Superhero Media: The Shape of Water

In the months leading up to the release of The Shape of Water, I had a habit of referring to the film as "X-Men Origins: Abe Sapien" as a bit of a joke, given the director and the visual look of the monster. Sadly, The Shape of Water isn't strictly a prequel to the Del Toro Hellboy films, but there are enough similar elements that they could certainly be in the same "cinematic universe" if you like to pretend. Which I do. Strictly speaking, were I required to place the film in a specific genre, it would be Melodrama, for quite a number of reasons, but there is more than enough superpowers, shady government labs and communist spies for it to suit your Silver Age needs. Elisa is a mute woman working as a cleaner for a shadowy lab in the employ of an American Intelligence agency, getting through the days with her friend Zelda and neighbour Giles, when she encounters, by chance, a strange creature and her life changes forever. I've noticed that people's acceptance of the romance in The Shape of Water can vary quite a bit, but there's no doubt that the film is magnificent in many ways. 

As you may expect, I'm not going to cover too much more of the film here, rather I'd like to discuss the elements which can work for your own superhero stories that can be found in The Shape of Water. As mentioned above, just making "the creature" just be Abe Sapien, or a member of the same species, from the Hellboy films is pretty easy, but let's not forget the other creature we can work from, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Monsters as superheroes (or villains) isn't anything new, from comic versions of Frankenstein's Monster to characters like Etrigan and Ghost Rider, hell even the Mummy as portrayed by Universal Pictures is there in obscurities like Shadrac and The Living Pharaoh. Whilst I've never done the "monster team" thing myself, it is a legitimate take on a Superhero group, and someone I used to game with even took a swing at an update on it (using the Terminator, Xenomorphs and Predator) but he left the country before he finished getting the models together. I think with a little more work, my own collection could provide Abe Sapien, Marrina and the Creature, but I'm not sure how well that would go as a team. 

Or, just for fun, let's flip this concept around, have the monsters be the villains, but still have them working for the government. Think of the NSA or CIA, but outright evil, rather than just being kind of evil anyway, trapping monsters and cryptids and using them for black ops work. Something like the Suicide Squad, but only with Bigfoot, the Creature and Chupacabra; I'd be down for that, sounds like a fun antihero or antagonist team. Part of the reason I started making "Superhero Media" a regular feature of my blog was to cover media that wasn't strictly in the Superhero genre, but still had ideas that were worth exploring. The Shape of Water is pretty much perfect in this regard, using tropes that may, strictly speaking, be from Horror, but are certainly at home with Superheroes and suit a more grim and Gothic supers setting, if that's your bag. At the very least, The Shape of Water is a good way to sneak something more fantastic into the viewing you undertake with your partner, if they're typically inclined to avoid the kind of media you enjoy.