Blog Archives
Abe Sapien Returns
Abraham Sapien returned in Hellboy: The Golden Army. Jones reprised the role, and the creature design was largely kept the same, although lighter color tones and different schemes were used for certain areas of the skin. Although the design was the same, the much larger onscreen presence throughout the film dictated a different approach to the make-up process.
Hunter — Predator
“A monster from another planet that kills for sport.” This is the brief, poignant description of the Predator given by producer Joel Silver in a promotional interview. Shortly after the release of Rocky IV, a joke made its way in Hollywood claiming that, since Rocky had run out of Earthly opponents to fight, the next one should come from another planet. Said joke unwittingly inspired the Thomas brothers — Jim and John — to write their first script: Hunter, later retitled Predator. “We had an idea about doing a story about a brotherhood of hunters who came from another planet to hunt all kinds of things,” Jim said, “but we realized that wouldn’t work very well, so we picked one hunter who was going to hunt the most dangerous species — which had to be man, and the most dangerous man was a combat soldier.” The first-time writers, devoid of agents, slipped the script under the door of Fox executive Michael Levy – who shared it with John Davis and Joel Silver, the future producers of the film.
Marcus Corvinus
Markus, bitten by bat, became the blood leader of the vampires.
For the first Underworld film, the most extensive Vampire make-up had been applied to Bill Nighy to portray the regenerating Viktor after his awakening. Otherwise, the Vampire make-ups in the film consisted in prosthetic teeth and bright blue contact lenses — showing their heritage from Marcus Corvinus. Interestingly enough, Tony Curran — who portrays Marcus in the second film — has red hair and blue eyes, both traits associated with vampires in Romanian folklore (specifically, the strigoi).
Lycans of the Underworld — Underworld: Evolution
The success of Underworld quickly led to the production of a sequel. Len Wiseman returned as the director of the new film, and with him Tatopoulos Studios to bring the Lycans to the screen again. The same basic design for the creatures was used, and most of the moulds were actually reused. An innovation in the design was represented by the greater quantity of hair on the bodies of the Werewolves. This aesthetic modification was implemented to portray the first generation Lycans of the prologue scene, as well as the climax of the film. “We changed up the Werewolves a little bit, made minor alterations to them,” Wiseman said, “because a lot of the Werewolves in this one were in some flashbacks that show the past, and we wanted them to look a little less evolved.” For issues of time and budget, the same suits were used to portray both the newly mutated first generation Lycans as well as the second generation Lycans.
Abraham Sapien
Abraham Sapien first appeared in the Seed of Destruction arc of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics — and was featured in Guillermo del Toro’s film adaptations. Abe was the director’s favourite character from the comic series, but despite that he wanted to take a different direction, character-wise: “[he was] completely different from the Abe Sapien in the comics, because I wanted this delicate, beautiful, very sensitive character to juxtapose with Hellboy.”
Creatures of the Cave
The creation of the mutated beings in The Cave was assigned to Patrick Tatopoulos and his special effects company. Accompanying them were the digital effects artists at Luma Pictures, also responsible for the film’s other visual effects — which included digital extensions of the cave sets. Wide creative freedom was given to the creature team. Guy Himber, shop supervisor, said in a featurette: “the script gave an idea of where it wants to go, but all of the creature development happens with us, because the guy who’s writing the script is only suggesting things. He might not have an idea of what the creature looks like; he just knows it’s a thing, it’s in a cave and flies, it has a bat quality to it, but that’s as far as he’s taken it.”
Monster Legacy 