No one likes facing failure but it’s a really dumb move to blame said failure on other people.
That’s exactly what David Harbour is doing. The Stranger Things star got talking about his disgraced Hellboy reboot on Instagram and provided his opinion about why it crashed and burned upon release. His reasoning? Well, it wasn’t the movie’s fault, it was the fans’ fault. Hmm, okay, David. That’s an interesting approach.
Here’s what he said:
“I think it failed before we began shooting because I think that people didn’t want us to make the movie and for some reason there was like a big… Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman created this iconic thing that we thought could be reinvented and then they certainly - the loudness of the internet was like, “We do not want you to touch this.” And then we made a movie that I think is fun and I think had its problems but was a fun movie and then people were just very very against it and that’s people’s right but I learned my lesson in a lot of different way.”
Okay, there are a few things to touch upon here. Firstly, he’s absolutely correct when he says that fans of the original del Toro films didn’t want the Hellboy reboot to happen. They definitely were against the project from the very beginning. He’s totally right, they did not want them to touch this.
But touch it they did. And, honestly, fans would have responded favorably if the movie was actually, you know, good. I can think of a few instances when weary, cautious fans ended up embracing what they were initially opposed to (Blade Runner 2049, HBO’s Watchmen and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead come to mind) However, the Hellboy reboot was an absolute train wreck. It wasn’t just del Toro fanboys who hated it though. Critics abhorred the film, giving it only a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes while audiences polled gave it a C ranking on CinemaScore. So this thing was universally panned, not just by those who held the originals near-and-dear to their hearts. It was just a bad movie, David. You made a bad movie. A bad, bad movie.
What we have here is the old deflecting blame technique that you often see from those associated with failed projects or public embarrassments. It wasn’t MY fault, they say. It was THIS person’s fault or this OTHER person’s fault. They just can’t accept blame. The failure of the new Hellboy is not because of protective fans, it’s because the movie just wasn’t any good. But Harbour doesn’t want to come out and say that and accept blame on behalf of the people who made the movie. So instead he finds another reason for the film’s performance: everyone else. Ignorance is bliss.