In an inspired fan-created mashup, Amazon's The Boys has been transformed into the image of the 1987 vampire flick The Lost Boys. The Boys is gearing up for its third season of Supe-murdering mayhem on the streaming platform June 3rd. Adapted from the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic, the show quickly became a hit for Amazon due to its darkly irreverent skewering of the ever-popular superhero genre and has recently spun off with an animated anthology series, Diabolical.
Even though it's a horror film that includes a scene of a vampire melting in a bath of holy water, The Lost Boys is somehow less violent than the superhero show mixed with it in the fan poster. Directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim, and Corey Feldman, the film follows teens Sam and Mike as they move to the fictional coastal town of Santa Carla, California, with their single mother. While Sam falls in with an occult-obsessed pair of comic book store employee brothers, Mike falls in with a much edgier crowd of hard-partying vampires that turn him into a creature of the night, eventually putting Mike and his entire family in peril. With no shortage of crazy details behind its making, The Lost Boys was a critical and commercial success. Although the once-edgy aspects of it have now aged into a fine cheese, the vein of dark comedy running through it, and the over-the-top nature of the filmmaking, paired with its stellar goth/synthwave soundtrack, have ensured its cult status.
In an Instagram post, Germany-based digital artist @diamanddead mashes up the two properties to great results. The 1987 film's iconic poster, with the "too-cool-for-school" posing of its characters in black and white against a blood-red backsplash, is recreated with characters from The Boys. In place of Jason Patric's angsty hero, Mike, in front-left is Karl Urban's vigilante anti-hero, Billy the Butcher. Rather than Sutherland's gang of feather-haired Lost Boys flanking behind him, he has his own underdog crew of Boys. The fan poster can be seen below.
The fan art community is a thriving one, and there's no shortage of artwork dedicated to The Boys. Although a somewhat worrying amount of it is laser-focused on Homelander, the nationalist, Nazi-loving Superman equivalent. Throwing back to The Lost Boys might seem like a random pull, and the two properties don't appear to have much in common beyond the word "Boys" in their titles, but there's more there than meets the eye.
For one, both properties use humor to undercut their gorier moments. For another, the placement of Hughie and Starlight on the poster behind Billy the Butcher is an especially canny touch, since in the original that's where the film's antagonist David, played by Sutherland, is placed alongside Jami Gertz's Star. In season 2 of The Boys, Hughie's hidden relationship with Starlight comes to the forefront and drives a huge wedge between him and Butcher, placing them at odds for much of the season. This neatly mirrors the antagonistic relationship between David and Mike, whose relationship is further driven apart by Mike's relationship with Star, whom David is very possessive over. And while they may both technically be on the same side as vampires, they have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world, just as Billy and Hughie do. A unique blend of properties, the post is bound to ramp up excitement for the upcoming season of The Boys, as well as the impending Lost Boys remake, whenever that happens.
Source: @diamonddead