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Seems like we just had a pretty good Hellboy or
two but here comes another one all the same.
>> I don't like this.
>> Before we get to David Harper's turn, in all that red makeup,
let's take a look back at Guillermo del Toro's 2006 film.
Del Toro pulled inspirations from a few different Mike Mignola graphic
novels to make his Hellboy.
Boy but the movie is still very much it's own thing.
So how do you adapt a graphic novel?
Do you take the exact translation 300 approach or the adapt the basics and
don't mess up the character approach?
>> Red.
Warning.
>> Hey, hey, hey.
>> Time to ask the world's greatest paranormal detective,
what's the difference?
>> Code.
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The main basis for Guillermo del Toro's movie is Seed of Destruction, a story that
outlines Hellboy's origins, from a Nazi occult ceremony, led by Grigori Rasputin,
the infamous Russian magician, or wizard, or something like that.
But influencers from other early volumes of Hellboy show up as well,
Wake The Devil and a collection of shorter stories called The Chained Coffin.
So to start with both Seed of Destruction in the movie opening
with the summoning of Hellboy.
In the movie, we find Professor Broome accompanying a group of
military men who had Never heard the word, paranormal, before.
They arrive on a rainy night in Scotland, 1944, to find the Nazis and
Rasputin readying their ceremony to open a portal.
The book sees Professor Broom in the ruins of a church in East Brunswick, England,
while the Nazis are performing their ritual on an island North of Scotland.
The ceremony, performed by Rasputin with his rad mechanical gloves
produces nothing on site in Scotland,
instead he conjures Hellboy in his right in front of and the allies.
>> Holy, how did he get over there?
>> The movie has many of the same characters Actors there.
Ilsa Haupstein and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, who go on to play important roles in
the book and the movie, while von Krupt is only in this scene in the film, but
is a major player in Rasputin's plan, which continues into Wake the Devil,
in spite of the fact he's just a head in a jar.
>> (Sound) Really could have used a head in a jar in this movie.
>> I know, right?
But the key change in the opening is putting the two groups in the same place.
It establishes the two sides clearly, right off the bat.
>> Allows them to fight a little bit, plus it changes Kroenen into a sword
wielding badass, which is not the kind of badass he is in the books.
Either way, the basics of the narrative are set at this point,
in both the movie and Seed of Destruction.
Rasputin and the Nazis are up to some paranormal, lovecrafty and no-goodery, and
Hellboy is involved somehow.
how. And that's more or
less where the story's stopping similar.
For the rest of the film, characters and
set pieces are pulled from all over the three volumes of graphic novels.
And they're mashed together to create something pretty much brand new.
>> Are you kidding me?
>> The main man himself stayed largely the same.
Really the only difference is he's in love with Liz Sherman.
The pyrotechnic on-and-off-again member of the BPRD.
>> Who is also pretty much the same character in both the book and movie.
The movie features a few characters made from scratch, most notably John Meyers.
The new kid on the block is basically just there so
characters have a good reason to dump exposition on the audience.
A role that's easy enough to accomplish in a few panels of the comic book.
Tom Manning is also there to simplify the world of the movie.
He's the FBI mouthpiece.
Keeping the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense a secret.
Debunking the myth of Hell Boy.
The entire title sequence of the movie is dedicated to establishing the fact
that the BPRD is trying to remain hidden.
On the other hand, in the book, the BPRD and Hell Boy himself offer no secret
They exist in the open, and the public seems to be pretty okay with it.
In 1944, there's even a superhero, the Torch of Liberty,
tagging along with the army when Hellboy first arrives.
Essentially, the movie world where dark magic and demons exist out in the open is
a tougher sell, especially for an origin story like Hellboy.
(Sound) Red you need to hear the rest
of the information.
>> Nah.
>> Most of the rest of the set piece from the movie are lifted from
different parts of the book and repurpised.
For example, early in the movie we join an expedition into this snowy temple where
Ilsa and Krowen murder their guide.
To use his blood to resurrect Rasputin.
>> In the seat of destruction though, Professor Broom treks into the Arctic to
find a snowy temple, along with three cavernous brothers.
The latest of nine generations to be obsessed with finding the place.
It's here that they awaken Rasputin, who had put himself in a trance like state for
all these years.
See it's the same set piece but a different story.
You see what they did there?
>> Here, we also get a smaller change.
Professor Broom very early in the movie is shown to be sick and dying.
It's not until the middle of the film where he is murdered by Cronin on
(Inaudible) orders.
In the book, Broom dies right away.
Killed by the gross frogmen Rasputin transformed the Cavendish boys into.
But even the frogmen with their long numbness inducing tongues find their way
into the design of the beast Hellboy fights in the movie.
Because Del Toro's film is more than anything else a long
list of repurposed imagery from the graphic novels.
>> I don't know. What do you think Clint?
Should we just start listing things?
>> I don't see why not.
Well here we go.
See the destruction moves quickly to the Cavendish Estate.
A centuries old house gradually sinking into the murky waters of a spooky lake.
Here they fight Rasputin in the watery sub levels of the house.
Where Abe Sapien swims deep into the murk.
In the movie, a similar looking set piece it's placed in an old reservoir in
the vowels of the city.
The movie also features Rasputin sneaking into Liz Sherman's room at the mental
hospital and activating her powers, burning down the building in the process.
In the book tough, Rasputin tries to coop Liz's powers on the showdown underneath
the Cavendish state and burns himself down in the process In Wake the Devil,
the team is looking for a vampire that's part of Rasputin's plans when they happen
upon a homunculus with a hole in his chest which springs to life when Liz touches it.
This homunculus hole and some of it's other features gets repurposed for
Cronin's new clockwork swordsman bag.
The dead guy Hellboy wakes up and uses to direct them through Rasputin's
lair outside of Moscow is pulled from a short story called The Corpse,
from The Chained Coffin collection.
In that story, some mischievous creatures have kidnapped an Irish family's baby.
Hellboy has to find a good Christian place to bury this deserving
corpse before the sunrise in order to get the baby back.
While some of the imagery is clearly the same,
it is a completely different kind of story.
>> In Seed of Destruction,
Hellboy kills a Cavandish turned frogman with a grenade down the throat.
(Sound) At the end of the movie, he does the same thing but
with the while string of grenades and he lets himself get swollowed completely.
And that's the real story of this adaptation.
While the film borrows its jumping-off point directly from the book,
the rest of Guillermo Del Toro's movie picks and
chooses its way through multiple volumes of Mike Mignola's work.
It's not an adaptation that's faithful to the story itself, but
instead faithful to the look and feel of its characters.
Even if it's only one line At a time.
>> I'll be sore in the morning.
>> That's it for this episode.
So, if you're going to be sore tomorrow, be sure to subscribe to Cinefix for
more What's the Difference?
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