It seems like half of the comments think this movie is an Abe Sapien origin story from the Hellboy universe and the other half think we’re dealing with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Throughout this video, I’ll be presenting the evidence for both these theories, so stay to the end, where I’ll give you my answer on what this film actually is. Early on, we’ve got some surreal imagery of furniture floating in an underwater room, but if you look closely you’ll see that it’s not just the room that’s underwater, but threesome fish swimming by outside that window as well. My prediction is that these shots are part of a dream sequence because generally in my experience, desk lamps don’t work underwater, they just end up electrocuting the victim. I mean... uh... forget I said that. But even if lamps did work underwater, they’d probably have to be plugged in. In the corner of the frame here, you see what appears to be a tentacle, something we’ve seen plenty of in the Hellboy movies, whereas Creature from the Black lagoon is much more grounded in reality.
Side note: I love how they put their Fox Searchlight logo underwater, it reminds me of the 30thCentury Fox thing they used in Futurama. Her waking up here supports my theory that the shots in the beginning of the trailer are part of a dream, and she’s also in the same room as that underwater part, so I’m pretty sure this scene represents her waking up into the harsh reality of her real world responsibilities. Also, time seems to be a major theme in this movie. You’ll see over and over and over in this trailer that the tracking of time seems to be important. This could be due to the fact that fish people in fiction tend to live much longer than humans, which is a weird consistency when you think about it considering how short lifespans tend to be for actual fish. One example of a fictional fish-person with an extended lifespan, you guessed it: Abe Sapien from Hellboy.
The Hellboy movies seem to take place in the year they were released, as suggested by a reference to the recent advent of YouTube in the second film. They put them up on YouTube. God, I hate YouTube. Abe is stated to have been discovered alive in 1865.That makes him at least 139 years old during the first Hellboy movie. So perhaps the constant references to time in the trailer play into the theme that the protagonist, Elisa, really has a limited time with this fish-person, whatever he may turn out to be, in the grand scheme of things. I’ve seen romantic complications caused by a difference in the speed of aging in other stories before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a big part of The Shape of Water as well. I guess only time will tell. Haha, oh I am just not funny.
According to the internet, the movie takes place in 1963 and has some connections to the Cold War, however, I think this part of the film must start a bit earlier in 1962, and maybe it carries over into 63, because this date, September 18th, falls on a Wednesday in 63, but a Tuesday in 62.I looked up the date in 1962 and apparently some nuclear testing was performed by the USSR that day. In an interview earlier this year, Doug Jones, who by the way is the same actor who played Abe Sapien in Del Toro’s Hellboy films, said the following about his role in The Shape of Water: I’m being studied and tested in a U.S. government facility in 1963, so the Russian Cold Wari’s on, the race for space is on, so there’s all that backdrop and that undercurrent.
I’m being tested for how can they use me for advantages in military or space travel, or my technology-can we make this usable for humans? So they’re trying to keep me a secret from the Russians. So that leads me to believe that The Shape of Water is about the US is developing this supernatural research program to as a reaction, to try to outpace the USSR in the Cold War.
Whether or not that turns out to be the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Section51, from the Hellboy franchise, remains to be seen. Moving on, this wallpaper, reminds me a lot of the carpet in Room 237 in The Shining. That’s probably just a coincidence, or at most an homage, but it did get my attention enough to take a closer look at it and notice that it also looks kind of like fish scales. Its shown again at the end of the trailer and it really starts to look fishy. There’s something special about these shoes that they keep showing. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but go ahead and leave your ideas in the comments, and if I do a follow-up video, I’ll put your comment up on the screen. She cleans these shoes with an oddly specific duck brush thing.
And overall she seems to be obsessed with cleaning, because in addition to keeping her own things, she also does it for a living. Webbed fingers. That could support the idea of either Hellboy or Black Lagoon, but again, I’d have to lean more towards Hellboy. The hand looks more humanoid than the hands of the Creature, which are much wider and more claw like. Hats not to say that if this was related to Creature of the Black Lagoon that Del Toro wouldn’t have updated the design a bit. It has been over 60 years since the movie came out, and to be fair it’s also been 9years since the last time Abe Sapien showed up on screen, so its possible wed see a fresh look there as well.
