of literature and a creepy, atmospheric story on its own.

So when I heard del Toro was making a movie out of it, I was hyped. Yes, I did an essay a while back about how it's nearly impossible to portray Lovecraft on the big screen, but I am a fan of del Toro. Also, once I heard about the creepy wax Lovecraft statue in Guillermo del Toro's mansion, then I believed that we were truly going to get an artistic, incredible Lovecraft film from such a talented director.

Then before you knew it, the movie was stuck in development hell. There were many stories surrounding constant script updates, re-writings, writer strikes, and even an article covering del Toro considering bumping the movie from an R down to a PG-13, as the budget for this film was 150 million bucks. Let that sink in.

Finally, after many years of tumult among del Toro and Hollywood studios, they finally decided to not greenlight his movie. Part of the controversy surrounding this was because of the release of Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which was claimed to have similar footage to that of del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness, despite being two totally different projects.

So yes, there will be no movie. However, the script was released on the Lovecraft eZine website for fans to enjoy and witness. With much anticipation and sweaty fingertips, I clicked "download" and read the FINALIZED PDF script.



Oh my word...was it bad.


No. I'm being generous.


It was bloody awful!

This script is NOTHING like Lovecraft's novella. All its contains are character names, a brief mention of the alien city, and some of the creatures. The suspense and build-up Lovecraft took his time delving into is gone, and everything is just thrown in, leaving nothing to be discovered in the end. Hell! There's one part where instead of the scientists exploring the alien city, finding the mutant penguins, and discovering the Shoggoth in the cave at the very end, del Toro instead makes all these scenes occur in the very middle, where instead of being spooked by the albino, eyeless penguins--the scientists just shoot them and nod it off. The aloofness to discovering alien life is pretty strange.

Also, del Toro thought it would be brilliant to make this movie like a rip-off of The Thing. Instead of delving into the horror, atmosphere, and symbolism of Lovecraft's writing, it's a film on how pop culture and the mass public see Lovecraft...as a man who loved to write about oozing tentacles and dangling viscera. Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness is nothing more than a cheesy, angst-y gorefest with lots of mutations, guns shooting, and an explosion here and there. The script is severely dumbed down to appeal to the mass public and to Hollywood executives.

Also, one of the "climaxes" of the movie is Cthulhu sleeping below the Antarctic...even thought R'lyeh is located off the coast of South America...specifically Chile. I have no idea why del Toro added this to the movie in the first place. Discovering Cthulhu's body doesn't even play part in the book.

If you are expecting too see a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft's only novella, then this script does not cut it. It's lazy, boring, banal, and sometimes laugh-out loud atrocious. Such a severe disappointment!

[Jimmy Man · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing as it hasn't got a lot of love so far, let me be the first to say I thouroghly enjoyed this screenplay and would have loved to see it realized. While he didn't write an Oscar-winning work of art, Gullerimo gave us an impressive realization of lovecraft's sci-fi terror. Told in flashback it weaves together a thriller that while compitantly written at a reasonable length with a straightforward and thrilling narrative (would've been like 114 minutes tops) it still managed to deliver a storm of surreal imagery (I personally loved the description of the elder thing's city) and personal punches (the wife's miscarriage and hard hitting ending in particular) that we'll sadly never get thanks to that garbage fire Prometheus. on the plus side, there are a ton of other movies that do ole Howard justice: John Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy, the color out of space, annihilation, alien, reanimator, evil dead, the mist, hell raiser, Phantasm, I could go on all day

[Michael D Jedlowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of both Del Toro, and Lovecraft. I wanted to see this film very badly. Alas it was not to be. When the now 15 year old screenplay became available you know I had to read it.

It is pretty good. There are some changes of course, but the Novels spirit remains mostly in tact. I even really loved some of the changes. Others not so much.

So why read a script that did not and will not be made? I think Del Toro fans, Lovecraft fans, horror fans and even more esoteric subjects such as unmade films and screenplays will enjoy this.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Del Toro - once again! - is talking about reviving this project, this time as a limited series for streaming. He doesn't like this script anymore, as it was written as a big budget studio blockbuster (it does have some Pacific Rim, and The Thing, vibes), that doesn't serve the source material as well as he wished.

That said, it's still a blast to read, straight from the brain of one of my favorite filmmakers. So! Many! Exclamation!! Points!! (I'm excited, too, Guillermo <3)

[Gera Sandoval · Rating 5 out of 5]

HELL. YES.