In my initial video, I mostly talked about The Shape of Water being a Hellboy spinoff
or a Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel.
There were all kinds of other ideas being presented, and I love seeing those intelligent
discussions taking place in my comments, so here are some of those theories.
Many of you were reminded of HP Lovecraft’s creation, The Deep Ones, from Dagon and Shadow
Over Innsmouth.
I’m not much of a Lovecraft expert, so I looked it up on HP Lovecraft Wiki, which said
basically said that they are ocean-dwelling humanoid fish people with an affinity for
mating with humans.
Some of their physical traits include small ears, glassy bulging eyes, hairless heads,
webbed fingers, folds on the neck which become gills and rigid scales on the back.
Knowing that, I’d say that there’s a very good chance that Del Toro was inspired by
Lovecraft on this one, but the question becomes, was he inspired directly?
There’s been a bit of controversy about The Shape of Water in the indie film world
because of how similar the movie seems to be to this 2015 short film, The Space Between
Us, with many of you making accusations of plagiarism, saying he took the concept, the
themes, and the look directly from The Space Between Us.
So I watched the short film, which is written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Marc S Noellkaemper,
and I have to say, if this is plagiarism, they didn’t try to hide it.
The main character is a cleaning lady at some kind of secret lab facility.
The Space Between us is about this post-war era where oxygen is scarce and people want
gills so they can take advantage of the oxygen underwater.
So these scientists are developing this fish person so they can give it’s gills to their
leader, or whoever this person is.
Whereas in the Shape of Water, scientists are developing the fishman as some kind of
weapon for the Cold War.
The place where the subjects are stored is a high security area.
They are stored in these vertical water tanks with glass windows and the people in charge
seem to have sinister plans for their specimen.
The fishmen themselves are blue and black humanoid creatures.
The one in the Shape of Water has webbed feet, while this one has a more traditional mermaid
tail.
They don’t like being locked up and the main girl sets them free and sneaks them out
of the facility.
The cinematography is similar.
The sound design is similar from what we can tell so far.
Even some of the shots seem to be almost identical.
So did Guillermo Del Toro rip off this film?
Maybe, but I don’t think there’s enough information to convict him.
Del Toro claims to have been developing the film since 2011, which means nothing I mean
be could be trying to cover up his plagiarism with that statement, but it does take at least
a couple years to develop a complex feature film like this.
The Space Between Us was successfully crowdfunded in August 2015, but it was first announced
in late 2014.
But the strange thing is, while the indie film community has raised this issue, the
director, Marc Noellkaemper has been silent on it.
He doesn't exactly have much social media presence, but they do have a website and Facebook
page for the film and the similarities with The Shape of Water have not been brought up.
There haven’t been any writing credits signalling that The Shape of Water is based on The Space
Between Us.
The only person from either film who has even acknowledged this, is the production designer
from the indie film, who just says that Del Toro’s picture seems to be inspired by their
short.
He doesn’t seem mad about it even, just kind of proud of it I guess.
There could be a contract going on behind the scenes so until the director comes out
and cries foul, I don’t see how I can get too upset about it.
Definitely suspicious how similar these films are though.
But there’s one more possible connection.
I was sceptical about it at first, but the commenters have raised some good points.
I asked in the previous video about the significance of the shoes that they keep putting emphasis
on in the trailer and some of you thought it might be a reference to The Little Mermaid,
only the roles would be reversed to where the male is the fish person instead.
In the trailer, she’s referred to as “the princess without a voice”, just as Ariel
gives up her voice in The Little Mermaid to go on land.
The significance of her giving up her shoes could her giving up her former life on land
to go be with the fish person underwater.
James Heskett points out that her shoe falls off during the scene where she kisses or dreams
of kissing the fishman representing her letting go of her ties to her life on land to find
her love below the surface.
Skyler has another idea about the shoe symbol, explaining that the zodiac sign Pisces is
the sign of the fish.
Pisces rules the feet, so the shoes will probably symbolically tie into that.
Pisces is known as being a sign of dreams and escapism, among other things.
He wasn’t the only one to point out instances of symbolism that I missed in the trailer.
Brendan Ramos suggested that the fact the she’s a cleaning lady could have something
to do with her clearing the evidence after she steals and hides the specimen later in
the film.
Maybe some of the evidence she cleans up could be this blood handprint on the theater.
I talked about this possibly being from the creature attacking someone and getting blood
on his hands, but it’s also been suggested it could come from Shannon, since we see his
hand wrapped up in another shot.
I still think it’s more likely a handprint from the creature since it is stated that
he’s a dangerous animal, but that’s really just my gut feeling.
I also talked about the bathtub and the tub of aviex, but Mitchel Baldwin points out that
there’s a strange substance in the tub floating around and the same can be seen in the creature’s
tank at the lab.
