The upcoming Hellboy movie is an entirely new take on the character compared to the version created by Guillermo del Toro. While we know the movie will be more violent, as it has achieved an R-rating, many of the other details regarding how this new version of the character will be different from the one movie fans know have yet to be revealed. However, David Harbour, who plays the title role, says one way his character is different is that he won't have a love interest, because apparently he can't have sex with humans.
This isn't an entirely random piece of Hellboy trivia. Well, it is, but it seems that there's a reason these things are being considered. It seems that Hellboy's lack of human...connection will be part of the reason that he feels so isolated among humans, which will therefore make the idea of Hellboy bringing about the apocalypse potentially more attractive to him. According to Harbour...
The other thing that we explore somewhat is — I mean, one of the interesting things to me about the Guillermo del Toro movies was that he had a love interest, right? And she was like a fire starter, and but I just think that Hellboy can’t have a human being. He probably can’t have sex with a human being because it would probably end disastrously, because of his demonic parts or whatever. So I just feel like what I wanted to explore was that loneliness, and you know, there’s the temptations that you have to, if you do create a darker world as the beast of the apocalypse, you can have sex. You can have a girlfriend. You can live your life. But to live in the human world and to protect humanity, you have to sacrifice some of your nature, and your actual nature, as opposed to this concept of destiny, just that your actual nature somewhat gets sacrificed.
In Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy, the title character had a relationship with a pyrokinetic woman named Liz, played by Selma Blair. The relationship was, complicated, but it was one of the things that grounded Hellboy and kept him strongly in the anti-apocalypse camp.
The actual mechanics of Hellboy's relationship in a physical sense is never dealt with in the previous films, but David Harbour tells JoBlo that his version of the character absolutely can't have sex with humans. To be fair, it's as good a motivation as any for bringing about the end of the world.
It seems that we won't be seeing Hellboy have a relationship like that this time around. Instead of being a character who embraces humanity and wants to be and act more human. Hellboy will instead feel alone. He has no connection to the demon world, but he also can't simply join the human world.
Hellboy is destined to bring about the apocalypse in the comics. Whether he chooses to embrace or reject that destiny is potentially much more relatable when you consider it in these simpler terms. Hellboy may love the human world but he also may want to live in a place where he can feel stronger connections, so maybe the end of the world wouldn't be so bad.
Hellboy hits theater April 12.
