Hellboy

My fears were confirmed, this is not at all the Hellboy I wanted to see. I know, maybe they couldn't even manage to cram the bulk of Mignola's years of universe building into a two-hour film that is also not a sequel and has to introduce Hellboy and the team. Someone has tried, and it was a suicide attempt – cheap, unimaginative, overstuffed, and at times (as the trailers warned) almost TV boring and awkward looking. It's similar to the comics in plot, but hardly at all in mood. The film seems to try to mask its lack of atmosphere with gore and all sorts of fucking, but it doesn't even manage to do that properly, and I wasn't particularly curious about anything like that. Hellboy is supposed to be poetic, doom-laden, dramatic, horrific, and yet still entertaining (like the books, like Del Toro's vision), especially since the filmmakers chose The Wild Hunt and The Storm and the Fury as their templates; yet this reboot is none of those things. It can only look up to Del Toro's magical films (and sometimes seems to) because it's worse in every way... Production design? Ridiculously simple. Potentially interesting or entertaining characters? Laughable (poor Lobster). Perhaps everything and everyone lacks heart, and unfortunately that includes Hellboy himself. David Harbour may be a likable actor who won me over in Stranger Things, but he wears a much worse mask than Ron Perlman, and underneath it he overacts, hollers, and prances unnecessarily. Why? If Mike Mignola likes it that way, that's his business. I, however, will continue to prefer to read his books and watch Del Toro's movies, in which Hellboy is Hellboy and which, while they follow their own path, at least have clarity and are not so damn stupid.___P.S. The misery was quite enhanced by the "cool at all costs" Czech subtitles, which sometimes were not even translations but completely made up (probably for dubbing purposes). (04/10/2019)

The new Hellboy goes uncompromisingly its own way, and the question is, will you like it? Fans of the comics will find a lot of familiar things and maybe they will be willing to forgive Hellboy for moving forward at too high a speed, for the way it neglects character work and for taking a step backwards in terms of filmmaking compared to what Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro did years ago. But if you haven’t read Mike Mignola's comics, you're probably better off waiting for Avengers. This Hellboy doesn't have much to offer. (04/11/2019)

Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy was more fairytale-like (but still pretty creepy), both films had amazing production design, make-up effects and a distinctive creative imagination. Neil Marshall's vision relies heavily on gory visuals, is more brash and doesn't shy from swear words, in short, it's an R-rated film with all the trimmings, which in the end has its pros and cons. I was unfortunately not as amused by David Harbour's banter as I was by Ron Perlman’s, in fact I had somewhat of a problem sympathising with any of the characters as they all more or less got on my nerves. Besides, the connection with the Arthurian legend left me with rather mixed impressions. But not to cast aspersions, of the characters, I was most interested (i.e. least irritated) by the witch Nimue and liked the excursion to Baba Yaga's cottage on chicken legs. I'm sorry to see how the latest Hellboy movie turned out, because the potential here was great. I wanted to criticise the film for its mostly distracting visuals and not-so-nice visual effects, but given the $50 million budget, that's understandable. But still, what a shame! (04/22/2019)

Having a 50 million-dollar full-length feature written by a debutant screenwriter with no experience in feature-lenght films, and assuming that it will then "somehow" work under the direction of a slasher B-movie director from England, is a really ignorant overestimation. It is therefore fair for the producers that the movie flopped. Although it seems there must have been a serious endeavor to please the comic book’s fans, Cosby's screenplay for this two-hour-long movie just does not work at all, and it appears to be an overpriced and incoherent dud, where the shallow characters have no chemistry between them, and so we cannot feel any sort of emotions from them. Also, their motivations are either completely shallow or straight up just completely random. Hellboy comes across like a computer game, where you are constantly jumping from one location to another, finding a key that will move you on to the next level, in a superficial (and seemingly unnecessary) plot. With all that being said, this movie is a really disgustingly big pile of CGI excrement. However, when I put aside even the most basic expectations I have from any movie (in other words, I switch off my brain), I absolutely did not enjoy this in any way. Actually, after those two hours, I could not figure out how this appalling failure of a movie was supposed to hold my attention. (09/17/2019)

I preferred Del Toro’s vision much more. Although this Hellboy tries to draw more on the comic books, it’s bloodier and ruder, but I miss the fantastic poetry here. Here they simply squander the mass monsters and characters appearing here, only to flit by on the screen, leaving you none the wiser. Harbour’s Hellboy is much more hideous, like a heavy-metal street bum, crossed with the devil. The action is hard and dirty, but full of playfulness and invention. The monsters are really demonic. The witch is so horrible that the sight of her made me feel physically ill. But my two-year-old daughter liked it... (10/31/2021)