Hellboy, creation of comics artist Mike Mignola, is as much a part of the arc of modern cinema as his Marvel and DC Comics-owned counterparts. Hellboy hit in the same year as Spider-Man 2, while Hellboy 2: The Golden Army shared a summer with The Dark Knight. When future cinephiles study the creative evolution of Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, his early take on inter-species fish-man romance, Abe Sapien, will not be forgotten. It’s unfortunate, then, that 2019’s rebooted Hellboy — from director Neil Marshall (episodes of Lost in Space and Westworld) and writer Andrew Crosby (Eureka), starring Stranger Things’ David Harbour — does not live up to that legacy. Hellboy is trying to do too much and say too much, but none of it is really what the movie needs. Crosby’s script attempts to cram half a dozen discrete Hellboy stories into a single film, with poor pacing and jagged structure. Marshall tries to make it a horror flick, a comedy, and an action blockbuster, turning out middling effort on all three counts. But the biggest problem with Hellboy is that it lacks any charm. The plot of Hellboy is predominantly lifted from Hellboy: The Wild Hunt, in which the Arthurian-era witch Nimue rises to conquer humankind with an unstoppable fairy army. Emphasis on “predominantly,” because there’s barely a facet of Hellboy lore left uninvolved, as backstories are forklifted into the story through long exposition speeches and no less than five flashback sequences strung throughout. Despite all this, it takes the two-and-a-half hour film roughly 45 minutes to introduce its secondary characters and put Hellboy’s Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense on the track of the villain. It’s more a Wikipedia list than a movie — an approach to the varied and disjointed nature of Hellboy continuity that would serve a TV series far better than a single feature film. In and among Hellboy’s flashbacks, information dumps, and a multitude of introduced-and-then-unexplored characters, the movie even tries to weigh in on the idea that Maybe monsters are just misunderstood, and shouldn’t be indiscriminately murdered? But none of the monsters in Hellboy are sympathetic. They’re all unrepentant murderers, baby snatchers, and cannibals — not just “other” but fundamentally destructive. In the end, Hellboy seems to forget that it ever raised the question in the first place, so it can stage a montage of bad guys getting killed to an upbeat rock song. And speaking of unsympathetic monsters, Hellboy’s lead is one too. It’s hard to say whether this is the fault of Harbour — who growls or yells or whines most of his lines — or Crosby’s take on Hellboy, who is neither endearing, competent, or consistent. An early scene has our scarlet hero pining over his role in the necessary execution of a fallen BPRD agent; later it’ll only take one villain speech to have him roaring about how he hates humans. He’s a jerk to the people around him, whether human or paranormal, and he doesn’t even seem very good at his job. He doesn’t like paranormal research, and he also doesn’t seem to like hunting monsters much, either. The movie makes no effort to explain to us why he’s in his profession except that his father forced him to be. A younger, more abrasive Hellboy does exist in the comics, but there’s a reason why adult Hellboy — insouciant but friendly, weary but never ready to give up, somehow unflappable and indignant simultaneously at all times — is the main character. He’s the Hellboy everybody likes. Much of Hellboy seems just left of center, as if Marshall played a game of telephone with the source material. The humor in it mostly consists of Hellboy complaining, and fell completely flat in my theater. The director occasionally attempts to tap into horror visuals, but left me, one of most horror-movie sensitive viewers I know, shrugging at the old trope of a creature that walks on all fours but belly up. The fight scenes are poorly shot, leaning heavily on CGI characters slugging it out in dark environments. And then there’s the gore; blood that sprays, living human heads peeled like grapes, demons grabbing a man by both legs and pulling until he erupts in a fountain of viscera. That said, the design of the demons themselves is one of Hellboy’s bright bits. Likewise, the movie comes briefly alive when Marshall allows himself to go full camp for the appearance of pulp-hero-pastiche Lobster Johnson. Johnson, played by Thomas Haden Church (Spider-Man 3) returns in one of the movie’s two end credits scenes. Ian McShane (Deadwood, American Gods, John Wick) does his Ian McShane-est as Professor Bruttenholm, even managing to sell the line “I love you, Hellboy” from a cheap-looking CGI double. And not all the CGI is bad; I found the facial animation on Gruagach the boar-headed fairy to be brilliantly expressive. If you like gore, and monsters, and tuning out for a few hours, Hellboy might even be the movie for you. But overall, its faults strongly outweigh its virtues. It would be unfair to compare nearly any filmmaker to Guillermo del Toro — and even his Hellboy films were not exactly perfect. They also suffered from pacing problems and anti-climactic endings. But they nailed the characters and tone, and they picked and chose carefully from the array of Hellboy source material to build an engrossing world and fully-fleshed characters. 