How the ‘Hellboy’ Reboot Is Different Than Guillermo del Toro’s Franchise

The new Hellboy makes it clear in the first trailer that this is not the same character fans previously saw on the big screen. The Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movies hold a special place in fan’s hearts, but now it’s time for a new team made up of director Neil Marshall and star David Harbour to usher in a new Hellboy. The new iteration has a lot to live up to, but the team thinks it has what it needs to pull it off, and Harbour recently broke down the biggest differences between del Toro’s vision of the character and this new 2019 iteration.

Harbour was asked during a recent set visit about the key differences between this new version and the movies that came before it, and one of the biggest ones has to do with how Hellboy views not only his job but also how he is viewed by society.

“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,’ Harbour told Joblo. “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.”

Another stark contrast between the two regards Hellboy’s love life, or in this instance, lack of one. The original film took a more classic approach to bring romance into Hellboy’s world, but Harbour’s Hellboy is taking a different angle, viewing that lack of someone as yet another sacrifice Hellboy makes to protect humanity.

“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,” Harbour said. “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.”

You can definitely see where they are coming from on that, and it is yet one more way that the two takes on Hellboy will stand apart.

Hellboy hits theaters on April 12th.

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