Hellboy

Well, I went today and saw the latest “Hellboy” adaptation. However, before I talk about how I feel on that, I should probably talk about the ones that came before it, even though this is another origin movie. Let’s start off with the 2004 adaptation of “Hellboy.”

This is one of those rare movies that’s not only based on a comic book, but also feels like a comic book. It’s filled with energy, and you can feel the passion and joy when they made it. Obviously it’s made of wildly special effects, weird makeup and a ridiculous story line, but it follows through everything lightly. Unlike some CGI movies that drag from one point to another, this one skips cheerfully through the action.

With Ron Perlman, they have found actor who is not just playing a superhero, but enjoying it. Obviously he, knowingly, had to go through hours in makeup every day; he smokes his cigar, wags his tail and fights his villains with something approaching delight. You can see an actor in the process of making a difficult character really work.

The movie, based on comics by Mike Mignola and directed by the great Mexican horror man Guillermo del Toro, starts with a scene that has Nazis, those most strong of comic book villains. In a hopeless time late in World War II, they open a portal to the dark side and bring forth the Seven Gods of Chaos – almost do, before they are caught by U.S. soldiers and Professor Bruttenholm, played by John Hurt, who is President Roosevelt’s personal psychic adviser. Nothing gets past the portal except a little red baby with horns and a tail. He is vicious towards the professor, who calms him with a Baby Ruth bar, comforts him in his arms and raises him to become human’s main call against the demons of Satan’s home.

Meanwhile, the psychic practitioner Grigori Rasputin, played by Karel Roden, who is working for the Nazis, is pulled into the portal and disappears. Yes, he’s the same Rasputin.

We skip to the present day. The professor, now in his 80s, is told he will die soon. Two of his old enemies are strangely still the same age, however: a Nazi named Ilsa (Bridget Hodson) and a strange person named Korenen (Ladislav Beran), who is addicted to surgical fixes on his body. In an icy area in Mondavia, they hold celebrations to bring Rasputin back from the other side, and they’re ready to start.

Now we’re at a secret FBI headquarters where Hellboy lives with the professor and an aquatic being named Abe Sapien, played by Doug Jones – a fishman who got his name because he was born the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The professor is teaching a young FBI agent Clay, played by Corey Johnson, when the Nazis attack a museum and free a creation imprisoned inside an ancient statue. Roger Ebert described this creature in his review as “a writhing, repellent, oozing mass of tentacles and teeth, reproduces by dividing and will soon conquer the Earth unless Hellboy can come to the rescue.”

Obviously he does that in action scenes that seem on the storyboard coming directly from pages of a comic book. Ebert said, “Hellboy gets banged up a lot but is somehow able to pick himself up off the mat and repair himself with a little self-applied chiropractic; a crunch of his spine, a pop of his shoulders and he's back in action.”

Ebert continued, “Abe the fishboy, who wears a breathing apparatus out of the water, is more of a dreamer than a fighter, with a personality that makes him a distant relative of Jar-Jar Binks.”

Hellboy has a lonely life. Ebert said, “When you are 7 feet tall and bright red with a tail, you don't exactly fit in, even though HB tries to make himself look more normal by sawing his horns down to stumps, which he sands every morning. He is in love with another paranormal, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a pyrokineticist who feels guilty because she starts fires when she gets excited.” There is a great scene where Hellboy kisses her and she enters flames, and we see they are made for one another because, as we know, Hellboy is fireproof.

The FBI, which is once in a while blamed for not sharing its information with other agencies, keeps Hellboy as its own deep secret. That funny actor Jeffrey Tambor plays the FBI chief, an administrator who is just not made to fight the demons of Satan’s home. He has some funny set-up scenes, and of course the movie is best when it’s making every character and before it leads up to its apocalyptic battles.

Hellboy fights the monsters in subway tunnels and subterranean caverns, as Liz, Clay and Abe the fishman go with him. Ebert said, “I know, of course, that one must accept the action in a movie like this on faith, but there was one transition I was utterly unable to follow. Liz has saved them all from the monsters by filling a cave with fire, which shrivels them and their eggs into crispy s'mores, and then -- well, the movie cuts directly to another cave in which they are held captive by the evil Nazis, and Hellboy is immobilized in gigantic custom-made stocks that has an extra-large hole for his oversized left hand.” How did that happen?

