Hellboy (2019)
Directed by Neil Marshall
Hellboy comes to England, where he must defeat Nimue, Merlin's consort and the Blood Queen. But their battle will bring about the end of the world, a fate he desperately tries to turn away.
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11 films that influenced Hellboy
What critics say influenced Hellboy
The uncensored visuals seem to accidentally be great at times, but it isn’t enough to allow this version of Hellboy to replace what Guillermo del Toro accomplished with two films and Ron Perlman in the same role.
The Hellboy comic book inspired two features last decade, directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman.
While I would much rather have seen Ron Perlman reprise the character he played so well in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 and 2008 “Hellboy” films, Harbour’s body-type and everyman bearing seemed perfect for the unconventional, demon spawn, superhero.
Neil Marshall’s Hellboy has faced immeasurable apprehension since satanic conception, as Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman’s defenders voiced outrage upon hearing Lionsgate’s decision to reboot Big Red anew versus honoring continuation after Hellboy II: The Golden Army .
Let me state right up front that I’m just as disappointed as the rest of you that Guillermo del Toro never got to finish off his Hellboy trilogy.
The film dabbles along an almost identical narrative to the 2004 version – Hellboy being inspired by evil to embrace his ‘destiny’ by unleashing Hell on Earth – but that’s where any similarities stop.
Director Neil Marshall ("The Descent," "Doomsday") brings his usual visually dazzling touch to the material, replicating the look and feel of the comic books with a mix of stunning practical effects and CGI.
The Descent and Dog Soldiers show he can take high concepts and deliver satisfying entertainment, but that same thrill and through line isn’t present here.
Marshall, the director of The Descent and such solid mid-level actioners like Doomsday and Centurion , trades in all of the beauty of Mignola and Del Toro’s work for a Millennium Films cheap-as-fuck aesthetic — boasting, perhaps, the worst CGI in recent memory outside of a Syfy Channel cheapie — and Perlman for the talents of Stranger Things ’ David Harbour, who is so miscast here that it is often painful to watch him work.
After Guillermo del Toro’s well-received pair of films in the 2000s that starred Ron Perlman, director Neil Marshall (“The Descent”) reboots the franchise with “Stranger Things” star David Harbour as the crimson-skinned half-demon superhero with the mighty Right Hand of Doom and testy personality.
Director Neil Marshall ( The Descent , episodes of Game Of Thrones ) has crafted a superhero movie that is profoundly unsuitable for children.
Hellboy goes even more overboard than Logan in adding naughty bits just for the, uh, hell of it — unlike, say, Deadpool , which did a great job of making its R rating feel like a natural fit, these other pictures bring to mind the adage, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
It’s not that an R-rated superhero film is an impossible task; we’ve seen it multiple times before in the Marvel X-Men franchise, such as both Deadpool films and in the conclusion to the Wolverine saga, Logan .
There’s another popular superhero movie that we can point as influencing this new Hellboy and that’s Deadpool.
It’s most distinctive change from its forbearers is its shift in tone, taking a more lackadaisical, Deadpool -inspired approach, stuffing the film full of constant one-liners and abandoning much of the pathos and subtext del Toro brought to the material.
Whilst there’s certainly no harm in retreading the expected, or embracing a higher rating for that matter ( Deadpool , anyone?), this particular Hellboy is so void of a personality that it simply fails on the most basic level of being fun.
But where del Toro reverently reimagined the cartoonist’s beautifully clean-lined monster art, the example of risqué superhero hits such as Deadpool has let Marshall off the leash.
Despite its relatively poor showing at the box office, 2012’s Dredd reboot is remembered much more fondly than 1995’s Sylvester Stallone-starring stinker, Judge Dredd .
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Del Toro’s “Hellboy II” even explored fantastical love themes which he’d later polish in “The Shape of Water.”
The cinematic incarnation of Hellboy (a Dark Horse comic-book character who is the spawn of Satan turned paranormal crime fighter) has passed from the hands of the Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (he made the original Hellboy and Hellboy II before The Shape of Water) to the exploitation horror film-maker Neil Marshall (The Descent).
Los Ángeles - La nueva adaptación de “Hellboy” que estrena hoy en los cines de Puerto Rico retiene la esencia del personaje, en gran parte por la excelente interpretación de David Harbour, pero ofrece una propuesta cinematográfica radicalmente diferente a las dos ofertas previas que fueron dirigidas por Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”, “El laberinto del fauno”).
In such an alternate universe, the Hellboy of 2004 would be indistinguishable from the Hellboy of 2019: a soulless, noisy, mess of a movie that has far more in common with lesser Underworld or Resident Evil sequels than it does with the works of Guillermo del Toro or Mike Mignola.
Despite its relatively poor showing at the box office, 2012’s Dredd reboot is remembered much more fondly than 1995’s Sylvester Stallone-starring stinker, Judge Dredd .
Hellboy wants to be Deadpool , but in execution it’s much closer to Suicide Squad .
From a storytelling perspective, it’s more like Suicide Squad, hoping its constant onslaught of pulsating rock music will mask the fact it’s hopping between locations like a Bond movie on fast forward.
It’s the kind of movie that makes us feel mean for naming the people attached — the kind of movie that makes Suicide Squad seem like a delight.
Not since "Suicide Squad" has a comic book movie felt so excruciating.
At times, Ni mue is every bit as boring and silly a villain as Suicide Squad ’s Enchantress, but whenever Jovovich actually has to deliver lines directly into the camera, she does her damnedest to make the character as intimidating as humanly possible.
Starring David Harbour ( Suicide Squad , Stranger Things ), Mila Jovovich (The Fifth Elemen t, Resident Evil ) and Ian McShane ( Deadwood , Game of Thrones , American Gods ), the film offers a decidedly predictable origins story which strays too far from the ethos of the original films to be anything but a watchable, yet instantly forgettable reimagining of a much-loved tale.
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It’s been 11 years since the last cinematic incarnation of Mike Mignola’s candy-and-kittens-loving comic book character, which is much more time than passed between Spider-Man 3 (the last with Tobey Maguire) and The Amazing Spider-Man (the first with Andrew Garfield).
The movie faces much the same problem that The Amazing Spider-Man films faced: everything it does well was done before and done better in the originals, and everything new it brings to the table is just a bad idea.
The violence is extreme to the point of tedium; intestines are spilled, faces are ripped straight off skulls, bodies are ripped apart Bone Tomahawk -style.