Hellboy: 10 Flaws That Prove Hellboy 3 Would've Been Better
6. More Rehashed Introductions Might Be On The Way
Marshall's choice to focus on a new team involving Ben Daimio and Alice Monaghan was arguably one of the smartest decisions he made when crafting his reboot. Rather than rehash the introductions of familiar characters such as Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman - the latter of whom would have inevitably been quite different from Selma Blair's depiction - audiences get to enjoy different characters with different abilities. Any attempt at a sequel, however, will likely destroy the good will earned by this decision.
At the end of the reboot, Hellboy and the BRPD infiltrate the Oannes Club. Fans of the comics already knew where this was headed, although viewers familiar only with del Toro's films might have been surprised to see Abe Sapien's reveal at the end of the scene.
Del Toro never bothered giving Abe Sapien much of an origin story, possibly because it's not the most film-friendly story. In the comics, Abe was originally human, turned into a walking fish stick by an ocean-obsessed occult society. It's an interesting backstory for a comic book, but it's hard to imagine that type of narrative fitting into the heavy metal world of the new film.
More importantly, wasting time on another origin story means that a character we've already seen in two movies will get less time to actually show us what he can do. Del Toro avoided that mess by simply introducing him while he was already in his prime, yet here we are back t the beginning. Fortunately (and also somewhat unfortunately), the reboot's box-office failure likely means we'll never fully see Marshall's version of Abe Sapien anyway.