Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is easily one of the most imaginative minds in Hollywood, proving time and time again just how wild his mind can be in films like Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth, and, of course, Hellboy. Of all of his creations, one of the most impressively disturbing is the Angel of Death featured in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, whose inspiration came from a church del Toro visited.
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When speaking at the Annecy Festival, the director revealed, “The Angel of Death in Hellboy 2, which has the eyes and the wings, that was created originally for a project in 1994. And it was inspired by a Mexican painting in a church, where archangels have eyes in every feather. I took a note.”
The project that the director was originally planning on using the image for in the mid-’90s was a film called “Mephisto’s Bridge,” which was the story of a man willing to sell his soul to the Devil.
Del Toro continued, “I was in a church and I drew it in my notebook and it stayed there. It was dormant until I was able to afford the mechanical eyes and the wings, and all that stuff. I thought, ‘That would be a great Angel of Death.’”
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From the horrors of science seen in Mimic or creatures from other dimensions in the Hellboy films, del Toro has never shied from bringing audiences creations that are both beautiful and macabre, something that his new film The Shape of Water will surely deliver to audiences in December.
One of del Toro’s films with the most passionate fanbase is Hellboy, which came out at a time when audiences weren’t entirely accustomed to seeing comic book movies featuring characters they weren’t familiar with. Despite the initial underwhelming reception of the film, it developed a cult following, due in large part to Ron Perlman’s performance.
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After the disappointment of Hellboy, del Toro made the dark fairytale Pan’s Labyrinth, which became a huge critical success, allowing the filmmaker to make virtually any film he wanted. The result was del Toro teaming up once again with the Hellboy crew for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Even with the filmmaker’s newfound notoriety, the film didn’t succeed, making the possibility of a third film in del Toro’s franchise an impossibility.
Back in May, it was announced that a new Hellboy film was on the way, but rather than going with the del Toro and Perlman combo, the character would get a reboot from director Neil Marshall starring Stranger Things‘ David Harbour.
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Image Courtesy of Shudder