2019’s Hellboy does exactly the opposite, favoring references and set pieces over character and tone, and suffers for it.<doc-sep>In the 2004 film Hellboy, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, the title character is introduced lifting weights in his cozy subterranean room, jonesing for a candy bar, smoking a cigar and surrounded by the cats, whom he loves. The soundtrack is Tom Waits’ “Heartattack and Vine” from the 1980 album of the same name. In the 2019 film Hellboy, directed by Neil Marshall, after some brief scene setting in Tijuana, the character is introduced with a cover of “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions. He is at a Lucha libre match, so there are no cats, but the candy and tobacco products are also missing, and neither show up over the course of the film’s remaining two hours. Subscribe to Observer’s Entertainment Newsletter These changes reflect how the culture has shifted over the last decade and a half in regards to how it views its comic book heroes. Back in the early aughts—when superhero comic book movies were not yet the dominant cultural force they were to become—it seemed perfectly reasonable, even fitting, to have an alternative take on the form. These days, there is little space for experimental jazz-rock icons or nicotine in these kinds of movies. HELLBOY ★ (1/4 stars) Directed by: Neil Marshall Written by: Andrew Cosby Starring: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim and Thomas Haden Church Running time: 120 mins. It’s dispiriting that an oddball sensibility is not even allowed here. What we get is an R-rated update that purports to be “dark,” but only in the limited sense where that word means being chock-full of beheadings and dismemberments. It’s exit Tom Waits; enter Mötley Crüe, whose “Kickstart My Heart,” is among the many generic rock hits on a soundtrack that seems designed to be released on K-tel. (If ever a film cried out for some Norwegian Death Metal, it’s this one). There appears to be a total of two ideas fueling the reboot. The first is to make the movie at least partially a horror flick; the second is to make David Harbour, the guy from Stranger Things with a longshoreman’s build and an amiable air, the lead. The first gambit works out disastrously; the second, just fine given the circumstances. Real horror requires, for starters, actual scares; by my count, there was only one in Hellboy, when a corpse hand reaches up beyond the grave. The rest is just gore and body parts being lopped off willy-nilly and without much flair. (The two beheadings that occur at the siege of King’s Landing in “Blackwater,” the Game of Throne‘s second season penultimate episode also directed by Marshall, are more memorable that the myriad than occur here.) This includes the witch Nimue (Milla Jovovich), who manages to continue jabbering on about vengeance even after her head is removed from her body. Like a Wiccan Darth Vader, she is trying to seduce Hellboy away from the side of humanity to which he has been recruited since being adopted as a lil’ devil by Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane), a rather sadistic explorer and scientist. There is a fascinating concept buried somewhere beneath the goo and splatter about nature versus nurture and the value of working alongside a species who will always consider you a sideshow, but the film lacks the rigor or curiosity to do anything interesting with it. Most of the visual choices are muddled and uninspired. The legendary Russian witch Baba Yaga shows up looking as menacing as a melted candle, while Nimue’s chief henchman, a boar-like humanoid named Gruagach, comes off as a not-ready-for-prime-time Muppet. The film does have one extended sequence of visual wit that is memorable and fun, when an already battered Hellboy has to take out three ogre-like giants in the English countryside. Thank heavens—or perhaps the many hells—for David Harbour. His half-demon can swing from The Dude-like languor to titanic bouts of rage with remarkable alacrity. He brings joy, empathy and humor, even though the script is relatively barren of funny things for him to do or say. (A highlight? He says to a recently chopped off head, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Yes, that’s as good as it gets, folks.) The chief battle here isn’t the one on screen between Hellboy and a sixth century witch; it’s between Harbour and the uninspired gore and bland rock music in which his unfortunate first starring vehicle is soaked. He loses in the end, but at least he puts up a good fight.<doc-sep>This week, the world’s greatest paranormal investigator is back in theaters! Hellboy has arrived, and Stranger Things’ David Harbour has taken over the role of Mike Mignola’s signature hero. SYFY WIRE recently caught up with Mignola and the cast of the film on the red carpet at the New York City premiere, where the legendary creator recalled envisioning Harbour as the new Hellboy before that even seemed possible. “My wife and I were watching Stranger Things,” said Mignola. “I was sitting there with her, and the minute David popped up on screen, she said, ‘That guy should play Hellboy.' Then, two weeks later, I get a phone call saying, ‘What would you think about David Harbour?’ So it’s just very odd. I didn’t pick him! The universe might have heard me ... I don’t know.” Harbour also told us about Hellboy’s inner struggle to resist his true nature, which he latched upon during his performance. “I felt like inside of him, his genetics, his DNA, his proclivities are all toward being evil,” said Harbour. “He has to cut off these pieces of himself to be a good guy. But he wants to. And ultimately, his big devil’s bargain is that if he becomes a good guy, he cuts off a vital piece of himself to do it.” Harbour’s castmates, including Daniel Dae Kim and Sasha Lane, praised his take on Hellboy. Milla Jovovich also spoke to us about her character, Nimue, the Blood Queen, and why she enjoyed the role so much. “I love my character ... because she’s strong, she’s powerful, she is a queen of her people,” noted Jovoich. “She loves her people and just wants to do right by them.” For more Hellboy details from the cast, check out the full video!<doc-sep>
Advertisement Movie Review: 'Hellboy' Big Red gets a new director and a rebooted franchise Share Shares Copy Link Copy Reboot. Not only has the word almost completely replaced the word remake, it feels like that's all you hear coming out of Hollywood. While a very high percentage of them fail for a variety of reasons, some, like X-Men: First Class or Bumblebee, somehow succeed, usually because of who's directing. The latest to be put through the reboot treatment, with a change of director, is Big Red himself: Hellboy.Hellboy (David Harbour) is the main agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, or BPRD, which is headed by his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane). They travel the world, searching out and defeating evil supernatural elements. BPRD's latest mission has brought them to England.During his reign, King Arthur defeated the immortal witch Nimue (Milla Jovovich) by using Excalibur to chop her into several pieces, which were placed in separate boxes and scattered across the country. Cut to today (pun intended), when the whereabouts of each box has been discovered by her minions, and they are endeavoring to put Nimue back together.Hellboy reunites with an old friend, Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), a young woman he saved when she was a baby, who is also a powerful spirit medium. They have to team up with M11 agent Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) in order to stop Nimue from becoming whole and spreading a plague that could destroy the world.So, how does this incarnation of Hellboy stack up to its predecessors? The short answer: They're completely separate beasts.This reboot is helmed by Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday, the "Blackwater" and "The Watchers on the Wall" episodes of Game of Thrones), while the first two Hellboy films we're written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, and the related presentations reflect their makers. While del Toro creates artistic entertainment, Marshall simply makes entertainment.I'm not saying that as a bad thing, since I'm a fan of both fimmakers. What it means is you have to go into this Hellboy with the mindset that it's a reboot, designed to take the character and his franchise in a new direction. If you try to compare the two versions, then you aren't going to be entertained.That being said, there are a couple major changes. The first difference you'll notice is the visual style. Del Toro created a very stylized look, trying to emulate the comic's creator Mike Mignola's distinctive use of color versus shadow. Marshall keeps the color palette muted, letting the drab greys of overcast England permeate the look.The other change is the rating. This Hellboy is a very hard R, for language and violence. It's filled with buckets of blood, gobs of gore and more f-bombs than the average porn. It's exactly what one should expect from a director with Marshall's resume, which makes it definitely not for the kids.Stepping into some big shoes, Harbour takes the reins from Ron Perlman and makes Hellboy his own. His interpretation has Big Red more cynical, torn between wanting to keep the world safe and having to fight his own kind to do so. He's also more at odds with his father, feeling like Bruttenholm raised him to be a weapon rather than a person.The story delves more into the darker elements of the source comic, bringing in some of its various side characters (many pulled from ancient lore from around the world), mostly nemeses of Hellboy. If you're familiar with the comics, then there's even more to enjoy here than what's merely on the surface of the plot.And enjoy it I did. No, it's not the higher concept artistic pieces that del Toro created, but, as Pacific Rim: Uprising proved, he's an unmatchable singular visionary. This is a Neil Marshall film, and that's perfectly fine. This is the man who, among his previously mentioned credits, also gave us Dog Soldiers, one of the best werewolf films ever made, so he knows how to make an entertaining monster movie.If you enter the auditorium expecting no more than that, I'm pretty sure you're going to have fun at Hellboy.