Pinocchio 3000 (or P3K, Pinocchio the Robot) is a 2004 Canadian-French-Spanish computer-animated film by Christal Films.
It is a science fiction re-imagination of the classic story The Adventures of Pinocchio. The movie is set in Scamboville, a city with futuristic feel that is governed by Scamboli. In this version of the tale, Pinocchio is a robot who is brought to life by tapping into a city's power surge as a parallel to to original tale where he's a puppet animated by magic.
Pinocchio tries to fit among humans and wants to live with them despite having various difficulties. He's frustrated with people, but eventually he overcomes his struggles. Most of the story bits, elements and characters have been re-tooled in some other forms.
This movie provides examples of:
- Actor Allusion: After Pinocchio becomes a real boy, Cyberina says "Who were you expecting? The Tooth Fairy?" Just like another fairy-type character voiced by Whoopi Goldberg.
- Child Hater: Scamboli quickly gains a hatred of children for not playing at his amusement park.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Scamboli starts off as a merely Jerkass but escalates subjecting the kids that didn't want to go to his amusement park to Unwilling Roboticisation and trying to kill the protagonists for trying to stop him.
- Egopolis: Scamboli's amusement park is called "Scamboland".
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Scamboli is an evil overlord who wants to build a technological city "Scamboville" and plans to get rid of all nature. He hates all children — but he does love his daughter.
- Evil Overlooker: The poster above has Scamboli looking down on Pinocchio and everyone else with a sinister grin.
- Expy: Scamboli seems to be one for the Coachman in the original story. He creates a place for amusement for children (a la Pleasure Island). Similar to how the Coachman turns kids into donkeys, Scamboli turns kids into robots.
- Scamboli's Bumbling Henchmen Duo appear to based on the Fox and the Cat since they convince Pinocchio to skip school and work for the villain they work for.
- Harmless Villain: Scamboli's robot henchmen are constantly screwing up much to Scamboli's annoyance.
- Mass Transformation: Scamboli uses an amusement park ride to turn the children of the city into robots and use them as slaves.
- Mythology Gag: One of rides at Scamboland is a whale referencing the whale that swallows Pinocchio and Geppetto.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: It's astonishing that anybody would trust a man named Scamboli.
- Reversible Roboticizing: Scamboli creates a machine designed to turn human children into robots, which he himself winds up getting turned into too at the end. Luckily the process is reversible and the children are turned back to normal.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The kids turned robots have glowing red eyes.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: All the robots in the movie are like this.
- Setting Update: The movies changes the setting from 19th century Italy to a futuristic city in 29th century.
- Shout-Out: Scamboli's name is after Stromboli, the Evil Puppeteer from Disney's Pinocchio adaption.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: This is Scamboli's evil plan is to turn all the kids into robots as revenge for them not going to his amusement park.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Pinocchio accidentally gives Scamboli the idea to turn the kids into robots.