In this shot, a warning on the wall reads NO LONE ZONE, which I guess means that no one should ever be in there unsupervised. Kind of like she is right here. Also, if you don’t know what these are, it’s a security measure meant to reinforce that no lone zone rule.
The door only opens if both buttons are pressed at the same time, so you need two people to-do it. If you are a Hellboy fan, you probably didn’t miss this one: eggs! Abe Sapien loves eggs, so that’s a huge connection. However, you’ll notice that the eyes... wait a minute... where have I seen this before? But anyway, you’ll notice the eyes are not quite the same as Abe’s, but do keep in mind that he can change the appearance of his eyes using those contacts that he wears, even though you’re not supposed to wear your contacts underwater. Also, the creatures in that franchise do change their appearance with age just like anyone else. This chain gives the impression that this creature might be dangerous, which would be a tally for Black Lagoon. Abe Sapien is not much of combatant. He only get into one scrum during the series, which he runs away from.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon is confrontational, has the power to rock the boat, literally, and breaks out of a cage with thick wooden bars. Also, this guy’s hand is wrapped up, so it’s likely that he was attacked by said creature. The obvious rebuttal is that if this creature is so dangerous, why is it going and falling in love with Amelie...I mean, Elisa. Well, Doug Jones says that this creature is the last of its kind.
That doesn’t mean it was always that way. So maybe this isn’t the same creature from the black lagoon, but a descendant. If the descendant was brought up under different conditions, maybe it’s less hostile. And let’s not forgot that in The Creature from The Black Lagoon, all of the men who are caught off guard get killed, but Kay, the one female of the group, leaves herself vulnerable, but the creature just touches her legs, and then at the end, (spoiler alert for Creature from the Black Lagoon) kidnaps her but does not kill her. Maybe Lagoon Creatures need love too. Back to the trailer, this scientist guy claims that the creature is intelligent, capable of language and understanding emotions. Both Abe and the Creature are intelligent. Abe reads four books a day and is able to extract information from people he meets.
The Creature devises a plan to trap the boat inside the lagoon using a huge tree branch. Abe demonstrates the ability to use language, which the creature does not. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, it just doesn’t happen during the movie. I would argue that both are capable of understanding emotion. Abe falls in love during the second movie, which leads to a glorious scene involving two supernatural monsters singing a love song.
The Creature expresses both anger and love; anger when he retaliates at them for shooting at him and love, as I mentioned earlier, towards Kay. In the Shape of Water trailer, Elisa plays some music for the fish-man. She offers him up some jazz music, maybe that’s not his thing, they settle on classical music. Or at least, something in the style of classical music.
The artist of this track is actually Madeleine Peyroux. She was born in 1974, over a decade after this movie is supposed to take place. So that doesn’t really make sense, it seems Guillermo Del Toro is pulling a Baz Luhrmannin this instance and using music from the wrong era. But the point is, that this track, which features instrumentals you might hear in classical music is what makes this creature dance, and Abe Sapien is also a fan of such music.
If you are curious about the song itself, it’s called La Ja-vanaise, and the lyrics translate roughly as follows: I admit I went through hell, didn’t you my love? Before I caught wind of you (met you) my love. Whether it pleases you or not in dancing the Ja-vanaise, We loved each other for the length of a song. That last line could tie back into the time thing I mentioned earlier; because he lives much longer than her, it may feel like their love was short lived to him. We also know Abe is a sucker for poetry and love songs, and this may be the origin of why those things resonate with him.
Next thing. The natives of the Amazon worshipped him. Well, the Black Lagoon is located in the Amazon. Abe on the other hand was found in Washington, but we don’t know where was located before that, or if the Amazonian natives worshipped a different member of his species back in the day, before he became the last remaining member. This seems to be the same room as Elisa’s apartment from the beginning of the trailer.
Over here we see a drawing board. Later in the trailer, when we see this rendering, we know that Elisa is most likely the artist. There’s also a self-portrait of her peaking around a corner, possibly foreshadowing the fact that she’ll be sneaking around later in the movie. Like in this next shot of the trailer. Calling it now: I think this scene is part of the dream too.
