{"id":4127,"date":"2024-09-19T03:24:46","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T03:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4127"},"modified":"2024-10-12T21:42:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T21:42:38","slug":"hellboy-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/19\/hellboy-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Hellboy (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hellboy<\/strong> (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Fantasy-Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 120 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore throughout, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Neil Marshall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Andrew Cosby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lorenzo Senatore \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Release date: April 12, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Brian Gleeson, Alistair Petrie.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $21.9M (US)\/$55.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: * \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s only been two hours since I watched the reboot of Hellboy<\/strong> and I\u2019m already hard-pressed to describe the plot in detail. If I\u2019m being completely honest, I\u2019m not even sure I\u2019d have been able to tell you what was going on as I watched Hellboy<\/strong>. It\u2019s a convoluted mess. By way of warning you what you\u2019re in for should you decide to see it, let me say it\u2019s the most ridiculous use of the King Arthur legend since that Transformers movie a couple years back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was looking forward to seeing Hellboy<\/strong>. As much as I like original and its sequel, I always thought the material would benefit from a darker, R-rated approach. After all, the titular character is a demon from Hell whose destiny it is to someday destroy the world. Of course, he doesn\u2019t want to be that demon. He fights for the side of good as a member of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), an agency that deals with supernatural matters- e.g. monsters, entities and resurrected evil sorceresses like Nimue the Blood Queen (Jovovich, the Resident Evil series). She\u2019s back among us hundreds of years after she was slain and dismembered by King Arthur. Her remains, which were scattered around Europe, are being collected with the intention of raising her from the dead so she can wreak havoc on mankind. It\u2019s up to Hellboy to stop her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This time, Hellboy is played by David Harbour (Stranger Things). I\u2019ll say right now that he\u2019s no Ron Perlman, just like director Neil Marshall (Doomsday) is no Guillermo del Toro. I know what he\u2019s going for with his take on Hellboy<\/strong>. His is a dark vision. While he never betrays its comic book origins, his movie is a lot of noise, bombast and confusion whereas del Toro has an eye for detail and endows his films with a superior visual aesthetic. He did some pretty amazing things in his two Hellboy movies. All Marshall does is give us bad CGI that, frankly, looks more like video game graphics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So obviously this reboot of Hellboy<\/strong> serves as an origin story. Just like in the 2004 movie, Hellboy enters our realm due to a failed Nazi experiment during WWII. Instead of killing him, the agent in charge Trevor Bruttenholm (McShane, the John Wick series) decides to adopt him and raise him as his son. He\u2019s not the only one in Hellboy<\/strong> with an origin story. We also learn about the medium Alice (Lane, American Honey) and fellow BPRD agent Daimio (Kim, Hawaii Five-0), the two people who aide him in his quest to stop Nimue. There\u2019s a lot more going on in Hellboy<\/strong>, too much in fact. Marshall tries to cram in way too much (characters, flashbacks, subplots, etc.) in the space of two hours. By the time it\u2019s over, you feel like you\u2019ve been through the ringer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t know whether to laugh or cry during Hellboy<\/strong>. Sure, it\u2019s self-aware about its ridiculousness, but that doesn\u2019t automatically make a movie funny. Ordinarily, I would have laughed at Jovovich\u2019s campy performance and ideas blatantly lifted from the likes of Predator, Clash of the Titans, Lifeforce and An American Werewolf in London. A transformation scene is almost a shot-for-shot redo of the 1981 horror-comedy classic save for the bad CGI. In the right hands, Hellboy<\/strong> could have been a fun bad movie. Sadly, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s about as joyless as they come.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To its credit, Hellboy<\/strong> has a couple of good points. It\u2019s violent and gory which would be better if it wasn\u2019t all the CGI variety. I liked the walking house that factors into one scene. Thomas Haden Church makes an amusing cameo in the mid-credits scene (there\u2019s also an end credits scene). Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good here. Perlman and del Toro found the humanity in Hellboy. They made him a full-fledged character, something that Harbour and Marshall fail to do. Here, he\u2019s just a big red demon-guy with a hand of stone for smashing things. Lane\u2019s attempt at a British accent is weak at best. I don\u2019t even like the look of the new Hellboy<\/strong>. I stop short of calling it ugly but it certainly isn\u2019t pretty. Del Toro has a knack for seeing the beauty in horror-type situations. It\u2019s sorely needed here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It saddens me to say that Hellboy<\/strong> is a crushing disappointment. I really hoped it would be good but deep down I knew that it wouldn\u2019t measure up to the previous movie which begs the question of why they bothered in the first place. Oh yeah, that\u2019s right, they\u2019re rebooting everything these days. The sad part is that a new Hellboy<\/strong> could have worked. Unfortunately, everybody involved gets it wrong. They took an irreverent comic book character and dropped him into a movie indistinguishable from all the other megabudget Hollywood noisefests that keep ibuprofen manufacturers in the black.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oh yeah, I almost forgot. A familiar character makes a surprise appearance (sort of) in the final scene that suggests the (re)start of a new franchise. Feel free to break this promise, guys.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hellboy (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Fantasy-Action-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 120 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore throughout, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Neil Marshall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Andrew Cosby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lorenzo Senatore \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Release date: April 12, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Brian Gleeson, Alistair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Hellboy-2019-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4127"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4933,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions\/4933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}