The upcoming Hellboy reboot was always going to face an uphill battle earning the acceptance of fans, not least when actor Ron Perlman and director Guillermo del Toro have already spent two movies making the property their own. But instead of trying to recreate what worked about the character’s previous big screen outings, Stranger Things star David Harbour feels he’s managed to offer his own original take on the film’s titular hero.
In an interview with Empire, Harbour commended Perlman for his take on Hellboy, before explaining that his own version of the Dark Horse Comics character will be bringing him into new territory:
“[Perlman] does something quite extraordinary in those films that is very specific to him, and I did not want to imitate that in any way. In our movie Hellboy’s younger. He’s rougher. He’s much more of a teenager. He’s really struggling with the idea of whether or not he’s a good person.”
While Harbour seems to think highly of his predecessor, neither Perlman nor his co-star Selma Blair have had a whole lot nice to say about Neil Marshall’s reboot, with the former sharing a meme last November that poked fun at the film’s first trailer.
Indeed, the preview for Marshall’s movie left many fans more skeptical than ever. In particular, the trailer’s lightly comedic tone proved jarring after months of hearing that the reboot would offer a brutal, more horror-indebted take on the property.
Nonetheless, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola recently offered his assurance that the next trailer will be “SO much better,” and with Harbour continuing to tease an assortment of gruesome imagery – from decapitations, to literal bloodbaths – you have to wonder if the film’s darkest content is currently being kept under wraps. Either way, there’s still time for the reboot to win over doubters before it arrives in theaters on April 12th, 2019.