Outside the movie theater, if you look behind the staircase, we can make out part of a word. Being that it is a cinema, it probably says feature or featured. But I was thinking, what if it says creature, or even creature feature. That could explain why the creature is the only one interested in seeing this movie. Perhaps there’s a jealousy subplot where the creature longs for someone of its own kind. By the way if you can figure out what movie this is, let me know in the comments. The bloody handprint here doesn’t look like a normal human hand, so I’m gonna guess that is also the creature, meaning he probably escaped and got himself into some trouble.
This guy is asleep, so he won’t be much help as a witness of this crime. Based on this license plate, it looks like the movie takes place in Maryland, possibly Massachusetts. If you’re wondering where Hellboy is set, it’s in New Jersey. And if you aren’t familiar with American geography, all of those locations are set in the Northeast region, not too far away from one another. While Black Lagoon was set in the Amazon, much of that crew was American, so it would make sense that they might capture something and bring it back with them. I don’t know who’s bath this is, but this container on the side stuck out to me. Its labeled: Aviex, a company that develops vaccines to combat parasitic diseases. Definitely a strange item to have laying around the bathroom.
Now I could be wrong about this one, but I think the voice at the beginning and end of the trailer is Doug Jones. Obviously that’s significant because he played Abe Sapien, but that doesn’t confirm that The Shape of Water is a hellboy spin-off, because director Guillermo Del Toro likes to work with the same actors over and over again, just as many directors do as part of their auteur, part of their directorial style.
The reason that it would be significant if that was indeed his voice is; A) he talks; and B) he refers to Elisa as the princess without voice, and if you’ve seen Hellboy will, you know he kind of has a thing for princesses. I’m not saying that Elisa is literally a princess, but he likes calling a girl princess, so that more evidence that these movies are connected. So now you have a good argument for this movie being connected to either the Hellboy or Creature of the Black Lagoon franchises. I think there is quite a bit more support for the Abe Sapien idea, but I have seen an article online that basically shoots down the possibility, saying that fans are trying too hard to connect the dots, much as many of my commenters have said about these trailer analysis videos.
The article also brings up that Del Toro legally wouldn’t be able to make such a film due to a reboot of the franchise already being in development. But how to do we know that Del Toro isn’t involved in the reboot? How do we know this movie isn’t a part of it? Creature of the Black Lagoon is also being remade in 2019, but nobody’s arguing against the possibility of that.
You have a fish person who likes eggs and vintage music. There’s no proof that this one has telepathic abilities, but he clearly has a connection with a girl who is mute, she can’t speak. When he looks at me, he does not know how I am incomplete. He’s able to understand her despite the fact that she can’t talk. In 2002, before any of the Hellboy stuff came out, Del Toro was briefly attached to a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, so I think he’s just a fan of it, he’s inspired by it, and that’s why we see these similarities. There was also an article recently where Mr. Del Toro flat out denies the existence of Hellboy III. Does this mean that Shape of Water can’t be a Hellboy spin-off? Not exactly.
I’m going to spoil the end of M Night Shyamalan’s Split right, so if you haven’t seen that, then skip ahead like 20 seconds, but I think what GDT is doing here is creating doubt to create surprise. I remember shortly before Split came out, Shyamalan responded to a tweet asking about a sequel to Unbreakable. He said that he had a script sitting on his kitchen counter and created the expectation that this might be something that happens a few years down the road.
Then just a few months after that, we got Split and it was a delightful surprise. I see The Shape of Water kind of playing out the same way. I don’t think it will be heavy handed with the Hellboy references, I think it will be its own movie that happens to work in this universe. Kind of like Split last year, kind of like 10 Clover field Lane. So that’s what I believe, I’m gonna put my eggs in that basket. Pun intended. If you’re looking forward to this movie too,
let me know by liking this video, and if you love creepy movies, you’re in the right place. Go ahead and subscribe to CZs World for new horrors every week, yes, this is my video this week, I’m gonna be going on vacation for the rest of weekend so you’ll see me again on Sunday the 30th at 2PM pacific for the first ever episode of The Dead stream. If you haven’t heard, I’ll be joined by Lady White Rabbit and Mortis Media for our first ever streaming event. You don’t want to miss it, so ring that death bell for notifications and I will see you in The Dead stream, assuming we both survive.
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