Ebert said, “Never mind. Doesn't matter. Despite his sheltered upbringing, Hellboy has somehow obtained the tough-talking personality of a Brooklyn stevedore, but he has a tender side, not only for Liz but for cats and kittens. He has one scene with the FBI director that reminded me of the moment when Frankenstein enjoys a cigar with the blind man.” He always lights his stogies with a lighter, and Tambor explains that cigars must always be lit with a wooden match. That’s good to know when Liz isn’t around.

Next came the 2008 sequel, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.” Imagine the fires of Satan’s home mixed with the alien in Mos Eisley on Tatooine, and you have a feeling of Guillermo del Toro’s sequel. This is in every way equal to the first movie, maybe a little nosier; it’s another work of his passion for strange fantasy and deadly machines. The sequel avoids the details of Hellboy’s origin story, but adds a story told to him as a child by his adoptive father, where we see an ancient fight between humans and everything else: trolls, monsters, goblins, the Tooth Fairy, everything.

There was a piece. The humans got the cities, and the trolls got the forests. But humans have cheated on their end of the deal by building parking lots and shopping malls, and now Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss, disobeys his father the king and hopes to start the fight again. This would involve awakening the Golden Army: 70 times 70 sleeping emotionless fighters. Standing against this decision is his twin sister, Princess Nuala, played by Anna Walton.

Ebert said, “And so on. I had best not get bogged down in plot description, except to add that Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his sidekicks fight for the human side.” His colleagues include Abe Sapien, somewhat of a fight-man, the fire-generating Liz Sherman, a Teutonic advisor named Johann Kraus, voiced by the creator of "Family Guy," "American Dad" and "The Cleveland Show," (who also provides the voice of Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Glenn Quagmire, Tom Tucker, Carter Pewterschmidt, Dr. Hartman, Jasper, Seamus Levine, Ida Davis, Stan Smith and Roger) Seth MacFarlane, and obviously Princess Nuala. Tom Manning (Tambor) from the secret center for telepathic insight joins them, but isn’t a lot of help, except for adding unimportance and dismissive sideways.

Ebert said, “Now that we have most of the characters onstage, let me describe the sights, which are almost all created by CGI, of course, but how else?” There’s a climactic fight between Hellboy and the Prince, with the Golden Army standing inactive, in what looks like the engine room of Satan’s home. Giant joining gears go up against each other for no real purpose, expect to ruin Hellboy or anything else that falls into them. Lucky they aren’t completely adjusted.

Ebert said, “There are also titanic battles in the streets of Manhattan involving gigantic octo-creatures and so on, but you know what? Although they're well done, titanic battles in the streets of Manhattan are becoming commonplace in the movies these days. What fascinates me is what the octo-creature transformed itself into, which was unexpected and really lovely. You'll see.”

Ebert continued, “The towering creatures fascinated me less, however, than some smaller ones. For example, swarms of tens of thousands of calcium-eaters, who devour humans both skin and bone and are the source of the Tooth Fairy legend. They pour out of the walls of an auction house and attack the heroes, and in my personal opinion, Hellboy is wasting his time trying to shoot them one at a time.”

Ebert goes on, “I also admire the creativity that went into the Troll Market (it has a secret entry under the Brooklyn Bridge). Here I think del Toro actually was inspired by the Tatooine saloon in "Star Wars," and brings together creatures of fantastical shapes and sizes, buying and selling goods of comparable shapes and sizes.” It would be worth buying the DVD just to look at it a frame at a time, finding out what secrets he may have hidden in there. The movies only rarely give us a fully new kind of place to look at. This will become a classic.

When you look at it, there are other hints of the “Star Wars” influence in “Hellboy II.” Princess Nuala doesn’t have Princess Leia’s type of hair (just ordinary long blond tresses), but she’s not a long way off from her. Also, Abe Sapien looks, moves and somewhat sounds a lot like C3PO that you’d think the robot became a fish-like being. Ebert said, “I also noticed hints of John Williams' "Star Wars" score in the score by Danny Elfman, especially during the final battle.” Not a aggressive job, you see. More of a suggestion of mood.

What else? Ebert said, “Two love stories, which I'll leave for you to find out about. And the duet performance of a song that is rather unexpected, to say the least.” Also once again we have a great performance by Ron Perlman as Hellboy. Yes, he’s CGI for the most part, but his face and voice and movements occupy the screen, and make him one of the great superheroes. Del Toro, who before “Hellboy II” did “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the great “Blade II,” had followed up this with “Doctor Strange” and “The Hobbit.” He has so much inventive imagination, and understands how legends work, why they fascinate us and that they sometimes stand for something, like love.

