Hellboy is back!
After an eleven-year gap separating Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and the new adaptation of Hellboy. He’s back and on fire (literally), with David Harbour portraying the demon-like character. Not only does Harbour own the role in appearance, standing 6’3 with a booming voice and manelike beard, he also captures the essence of who Hellboy is from Mike Mignola’s acclaimed comic.
The reboot mirrors a prequel, as viewers find out the origin of Hellboy in addition to what kind of creature he is. Hellboy faces inner turmoil of being caught between two worlds; the supernatural and human. He faces an existential conundrum, torn between killing demonic creatures like himself or letting those very creatures kill innocent people and ultimately end the world. The Knockturnal sat down with David Harbour in sunny Los Angeles about his horror-centric role and his take on the remake.
The Knockturnal: What is your opinion of the film. I know you’ve watched it now, what do you think?
David Harbour: I think it’s great, I’m really proud of it, I think it’s really fun its sort of like a dark scrappy- monster movie, slash horror film, slash superhero film. It’s got a lot of action, it’s got heart at its core it got an interesting sort of identity struggle, but I just think at its essence it’s really a fun monster movie and I really enjoyed watching it. Especially on a big screen- they screened it for me in a big movie theatre, and like I really enjoyed the whole thing.
The Knockturnal: Did you read the comics for it? Is that a way you prepared for the role?
David Harbour: I did. Yeah, I have known the Mike Mignola comics since I was like in my twenties the Dark Horse comics. One of the things that they pitched me early on is that it was going to be really dark and sort of related to the comics in that way. I went back to them and it was very important to me to get it, to get sort of get his essence from that particular thing, I consider that to be the major inspiration. I went back to the comics and I really did study them even things like facial expressions or body positions, things like that I was really interested in the terms Mike would draw them.
The Knockturnal: Coming from Stranger Things and going to Hellboy, how was that transition? And did you take something like working with the special effects in Stranger Things with you to Hellboy?
David Harbour: Yeah…It’s a very different thing. I guess the thing I did take, interesting enough is less the special effects at its essence, Stranger Things is kind of a family drama in a weird way. It’s about kids, it’s about growing up and in a way, Hellboy is a big ole’ monster movie but the family dynamics of it are one of the things that interested me the most, especially his relationship with his father and stuff like that. That’s really what I brought from Stranger Things, was more the interpersonal relationships which I feel are most important in sort of big movies. Sometimes you actually want to do the opposite of what’s expected, and you want to focus on the things that are opposite. In that ways it was most interesting to focus on the personal dynamics of Hellboy and to let the special effects and action take care of itself.
The Knockturnal: What resonated most with you about this role?
David Harbour: I think the fact that he’s built for one thing but he consciously wants to be something else. That to me is a struggle that I myself feel very deeply is that there’s certain things that genetically may define me or impulse-wise may define me or emotion-wise may define me but that actually who I am in the world based on my behavior and how I choose to consciously deal with the world, hopefully, will define me more and that’s something that I wanted to express in this, and it was something that is really important for me personally and also today to think about in terms of human beings and I wanted to do that.
The film hits theaters this Friday!
