Hellboy

So, the behind the scenes story of this reboot of the Hellboy film series goes like this.  Apparently, Academy Award-winning director, Guillermo del Toro, was interested in making a third entry in his original film series, which has been left somewhat open-ended since 2008's Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  However, for whatever reason, an agreement was never reached, and the studio instead decided to go with director Neil Marshall, whose experience behind the camera mostly lies in television.  If this is true, then the studio only has themselves to blame for the movie that we got.

Marshall's take on the character (who started life in the comic books by Mike Mignola) is a spectacle of nothingness.  Its incessantly loud, overlong, frequently confuses blood-soaked action scenes for tension, as well as boring scenes of exposition for character development.  It's a real splitting headache of a movie, as it seems to think cranking up the volume and blasting rock music on the soundtrack is the same thing as building excitement in the audience.  Compared to the earlier two movies that del Toro made (which were steeped in a kind of mythos, and eventually made us care about its odd cast of demons, psychics and fish-men), this seems like a cruel joke being played on the audience that is designed to deaden the imagination.  In this day and age when comic book movies are almost routinely some of the better blockbusters out there, this is like a throwback to when Hollywood didn't know what to do with these weird characters.

Not only has del Toro been cut from the film franchise, but so has the star of the earlier films, Ron Perlman, who gave the character of Hellboy a kind of gruff likability.  In his place is David Harbour (from TV's Stranger Things), and while he definitely is trying, he doesn't come close to making the titular demon as human as Perlman did.  But can you really blame him when he's saddled with Andrew Cosby's chaotic and underwritten script?  The idea behind the character of Hellboy is that he is a creature who doesn't belong in our world, but desperately wants to.  He protects humanity from the paranormal evils that threaten it, and he's good at his job, but he'd really like the chance to just kick back, chill, and be accepted, despite his monstrous appearance.  We don't get that sense here, because the movie treats Hellboy like the hero in a video game.  He zips about from one action scene to another, kills tons of CG monsters, gets knocked around a lot, and never comes close to developing an interesting personality.  He's just another one liner-spewing hero, and the quips he's been given aren't even that good. (When holding the decapitated head of a fallen enemy, he says, "You should have quit while you were ahead".)

Despite the comic book source material, the main inspiration behind this movie seems to be Sam Raimi's Evil Dead franchise.  It throws a lot of ghoulish monsters, gross images, splattered blood, broken and severed limbs, and the like up on the screen, but it wants to do so with a nod to screwball comedy at the same time.  Raimi knew how to work this balance, and created a unique vision as well with his camerawork.  Hellboy feels far too routine.  The blood and splatter shots are so heavily CG that they don't look real, and as I've already mentioned, the jokes just are not that funny.  There is no style here, or a sense that the filmmakers wanted to make a visually interesting movie.  And despite the movie's large cast of demons and monsters, none of the designs are memorable.  Maybe they would be more interesting if these creatures were allowed to do something or show personality during their scenes.  But, most exist to act as targets during action scenes, some of which have little to do with the plot, and seem to exist to pad out the running time.

Speaking of the plot, it too is chaotic and unfocused.  Here is a movie that manages to mix in the legend of King Arthur, a monster uprising, a pig demon seeking vengeance on our hero, the return of the evil Nimue the Blood Queen (played here by Milla Jovovich), and Hellboy himself having to choose between if his allegiance should be with the humans, or if he should take his rightful place as a fearsome Demon King, and make it into the most incoherent mess imaginable.  The movie frequently pauses to explain itself with lengthy flashback and exposition dialogue scenes, which is the closest thing we get to character development.  The rest of the time, it's all action, non stop noise and rock music on the soundtrack, and the overall sense that nobody really cared about making a quality product, and just wanted to throw a lot of special effects up on the screen.  They have succeeded, but in doing so, they have robbed the film of any wonder, character and interest.  The movie gives Hellboy two human sidekicks to fight alongside him on his mission, but they're treated with such disinterest that you wonder why the screenwriter bothered to add them in.

Hellboy is the perfect film for people who don't care what they're watching, just as long as something is always happening.  It holds no lofty ambitions, such as holding your attention or giving you something to think about while you're watching it, or after.  It simply exists to throw some stuff up on the screen, and send you home without actually giving you anything.  When you consider what a truly good or well made movie can do, it just makes its lack of ambition all the more cynical.

0 comments