Guillermo del Toro rallies for optimism in powerful new essay: “No hope is ever too small”

By Dan Neilan | February 7, 2019 | 4:43pm

Aux Features Guillermo del Toro

When faced with our current political landscape, the looming threat of climate change, and the general callousness of strangers on the internet, it’s easy to be a pessimist. That’s why, in his new essay for Time magazine, director Guillermo del Toro repeatedly refers to optimism as the “radical,” often more difficult choice. It’s a good message, and one that needs to be repeated again and again, if only to combat the ceaseless swarm of negativity polluting the cultural airwaves.

“Optimism is our instinct to inhale while suffocating,” del Toro writes. “Our need to declare what ‘needs to be’ in the face of what is. Optimism is not uncool; it is rebellious and daring and vital.” While the director concedes that, as American sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon once said, “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” he believes that that must mean the remaining ten percent is “worth the damn effort.”