David Harbour, the star of the upcoming Hellboy reboot, has revealed how the film differs from the Guillermo del Toro movies.
With any reboot of a movie, efforts are made to distinguish the new version of the film from what has come before, largely in an effort to justify its existence, especially if it hasn’t been very long since the original was released.
Hellboy has this task ahead of it right now and is doing things like becoming R-rated to separate itself from Guillermo del Toro’s earlier films. David Harbour is starring in the reboot and he has spoken to JoBlo about what else is different about the new movie:
“The terrible version of it is angsty, and the great version of it is tortured, I would say, is that in the original Hellboy movies, I feel like you know, he’s very much a guy that has a sense of humor and goes about his job and does his thing and sort of deals with the demons and the evil in the world. And in our movie, he’s very much dealing with his own being ostracized from society. There is kind of a Frankenstein element to it. There’s, I think a lot more self-hatred. You know, although those movies did explore certain aspects of that, ours is just a lot darker in terms of a character piece, in terms of like, who he is. Like he’s a much more tortured guy, who in the end, has to do the right thing.
SEE ALSO: Hellboy director reveals motive behind going R-rated
“I mean, he is destined to be the beast of the apocalypse,” Harbour said. “And I think one of our goals is to justify the temptations of that destiny in terms of the creation of a world, where you know, as a demon, he might be accepted, and as a monster, he might be accepted, that he doesn’t feel in this world. The other thing that we explore somewhat is—I mean, one of the interesting things to me about the Guillermo del Toro movies was that he had like a love interest, right? And she was like a fire starter, but I just think that Hellboy can’t have a human being. He probably can’t have sex with a human being because it would probably end disastrously, because of his demonic parts or whatever.
“So I just feel like what I wanted to explore was that loneliness, and you know, there’s the temptations that you have to, if you do create a darker world as the beast of the apocalypse, you can have sex. You can have a girlfriend. You can live your life. But to live in the human world and to protect humanity, you have to sacrifice some of your nature, and your actual nature, as opposed to this concept of destiny, just that your actual nature somewhat gets sacrificed.”
SEE ALSO: New posters, images and clip from Hellboy released
What do you make of Harbour’s remarks here? Are you looking forward to this new version of Hellboy? Let us know in the comments below or on our social channels…
Hellboy is back, and he’s on fire. From the pages of Mike Mignola’s seminal work, this action-packed story sees the legendary half-demon superhero (David Harbour, “Stranger Things”) called to the English countryside to battle a trio of rampaging giants. There he discovers The Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil series), a resurrected ancient sorceress thirsting to avenge a past betrayal. Suddenly caught in a clash between the supernatural and the human, Hellboy is now hell-bent on stopping Nimue without triggering the end of the world.
Hellboy is set for release on April 11th 2019 sees Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones) directing Stranger Things star David Harbour in the lead role alongside Ian McShane (American Gods) as Professor Bruttenholm, Sasha Lane (American Honey) as Alice Monaghan, Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) as the Queen of Blood, Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O) as Major Ben Daimio and Penelope Mitchell (The Vampire Diaries) as Ganeida.
Originally published March 29, 2019. Updated March 19, 2020.
