Fans have been waiting years to find out which new twists would be added to the story by
the new creative team for the rebooted Hellboy franchise.
We're gritting our teeth, dusting off our tomes of BPRD history, and casting a spell
of blood magic to bring you all the small details you missed in the 2019 version of
Hellboy.
Hellboy starts the movie heading to Mexico to find a missing B.P.R.D. agent and close
friend, Esteban.
He finds his old pal wrestling in a lucha libre arena under the name Camazotz, seemingly
indifferent to Hellboy's concern.
In the comic storyline Hellboy in Mexico, Hellboy teams up with a group of 1950s luchadores
while fighting vampires in Mexico.
After a night of heavy drinking, one of the brothers, Esteban, wanders out into the night
and gets turned into a vampiric luchador called Camazotz.
The movie closely follows the storyline, as Hellboy is forced to battle against the giant
bat creature, impaling him on a ring post.
The movie even includes the months-long drinking bender that Hellboy goes on afterwards.
When Hellboy gets picked up by B.P.R.D. agents in Mexico, Professor Broom lets him know he
has to go to the Osiris Club to help them out with a giant problem that they're having.
"The British occult society born in 1866 by the ranking members of the Heliopic Brotherhood
of Ra."
“Ra?”
In the comics, the Heliopic Brotherhood is a group of supernatural-obsessed cultists
who went around causing trouble.
They usually battled against Sir Edward Grey, the Witchfinder, a Victorian-era precursor
to latter-day heroes like Lobster Johnson and Hellboy.
The Brotherhood's reference in the film isn't just to show that the new film is firmly enmeshed
within the larger Hellboy comics universe.
It's also a sly bit of foreshadowing to the Osiris Club's betrayal of Hellboy while on
the Wild Hunt.
If you've got a phobia of eye trauma, stay away from this movie.
Hellboy himself blinds at least three different monsters on-screen.
Plus, there's Baba Yaga, the witch who lost one eye to Hellboy before the movie's events.
She's eager to pop one of Big Red's yellow eyes into her socket.
She offers Hellboy a deal for information on Nimue the Blood Queen's next move in return
for one of his eyes.
Hellboy accepts, but ends up reneging on the deal, telling the witch that she can have
the eye when he's done with it.
That might not have been the right decision.
He gets hit with a nasty curse and ends up losing out on some knowledge.
Hellboy probably should have remembered the Norse myth of Odin, who is said to have traded
an eye for divine wisdom.
Hellboy is able to get out of the trade with Baba Yaga by telling the witch that she never
specified a time frame to collect his eye.
It's a savvy trick that gives our hero the high ground for not staying true to his word
when making a deal with a child-killing cannibal witch, and it also subtly connects Hellboy
to Nimue.
A significant portion of the film is devoted to Hellboy struggling with his dual loyalties
to humanity - epitomized by Professor Broom - and monsterdom, represented by Nimue.
She tells him that they're bound by fate.
That might be true, but they're also bound by how tricky they both are.
After Gruagach defeats Hellboy in combat, Nimue takes the former's power away.
When Gruagach reminds Nimue that she promised to "make him whole," she responds that she
did.
She just didn't tell him for how long.
Nimue and Hellboy's dual trickery connects the two characters.
When Hellboy leaves her house with both his eyes, Baba Yaga curses him that he'll use
both of his eyes to see the one person he loves most in the world suffer and die.
Later in the film, Alice is hit by one of Nimue's poisonous needles, and her outlook
seems grim.
With Alice knocking on Heaven's door, it seems like the film is setting her up to be the
unfortunate recipient of Baba Yaga's curse.
But all she needed was a little Merlin magic to get back up on her feet.
The curse's real target seems to be Professor Broom, who Nimue kills while Hellboy watches.
The Wild Hunt is another element of the movie straight out of European myths.
There are many, many variations of the myth, but one of the most consistent aspects of
the Hunt is that it presages an outbreak of war or plague.
The Wild Hunt of Hellboy is a bit distinct in that everyone involved in the Hunt, except
for Hellboy, is a normal human.
Nimue is known for bringing with her plagues and destruction, and there are definitely
enough demons and soldiers milling about in the final scenes to qualify as a war.
One of the most memorable lines is when Hellboy rebuffs Nimue's offer of romantic alliance
by telling her that,
"This is not gonna work, ya know, cuz I’m a Capricorn and you're f---ing nuts!"
It's not actually accurate, though.
In the comics, Hellboy's given birthday is October 5, which would make him a Libra.
It's easy to see why screenwriter Andrew Cosby went with the Capricorn; the zodiac symbol
is a goat.
Hellboy's demon father takes the form of a goat, occasionally, and Hellboy's horns are
goat-like.
One of the Huntsmen asks Hellboy what his rocky right hand is used for.
"It smashes things real good."
That line might have come as a shock to super fans of the comics and 2004's Hellboy, since
they know that Hellboy's "Right Hand of Doom" is the key to controlling the Ogdru-Jahad,
Lovecraftian creatures from beyond space and time.
None of that plays into 2019's Hellboy, largely because his space-worm controlling stone hand
isn't part of the movie's doomsday prophecies.
It's more of a battle between his demonic evil and Arthurian good twin heritages, with
the forces of evil kept decidedly in the folklore and hellish realms.
While Hellboy's appearance on a small Scottish island after a Nazi ritual is kept fairly
faithful to the original comics, there is one noticeable twist.
In the original comic, the Torch of Liberty, a creation of John Byrne's that was loaned
to Mike Mignola on a one-time basis, is there.
Since the character figured so prominently in Hellboy's origin, you'd expect him to make
another appearance, but due to copyright issues, Mignola has steered away from ever reusing
the Torch.
In the movie, the pulp hero who's there is Lobster Johnson.
Whenever Mignola and his collaborators needed to use a pulp hero to fight Nazis in the Hellboy
universe, they used the Lobster.
Making him an official witness to Hellboy's arrival on Earth is a pretty declarative statement
that the film takes place within that larger universe.
More importantly, they kept his catchphrase:
"Beware my claw, for I've come to inflict justice!"
The filmmakers are clearly trying to reboot the Hellboy franchise with this movie, and
they wanted to avoid audiences confusing it for a sequel, so a lot of familiar faces from
the previous films don't appear.
Yet if the ending of the film is any indication, they knew that they could only get in one
movie without Hellboy's good friend Abe Sapien.
"Hey, Abe!"
Played by Doug Jones in Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Abe Sapien is an icthyo
sapien, a more humanoid Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The closing scene of 2019's Hellboy features Hellboy, Alice, and Ben Daimio raiding a warehouse
in Siberia with a tank that reads "Icthyo Sapien."
If the film ends up earning a sequel, it's a sure bet Abe will appear.
Hellboy's post-credits scene finds the half-demon getting prodigiously drunk at his father's
grave, only to be interrupted by the Lobster's ghost.
Hellboy geeks out at meeting his childhood hero, and the Lobster gives a stirring pep
talk to get Hellboy back on his feet.
If there's one thing that Hellboy loves doing, it's getting drunk with ghosts.
"Oi!
I need some ID, love."
"Are you serious?"
In fact, that's how The Wild Hunt storyline in the comics starts.
Hellboy's called to lead the Hunt after going on a boozy tour of Great Britain's finest
ghost houses.
Some character beats are simply too important for any adaptation to ignore.
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