It's no 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', by which I mean that it's good. Ron Perlman ended up being the perfect choice for the lead, and I am very glad that the director was dedicated to keeping this project true to the atmosphere and story of the source material and to his own vision. For example, he rejected suggestions for a helldog, a hellmobile, and that Hellboy be a regular guy who just turns red when he gets angry. Yes, these were serious suggestions from studio executives.
Mike Mignola, the creator of the Hellboy comic, mixes humor, black magic, the paranormal, and nazis. Fortunately, the emphasis on nazis isn't very strong, and the other elements combine with stylized and unique art to create fun, readable stories about a being from hell who's really a pretty regular guy. He happens to be big and red, largely indestructable, and fights monsters, but hey, that's no reason to be all broody and mysterious.
I'm not going to talk about the plot, for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, but I will say that Hellboy's personality is perfectly captured, and in many scenes the movie comes as close to Mignola's stark artistic style as is possible in the real world. My husband complained on the way out of the theatre that there wasn't enough of the dark and creepy stuff that crops up in the Hellboy comic stories, until I reminded him of a few things. This is one of the strengths of the movie, that it mixes light humor with dark and disturbing images so well that it never precisely becomes horror but also is not gutted and inconsequential.
If you understand the construction of stories at all, some of the seams do show a bit. The POV character is obviously there for the viewers to identify with. As the 'new guy' he gets introduced to the other characters and the storyline along with the viewer, and we never learn that much about him, allowing us to more easily project onto his character. This really isn't a bad solution for making the story accessible to people who haven't read the comic, and is done fairly unobtrusively. The plot is tight, self-contained, and well-paced, the special effects are quite good, and there is action! romance! and humor! enough for all.
So, is this movie significant? No. Will it change your life? No. Will it give you a really fun two hours of entertainment? You bet.
I was unexpectedly disappointed with the movie. I have to disagree about the pacing, which I thought was a bit off, but I do agree that the characterization was good. (I've never read the comic, but I did enjoy the characters in the movie.) In fact, I thought it had a rather high amount of character development for an action movie. But the plot had one big thing that drove me crazy, and several minor things.
MINOR SPOILERS BELOW...
My Big Issue and why I didn't enjoy Hellboy: I hate "evil destroys the world for the sake of..." Well, nothing, really. Evil with no purpose other than to be evil is BORING. And from what I could see of the "bad guys" that's all there seemed to be to them -- summon the big evil god-thing and the world will be destroyed and won't that be wonderful. That got a big fat YAWN from me, and once that was revealed it was difficult for me to stay engaged with the story. Neat characters, boring evil. Blah.
And to make it worse, the climatic battle scene with the evil god wasn't even exciting or suspensful. (And the level of suspense wasn't helped that the scene where giant tentacle grabs HB was given away in the previews.)
Minor Nit: There was an odd foreshadowing blunder. Liz tells HB that she's learning to control her power, but the time she needs to use it, she has to get John to slap her to get her angry enough to be able to use it. What.'s the deal with that? (And when she destroyed all the ugly doggies, weren't they supposed to divide into two and come back?)
Another minor nit: bad guy who waves his weapons around in fancy martial arts display every time he draws them. (I can think of a possible justification for it in this case, but it still bugs me.)
Posted by: Lisa | April 22, 2004 at 10:39 PM
MINOR SPOILERS....
See, I read it that the villains had been promised something in return for serving the great old ones. They were already unaging, a clear indication that they were getting *something* from the deal. True, it wasn't explicitly stated, and true, it's a standard trope in 'deals with demons' stories. It might have been better if the villains had stated how they expected to benefit from their actions, but there was enough there that I didn't see their actions as being meaningless evil but rather that they were willing to sell out the world for personal gain of some sort.
Re: the doggies - if they're destroyed by fire, they don't come back. The first one had laid eggs before it got cacked, which is why there were more down there.
Weapon waving - yep. Kinda silly.
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it more, especially if my review had anything to do with you going to see it. Heh, maybe I'm just a bigger comic geek than I thought. =)
Posted by: Erica | April 26, 2004 at 10:27 AM
We would have gone to see it anyway because the previews looked good.
What's the point of being an unaging wizard in a destroyed world?
If the doggies are destroyed by fire, then why, after the first one was destroyed by fire, did they show a green soul-like things rising out of the corpse then splitting in half, followed immediately by the "old guy" (forgot his name) learning that two come back for each one killed. That visual followed by that scene really suggest that the first one did come back as two.
Posted by: Lisa | April 26, 2004 at 11:52 AM
RobGreat shots love the light on the couple in the chucrh and really love the moment that you captured during the speech the bride looks as though she is about to burst! Great emotion all the way through and such a happy, smiley couple!
Posted by: Natascha | July 29, 2012 at 08:05 PM
dude its cool matt tracker was made for nogtolsia reasons but in a way he was a waste of space in that wave, they could have gave us something we need like dr mindbender or wetsuit. really though they should remake a mask line, that would be tits. also centurions need to be made as well in 3 3/4 style. clear wraith must be ivisible because i still havnt found him either. and zartans swamp skier is a joke. anyway good review man.
Posted by: Jeet | July 30, 2012 at 02:23 AM