Colonel Richard Strickland

Richard Strickland is the main antagonist of the 2017 acclaimed fantasy romance and Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro.

He was portrayed by Michael Shannon, who also played Zod in Man in Steel, Frankie Lombardo in Kangaroo Jack and Rick Carver in 99 Homes.

His Story
Strickland works as the head of the Occam Aerospace Research Center in the early 1960s of Baltimore. Sometime later, Strickland discovers an amphibious humanoid creature in the rivers of South America.

He is introduced in the film as Elisa Esposito, a mute woman working the nightshift as a janitor at Occam, and Zelda Fuller, an African-American janitor and Elisa's friend, are cleaning the men's bathroom. He enters the bathroom while they are cleaning, making both women incredibly uncomfortable as he uses the urinal with no hands, and speaks to them as they work. He tells Elisa about his stun baton, which is resting covered in blood on the counter, and eats candy in the bathroom without washing his hands, before finally leaving and letting the ladies continue their work.

Whilst being imprisoned by the institute, the creature bites off the last two fingers on Strickland's left hand, presumably as a result of Strickland attacking the creature. He begins to bleed profusely in the hallway where Elisa and Zelda are cleaning. The two janitors are then sent to clean up his blood in the Asset's room.

Elisa finds Strickland's fingers and saves them in her lunch bag. Zelda leaves the lab to look for someone who could take the fingers, and Elisa discovers the creature and begins to interact with the humanoid creature that Strickland had dubbed as "the Asset."

After Strickland's fingers are surgically reattached, he mentions that it's unknown if they will still function (and as an aside, says the doctors found mustard on them). He warns Elisa and Zelda about that creature, saying it is unholy and not made in the image of God like himself, while at the same time displaying an overtly racist attitude towards Zelda. Disregarding his warning, Elisa begins to visit the creature, and care for it.

Strickland returns home to his family: a wife, daughter, and son. After his son and daughter go to school, he has sex with his wife, during which his fingers begin to bleed, and he wants her to be completely silent. It's heavily insinuated that he has a sexual interest in Elisa during this interaction with his wife.

Strickland is shown to be unabashedly abusive towards the creature, as while the creature is chained to the ground for inspection by his superior General Hoyt, he beats and stuns the creature violently, mocking it's sounds of pain. Both he and the General show a complete disregard for the creature's wellbeing. However, curious about the Asset's biology, Hoyt demands Strickland to begin preparations to vivisect the Asset so that its organs can be used for the improvement of space travel.

Unbeknownst to Strickland, one of the scientists working in the facility - Robert "Bob" Hoffsteler - is secretly a Soviet spy called Dimitri who secretly delivers information to his superiors.

Despite this Bob is truly fascinated by the creature and is excited to do breaking discoveries, however his superiors from both sides have different plans as the soviets want him to kill the creature and examine it. Bob pleas for the creature's life to be spared, so that they can study it alive, but his pleas fall on deaf ears, and Strickland orders the operation to be conducted. Elisa, overhearing this, starts to formulate a plan in order to save the Asset with the help of her neighbor and close friend Giles, a homosexual advertising illustrator.

Unbeknownst to Strickland, Elisa and Bob begin putting their plan into action, with Elisa moving the loading bay camera, and Bob planting a Russian device to take out the building's power.

Elisa hides the Asset in a laundry cart and Bob gives her the instructions for taking care of "him" and lets her go.

Zelda finds out about the plan and helps her friend taking the Asset to a van disguised as a Laundry company van driven by Giles, Strickland finds out through the security cameras and runs to stop them, however, Elisa and Giles were already leaving (accidentally crashing into Strickland's new Cadillac) and Zelda and Bob had already disappeared.

Elisa takes the Asset to her apartment, keeping him alive in her bathtub by using chemicals that Bob gave her. Strickland begins to suspect that Elisa and her friend Zelda were most likely the ones behind the Asset's disappearance. His lackey tells him he believes ten highly trained specialists were behind it, and so Strickland finds "the help" incapable of doing such a thing.

With the Asset's health worsening, Elisa hatches a plan to release the Asset into the canal within days banking on how there would be few witnesses. Realizing that the Asset wasn’t dead, Hoyt threatens Strickland's livelihood, giving him thirty-six hours to find the Asset.

Strickland begins to suspect his fingers couldn't be saved as they become black and necrotic on his hand, but continues to desperately take handfuls of antibiotics to try and fix it. After spying on Bob with his lackey, he discovers Bob at the Soviet meeting site, killing the two Soviets present, before torturing Bob for information about what happened to the Asset. It is then that Bob reveals that the Asset was not taken by any Soviet operatives, but by the cleaning ladies.

Strickland then leaves Bob to die of his wounds. Strickland then invades Zelda's house, and threatens her for more information. He recites the story of Samson and Delilah, and how God gave Samson the power to bring down temples, and how he was going to bring down this "temple" on Zelda and her husband. He pulls off his two dead fingers, and throws them on the floor of Zelda's home, and her husband tells Strickland how he heard her on the phone, and that Elisa had the creature.

After Strickland leaves, Zelda calls Elisa and Giles to warn them. When Strickland arrives to Elisa's apartment it was already empty, but he finds a note on the calendar and the bathtub filled with water and salt crystals.

Final Confrontation
When Giles and Elisa arrive to the canal, before the Asset is released, Strickland arrives and immediately knocks down Giles before shooting Elisa and the Asset. The Asset is hit twice in the chest, and Elisa once in the stomach, and both collapse to the ground. Giles stands back up and hits Strickland in the face with a piece of wood.

As the Asset recovers from his gunshot wounds with his regenerative abilities, Giles embraces Elisa protecting her. As Strickland tries to reload his weapon, the Asset walks up to him. Strickland is astonished and says "F**k. You are god" and the Asset slices Strickland's throat with his claws.

As the police and Zelda arrive, Strickland falls to the ground and dies. The Asset then carries Elisa, enters into the canal with Elisa's body, and uses his healing powers to save her life. The scars on her neck sprout into gills, and the two of them embrace in the water.

Trivia

 * Strickland has an extreme and domineering behavior, which only grows more as the movie progresses, harassing at one point the main protagonist Elisa Esposito.
 * He's shown to have a great distaste for African-Americans, particularly Zelda, though he is still willing to shake her husband's hand.


 * “Strickland is a very troubled person,” Michael Shannon says of his character, a guy who measures masculinity by a man’s bathroom routine – Strickland pees hands-free, and considers washing your hands immasculate. “It’s easy to focus on the pain he inflicts on other people, but something that is a little more insidious is the pain he inflicts on himself.”
 * It's possible that Strickland's interest in Elisa is something of a fetish that stems from a desire for people to shut up. His attitude towards the lackey scientist, his wife, the car dealer, Bob, and later Elisa shows that he places great emphasis on being respected, and yet is always surrounded by people who talk too much. Elisa, who is both his subordinate and completely incapable of speech, is an outlet for those desires.


 * Strickland is also the surname of a villain/anti-hero in Trollhunters, a Netflix animated series also created by Guillermo del Toro and based on a book also written by him.


 * The creature design is heavily inspired by the film The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Michael Shannon's character even says they picked it up in a river in South America, which is the setting of The Creature from the film.


 * Strickland carries a macana with an electro shocker on the tip which he uses to torture the Asset.


 * His first name, Richard, maybe a reference to actor Richard Carlson, who played Dr. David Reed in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, one of the main influences for the film.