My guess is that it’s some kind of solution that helps the creature in some way, so when
Eliza sneaks the creature out the lab, she also steals that solution so that the fishman
can survive in her tub until she figures out a better solution for him.
There were a couple of things I got wrong in my other video, like when I said this could
be a tentacle of some kind.
Looking at the other shots in the sequence, it makes more sense that this is just a curtain
or blanket in the room.
I also said that the voice could be Doug Jones, but I wasn’t really sure.
It seems that it’s actually Richard Jenkins, who may play a father figure to Elisa.
And then there’s the song, which I brought up as something in style of classical music,
which was another piece of evidence toward this fishman being related to Abe Sapien,
I’ll touch more on that later.
But what I had said was that this movie was pulling a Baz Luhrmann because the recording
was actually released in ‘06.
What I didn’t realize, what that this version was actually a cover.
The song has been covered forever throughout history, so it actually fits just fine in
a historical context.
I predicted that some of the scenes in the trailer may actually be dreams, and this girl
took it a step further by saying that if the subject does really have those psychic abilities,
he may be the one causing Elisa to have these dreams with his powers.
And speaking of powers, many of you brought up this scene in the trailer where Elisa looks
to be controlling some water droplets on the window.
I didn’t think much of it before, because I assumed she was in the lab, the camera right
here is inside the water tank, and those were just some bubbles she was pointing to.
It wasn’t until I saw a comment referring to this as “the bus window scene”, when
I noticed that she is in fact inside of a vehicle, as evidenced by the reflection of
a traffic light.
So she is actually controlling these raindrops with some kind of telekinetic power, perhaps
something she learned from the creature and definitely more evidence that a psychic connection
does exist in this movie, and with that, it’s impossible not to think about Abe Sapien.
Let’s just for a moment set aside our views on if this creature is related to Hellboy
in way and give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment.
There are obviously some differences in the design of Abe Sapien from Hellboy 1 and 2
compared to The Shape of Water creature.
But one person pointed out that this new creature could actually be based on the design from
the BPRD Hell on Earth comics, which look much more similar to The Shape of Water’s
monster.
This guy on the other hand, mentions the new creature is BLUE, just like Del Toro.
Wow, PitSniper, you know... I never noticed that before but Guillermo actually is blue
isn’t he?
I’m so glad you pointed that out -- okay I’m done.
I’m absolutely done.
But on a more serious note, maybe this man near the end of the trailer is a recast of
Professor Broom.
Probably the most popular comment that I got though, were the comments about Eliza and
the fishman creature being Abe Sapiens parents or Grandparents, and I think it’s reasonable
say that this creature is of the same species as Abe, but if you look at the timeline of
events there’s no way that Abe is their descendent, because Abe had already been discovered
about 100 years before the events of The Shape of Water take place.
Some of you also discussed that Fox Searchlight probably doesn’t have the rights to make
a new Hellboy movie and I think this comment perfectly sums up my views on the subject.
Referring to an interview with Guillermo years ago, he did state that the fantasy world in
his films does loosely have a connection.
Legally, he wouldn’t be able to make a Hellboy flick, but from an artistic point of view,
he could make a movie closely resembling the characters in the Hellboy franchise, as many
movies have done and gotten away with.
In that scenario, he could albeit make every little detail point towards being a prequel
without actually saying that it is.
As long as they don’t explicitly state any names, locations or details, he could imply
a loose connection.
If this is the case, that would explain why Guillermo Del Toro and Doug Jones have to
deny any connection to the Hellboy universe in interviews, especially with a new Hellboy
reboot on the horizon.
And I think that’s as much as we’ll see in the Shape of Water.
This creature is just another organism from the same species as Abe.
The title of the movie is a perfect analogy for the relationship it has to Hellboy.
The film is called The Shape of Water, but water molecules are fluid, they don’t actually
have any one defined shape.
The movie won’t be shaped as a Hellboy movie.
It won’t have any of those characters, names or plot points.
But this will just be it’s own movie, composed of the familiar materials that make up Abe
Sapien.
They’ll just be taking on a new shape.
Scary story narrations are also taking on a new shape, in the new True Horror Game for
mobile phones.
My friend and fellow narrator Let’s Read just launched his game for Android and iOS
that lets you choose your own horror adventure.
It comes with 10 stories and is totally ad free.
I’ll leave a link to the download in the description.
Next week The Shape of Water comes out and you’ll definitely want to see my Things
You Missed where I’ll be going into detail on it, so remember to subscribe to CZsWorld
for new horrors every week, ring that deathbell for notifications and I’ll see you in the
next one.
Assuming we both survive.