Now we come to the 2019 remake of “Hellboy,” which came out four days ago. You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro to make more movies until you see this reboot.

Christy Lemire said in her review, “Long gone are the master filmmaker’s stylistic signatures: his meticulous eye for detail in the biggest monster and tiniest fairy, his deft tonal balance of the weird and the whimsical, and—above all else—an obvious affection for his creatures, both good and evil. Instead, under the watch of director Neil Marshall, we get empty bombast and a million bloody ways to rip a body to pieces, too few of which are inventive.”

Marshall takes over for del Toro, who directed the original movie and its sequel, films that were the perfect pairing of director and actor with Ron Perlman as the wisecracking, half-demon superhero. Even though it would be tough for anyone to follow in that great area, Marshall – who mostly has horror films and television credits to him, including “Game of Thrones” – allowed his look on the character to go completely out of control.

However, that’s part of the point. The script from Andrew Cosby, based on Mike Mignola’s Dark Horse comic series, is defiantly anachronistic and self-aware. It’s also filled with many flashbacks and digressions introducing more characters and subplots than anyone could really keep up with. Lemire said, “And this “Hellboy” really wallows in every last drop of its R-rating whereas the previous films were PG-13, upping the graphic violence, profanity, and overall gnarliness. It’s the further Deadpool-ization of an already irreverent and inappropriate character, and—for a little while—it’s admittedly kind of a kick.”

However, just because a movie is silly and know its silly, that doesn’t really make its silliness work. “Hellboy” stops being fun when it stops being funny – when it suddenly turns into a more harshly bloody, violent mood. Eventually, the film comes to an extreme point, pathetic madness. Even that might have been fine, however, if the action scenes where done and staged in a more exciting way. Lemire said, “Instead, we get crude, computer-generated brutality, choppily edited to the tune of overplayed rock anthems like Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare” and Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart.””

Lemire continued, “At the center of it all, the endlessly intriguing and appealing David Harbour can only do so much. He more than ably steps into Perlman’s giant boots to play the hulking and hard-drinking Hellboy. It’s good to see the “Stranger Things” star continue to get leading roles after a lifetime of strong supporting character work. Harbour has just the right look, the grizzled attitude, the way with a snappy one-liner.” He even gets the chance to look at Hellboy’s soft side that is underneath his tough, red façade as the character sees the truth of who he really is. (Because like stated before, this “Hellboy” is an origin story. Every comic book hero gets one, and usually more than that.) Lemire said, “But increasingly, he’s called upon to contribute little more than sheer brute strength. He’s also stuck with far too many groaners, including one truly terrible pun toward the end that had me saying: “Oh no, no no no,” out loud to the screen.”

Where to start with the story? How about centuries ago, with King Arthur (yes, that King Arthur) killing the evil blood queen Nimue, played by Milla Jovovich, cutting her body and placing the parts in boxes to be scattered through the area. (This is just in the first few minutes.) Fast forward to present day, with Hellboy, as a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, eventually having to fight Nimue as she gets put back together and gets her powers to cause destruction on humans. That is a really truncated explanation of the story. A lot more happens in this film, but there’s no need to over think this.

Hellboy would look like a really tough person on himself to battle this ancient villain. However, he gets help from Sasha Lane of “American Honey,” doing a decent British accent as a young psychic, Daniel Dae Kim as a British military officer with a secret, Sophie Okonedo as a noble prophet, and Ian McShane as Professor Broom, or as Hellboy calls him, Dad. He also has to fight members of a centuries-old best civilization, a giant, talking pig man, played by Stephen Graham, and real giants, and, of course, Nazis, because there has to be Nazis. Lemire said, “Individually, Harbour might have a humorous moment or two with his co-stars, but decreasingly so as the movie staggers toward its messy, cacophonous end.”

This doesn’t seem to end. After a really long two-hour runtime, “Hellboy” thinks that it will hopefully be able to start its own franchise, but it might be stuck in development instead.

I’m not going to say that this remake is one of the worst I have seen, but definitely one that I was disappointed in. It has been a while since I have been disappointed in a comic book adaptation. It just felt like a mindless action flick that is stealing elements from other movies and combining a lot of story lines. However, there are some funny parts and Harbour does do a decent job, but I still think this is one that you can wait until it comes out on Blu-Ray/DVD to rent it.

Alright, thank you for joining in on this long review, stay tuned this Friday for the finale of “Edgar Wright Month.”