Guillermo del Toro goes family friendly with DreamWorks animation Trollhunters

Besides those early trips through Guadalajara's sewers, del Toro drew inspiration for the series from cultural references high and low: Jonny Quest cartoons. The early work of Hayao Miyazaki, "back when he was animating for Toho". Irish folklore and Arthurian legend. Children's movies from the 1980s, like The Goonies. Asked about a scene involving a gnome and a dollhouse, he admitted with a laugh that, yes, it did indeed come from the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Miniature", starring Robert Duvall.

A lifelong lover of fairy tales, del Toro recalled a Brothers Grimm story about a king who offered his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who could hold her attention. Three brothers go to the kingdom. The youngest is something of a scatterbrain, picking up a piece of string here, a dead bird there. "His brothers laugh at him," del Toro said, "but eventually he uses those objects to keep the interest of the princess."

"That's me," he continued. "I've always got my head in the clouds, looking at the floor, picking up string that nobody picks up, and enshrining it."

Here are four of the magical elements from Trollhunters, and a few of the bits of string that informed them.

The Goblins

In addition to trolls, gnomes and changelings, Arcadia has goblins, lots of them. Del Toro's vengeful creatures, all flashing canines and skittering little legs, are based on Anglo-Saxon myths going back centuries. (The director consulted a book from his own collection, British Goblins, an obscure 1880 tome, to help create his modern-day versions.)

One particularly nasty trait of goblins is their habit of stealing human babies from cribs and replacing them with "changelings", tiny creatures that look like babies but aren't. In the olden days, iron horseshoes were hung near an infant's crib to prevent the swap, and a magical horseshoe figures in Trollhunters, as well. Their insectlike movements are pure del Toro (reminiscent of the stick insect/fairy in Pan's Labyrinth); their creepy tendency to skitter up walls and ceilings evokes memories of Japanese ghost movies. "It's very much like yokai," he says, referring to Japan's famous and centuries-old spooks.

Troll Market

The visual heart of the series, Troll Market is a subterranean metropolis pulsing with energy and jewel-fueled light, where trolls eat, fight and down brews in pubs straight out of Viking lore. The works of the comic book artist Richard Corben inspired the city's grand scale and purple-and-orange colour scheme. "There is a pulp energy to Richard Corben that no one else gives me," del Toro says.

Every del Toro creation has an underworld, be they cellars (Crimson Peak), labyrinths (Pan's Labyrinth) or monster-infested sewers (Hellboy). As a child, del Toro was entranced by the underground treasure troves of The Arabian Nights; later, he fell in love with the 1973 made-for-TV movie The Night Strangler, which featured scenes shot in downtown Seattle's famed network of tunnels and passageways.

"It spoke about an entire underground city that exists underneath Seattle," he says. "And I always thought, God, I want to go there. I want to live there."

The Armour

The Trollhunter's gleaming armour was inspired by the polished chrome beauties in John Boorman's 1981 fantasy Excalibur. In that film, the armor of King Arthur and his knights was constantly bathed in an eerie emerald glow (green lights placed offstage created the effect), a visual signature that del Toro borrowed for his own. "We did a little nod to Boorman," he says. "Every time you see Jim, there's a green light that comes from nowhere."

Unlike with Arthur's suit, however, no loyal page is required to help put it on: When needed, the armour magically attaches piece by piece to the Trollhunter's body. "That is complete Japanese animation," he says, occurring in anime including Ronin Warriors and Erza Scarlet.

The Amulet

To summon his magical armour and sword, the Trollhunter calls upon a mystical golden talisman, which serves as both a source of his power and a symbol of his high office. Visually, the amulet is "a cross between an Arabian astrolabe and a clock"; its spinning gears evoke "a kind of Arthurian steampunk," del Toro says.

To make the thing work, its master must speak the magic words, much like Ali Baba's "Open Sesame," or Green Lantern's overly wordy, battery-charging oath. "Every talisman needs an incantation," del Toro says. The Trollhunter's oath – "For the glory of Merlin, daylight is mine to command" – is, of course, straight out of Arthurian legend. "It also hints at some of the deeper origins that we're going to explore in the series," del Toro says.

WHAT Trollhunters

WHEN On Netflix

​The New York Times