The new movie from Guillermo Del Toro looks awesome and the fantastic animation & effects in this picture will be no surprise to anyone who has followed his work over the years, neither will the choice of setting, during a war era and containing unusual fantasy creatures.Â
The film is set America, during the cold war period and revolves around a laboratory where they are keeping a somewhat familiar acquatic creature for some kind of military testing while the lead is a mute female who finds a way to reach out and communicate with the fishman.Â
Watch the Trailer
The trailer is breathtaking and features the cinematography you expect from Del Toro with maybe a dash of Wes Andersons style.Speaking of Fishmen, the big thing that stood out for me was that this surely had to be Abe Sapien from the Hell Boy franchise. Consider the likeness of the two characters and their back stories the there's the fact Del Toro worked on both Hell Boy movies and was until recently in talks to make a third, oh and erm Doug Jones it's the actor for Abe Sapien and the water creature in this new film.Â
Who's leg are you pulling?Â
Del Toro announced in February that Hell Boy 3 will not happen but then we hear rumors of a complete reboot with an all new cast with David Barbour of Stranger Things in talks to play Hell Boy as Mike Magnolia goes in a different direction. Is this his way of Del Toro doing a spin off? even if unofficial?Â
Then there is the fact that this years Split by M. Night Shyamalan turned out to be an origin story for a character known as the Beast which revealed a shocking connection in the end to Shyamalan's Unbreakable.
This was then followed up with news announcing that The Beast played by James McAvoy will feature in an Unbreakable sequal in the near future where we will also see Bruce Willis reprise his role as David Dunn from the original film.
Ultimately the rumors are being quashed with several reasons being noted which vary from Del Toro not having licencing to use characters from the Hell Boy franchise to differences in the creature in this film and in Hell Boy.Â
Instead we are presented with an adult fairy tale / love story set in cold war America between a mute girl who stumbles across a secret government project where they are keeping the poor solitary creature thought to be the last of his kind who she goes onto form a connection with.Â
What do you Think?
1) Is it really Abe?
Is it possible Del Toro loves Abe Sapien as much as the rest of us and due to unforeseen circumstances simply taken influence from the character and weaved him into something new so he can tell the story he originally wanted for Abe?
2) Are you excited for this new movie?
3) If you could have ANY origin story to a character you love and feel is underrated who would it be? My vote would be for a good director to reboot The Punisher and perhaps start with an origin story.
4) Do you even care? if so GTFO Just kidding, I love you too!
The Shape of Water hits cinemas on December 8th, quite a wait! We are being teased people! As a long time fan of Del Toro all I can say is I am very excited to see this movie.Â