Hellboy: Rise Of The Blood Queen - 8 Things It Must Do Differently From Del Toro's Films
3. Action Sequences Have To Feel More Visceral
Dark Horse
When Hellboy came to blows with his enemies in the del Toro series, he tended to pick up his big revolver, 'the samaritan'. The hand-cannon looks fierce on the page as well as off it, and it was always fun to see ol' red shooting his enemies when he got the chance, but Hellboy doesn't actually use it all that much in the comics, preferring to use his fists or, in some cases, other weaponry to get the job done.
Hellboy has that fist for more than just ushering in the apocalypse - turns out it's also pretty handy at punching things too. And, whenever Hellboy does get the opportunity to do some punching, Mignola makes it look pretty, powerful and perfect all at once. People on the wrong end of a stone-fisted slap don't usually emerge all that well after it.
Firearms are of course a big part of the character's arsenal, but it would be nice to see (makeup permitting) some more dynamic fight scenes in the reboot. In the Storm and the Fury Hellboy even wields Excalibur, so, if Rise of the Blood Queen really is going heavy on Brythonic mythology, then there could even be a chance that we see red swinging the sword on the big screen.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
