{"id":5496,"date":"2019-04-02T00:15:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T00:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/?p=5496"},"modified":"2019-04-02T01:02:54","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T01:02:54","slug":"who-is-hellboy-and-whats-his-backstory-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/hellboy-backstory-history-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Hellboy and What&#8217;s His Backstory?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s talk about\u00a0Hellboy, yeah?<\/p>\n<p>The half-demon hero has had a surprising amount of media surrounding him for such a relatively young character, but there\u2019s a lot to love about the big guy. He made his first appearance in 1993, meaning the character was still practically a baby in pop culture terms when his story was first adapted into film format in 2004 by Guillermo del Toro. Eleven years might be a considerable hunk of time in film and television standards, but most comic book films we see revolve around characters who\u2019ve been around for decades. Such is the popularity of Brother Red and his band of misfits.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cmUxnec1sCQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>His &#8220;Birth&#8221; And Childhood<\/h2>\n<p>With all great heroes must come a solid origin story. We\u2019ve all seen Martha Wayne\u2019s pearls bounce off the pavement and Uncle Ben die on a sidewalk enough\u00a0times\u00a0to know that those origins usually come accompanied by some great tragedy or another. In the instance of\u00a0Hellboy, his origins <em>are<\/em> his tragedy. A baby Hellboy, born as Anung\u00a0Un Rama, was summoned to Earth by a Nazi cult trying to get a leg up on the Allies during WWII. Unfortunately for them and lucky for us, their enemy found the weird little dude before they had a chance to tell him their favorite Third Reich bedtime stories.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Allies&#8217; discovery of the creature they affectionately named \u201cHellboy\u201d led to the creation of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). The Bureau was the brainchild of Professor Trevor\u00a0Bruttenholm, who took the half-demon in as his own and raised\u00a0Hellboy\u00a0like he would raise any other son. It didn\u2019t take long for the red kid with a hammer hand to realize he wasn&#8217;t like the other kids, however. Armed with his father\u2019s wit and what\u2019s basically a battering ram for an arm,\u00a0Hellboy grew up to take on all sorts of paranormal\u00a0nasties as a protector of our world. But he didn&#8217;t do it alone.<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>His Friends And Allies<\/h2>\n<p>Abe\u00a0Sapien\u00a0and Liz Sherman are long-time allies of\u00a0Hellboy. Like\u00a0Hellboy, Abe\u2019s origins are rooted in the occult. He was a perfectly average Victorian scientist before he shacked up with some ocean-worshipers and made contact with your run-of-the-mill jellyfish god. The affectionately nicknamed\u00a0Fishstick\u00a0(by\u00a0Hellboy, not his snooty cult friends) doesn\u2019t have much memory of his first life, which is probably for the best. When his aforementioned &#8220;friends&#8221; left him in his test tube when the Civil War broke out, he wasn&#8217;t discovered again until 1978.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Liz Sherman\u2019s story differs a little depending on your preferred media. She was a natural-born firestarter\u00a0who accidentally killed her family at a young age. This resulted in her keeping everyone, even those she considered her friends, at arm&#8217;s length. What varied was her relationship with\u00a0Hellboy. In the comics\u00a0she\u2019s his distant but completely badass friend. In the films, their relationship\u2019s a little bit spicier and romantic. Regardless of her iteration, it remains a crime that we haven\u2019t gotten a stand-alone series showing off her journey. After all, the fish boy got one!\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>His Powers And Personality<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4107\" src=\"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic-500x281.jpg 500w, https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/hellboy-pic.jpg 1067w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While his allies are his greatest weapon,\u00a0Hellboy\u00a0is also gifted with several significant demonic advantages. In addition to his stone hand (dubbed The Right Hand of Doom by his colleagues at the BPRD), the half-demon can also lift over a ton, is pretty difficult to hurt, and heals a lot faster than his enemies may like. With all of these advantages comes a sensitive side that one probably wouldn\u2019t expect from a creature that could pulverize whatever he wants.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hellboy\u2019s\u00a0personality is driven by two main factors. The first is being raised as Professor Bruttenholm\u2019s\u00a0son. That\u2019s not to say that the professor did a bad job. In fact, it\u2019s just the opposite.\u00a0Bruttenholm\u00a0raised\u00a0Hellboy\u00a0like any other normal boy, but there are some unfortunate repercussions to a kid with horns and a hammer hand believing they\u2019re \u201cnormal\u201d &#8211; or at least fully human. The second driving factor is the way the half-demon ages. While his body matured quickly,\u00a0Hellboy\u2019s\u00a0mind developed a little bit slower. But just like many humans, his discomforts about his appearance and his concern with the ideals of \u201cnormal\u201d faded away as he matured.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Red\u2019s issues with his appearance are usually represented by his insistence on filing down his horns. But, let\u2019s be honest here, we\u2019ve all seen those things when they go untrimmed. There\u2019s a fine line between being a strong independent (half) demon who don\u2019t need no\u00a0approval from\u00a0humanity\u00a0and just wanting to be able to fit through a door.\u00a0His discomfort manifests through\u00a0snark, as well, but who among us doesn\u2019t toss out a little sass when we\u2019re feeling self-conscious? Or, you know, on Tuesdays.<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>His Role And Its Secrecy<\/h2>\n<p>Hellboy\u2019s\u00a0demonic origins pave the way for a whole host of mythical, supernatural and biblical foes.\u00a0Often, those foes are dealt with without public knowledge. The BPRD isn\u2019t a government agency, so it has a relatively easy time hiding its agents from the prying of government scientists (though its own scientists can sometimes be just as gruesome). However, Del Toro made the decision to reveal the agency &#8211; and Hellboy &#8211; to the world in his underrated sequel\u00a0<i>Hellboy<\/i><i>: The Golden Army.<\/i>\u00a0We never got to see the repercussions of that, because it turned out the trilogy he had planned out simply wasn\u2019t meant to be.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We will see\u00a0Hellboy\u00a0and his friends take on the big screen once again later this year with a reboot simply titled\u00a0<i>Hellboy<\/i>, this time with the big red bruiser played by <em>Stranger Things<\/em>&#8216; David Harbour. The title was changed\u00a0from series creator Mike\u00a0Mignola\u2019s\u00a0initial plan of\u00a0<i>Hellboy<\/i><i>: Rise of the Blood Queen<\/i>, but the plot they had planned remains intact. Though questions remain regarding where the half-demon\u2019s usual allies are, he\u2019ll have new folks on his team like Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) and Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane). He&#8217;ll need all the help he can get when he takes on\u00a0Nimue\u00a0the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) and whatever other fantastical foes the team behind the project have planned for Red and the BPRD.<\/p>\n<p>Though he has an uncommon number of films for a comic book character under fifty years of age, there\u2019s enough lore surrounding\u00a0Hellboy\u2019s\u00a0character that we have no difficulty seeing this\u00a0relaunch\u00a0resulting in a whole new trilogy should everything go the way the studio plans. Abe\u00a0Sapien\u00a0and Liz Sherman will be missed in the 2019 film, but we\u2019ve got plenty of time for them to hop back into the picture in the future. Here\u2019s to the wearer of the crown of flame! Long may he continue to kick the crap out of Nazis, demons, and whatever else crawls out from the bowels of the Earth.\u00a0<span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s talk about\u00a0Hellboy, yeah? The half-demon hero has had a surprising amount of media surrounding him for such a relatively young character, but there\u2019s a lot to love about the big guy. He made his first appearance in 1993, meaning the character was still practically a baby in pop culture terms when his story was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-app"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5835,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496\/revisions\/5835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}