Hellboy is a 2019 American supernatural superhero film based on the Dark Horse Comics character of the same name. Directed by Neil Marshall, the film stars David Harbour in the title role, alongside Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, and Thomas Haden Church. It is a reboot of the Hellboy film series, and the third live-action film in the franchise. The film draws inspiration from the comic books Darkness Calls, The Wild Hunt, The Storm and the Fury, and Hellboy in Mexico.
The project began as a sequel to Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), with Andrew Cosby and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola writing the script. Guillermo del Toro was not offered the full writer-director capacity he had performed in the first two films, and Ron Perlman, who portrayed Hellboy in the previous films, refused to return without del Toro's involvement. The project was turned into an R-rated reboot after Marshall was hired as the director and Harbour cast as Hellboy. Principal photography began in September 2017 in the United Kingdom and Bulgaria and ended in December 2017.
Hellboy was released in the United States on April 12, 2019, by Lionsgate in standard 2D and IMAX. The film received negative reviews from critics, with many comparing it unfavorably to Del Toro’s films and criticizing the story, inconsistent tone and the amount of gore, though Harbour and Jovovich's performances and the makeup received some praise.
Cast:
David Harbour as Hellboy / Anung Un Rama
Milla Jovovich as Nimue, the Blood Queen
Ian McShane as Trevor Bruttenholm
Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio
Thomas Haden Church as Lobster Johnson
Penelope Mitchell as Ganeida
Sophie Okonedo as Lady Hatton
Brian Gleeson as Merlin
Alistair Petrie as Lord Adam Glaren
Laila Morse as a BPRD employee
Stephen Graham and Douglas Tait as Gruagach. Graham provides the voice for Gruagach while Tait provides the physical performance.
Emma Tate and Troy James as the Baba Yaga. Tates provides the voice for the Baba Yaga, while James provides the on-screen performance.
Plot:
During the age of King Arthur, Nimue, the Blood Queen, is betrayed by her coven and dismembered by Merlin and King Arthur, who scatter her remains across Europe. In the present day, Hellboy travels to Tijuana to find Ruiz, a missing agent. Hellboy discovers that Ruiz was turned into a vampire and reluctantly kills him. Gruagach, a hog-like beast, seeks advice from Baba Yaga to exact revenge on Hellboy. She suggests restoring Nimue and gives him the locations of her remains.
Three weeks later, Hellboy returns to the B.P.R.D. in America. His adoptive father, Trevor Bruttenholm, sends him to England to aide the Osiris Club in hunting three giants. The club's seer, Lady Hatton, reveals to Hellboy that Bruttenholm found him on an island during World War II after the Nazis summoned him. Hellboy joins the giant hunters but is betrayed by them. He loses consciousness after the giants arrive and kill the hunters. Meanwhile, Gruagach kills several monks as he retrieves the head of Nimue, who tells him where to find her other pieces.
Hellboy regains consciousness and battles the giants. He loses consciousness again as he is rescued by a young woman. He wakes up in the woman's flat, whom he recognizes as Alice Monaghan, a girl he once rescued from fairies and who acquired medium powers as a result. A SWAT team then invades the flat, at Bruttenholm's request. He brushes off Hellboy's concerns, and reveals to him that someone has taken Nimue's remains and is likely to find the last piece at the Osiris Club. Hellboy is introduced to an M11 agent, Ben Daimio. On Bruttenholm's orders, Alice joins the team.
They find everyone at the club slaughtered. Alice channels her powers to communicate with Lady Hatton, who reveals that Nimue plans to find a king and raise the apocalypse. Hellboy runs into Gruagach, holding Nimue's arm. Gruagach escapes after Nimue distracts Hellboy, and appeals to his frustrations. He reveals to Alice and Daimio that Gruagach was the creature who stole Alice as a baby and whom he branded with iron. After this, Gruagach swore revenge.
Daimio takes them to M11's headquarters. While Daimio secretly acquires a special bullet to kill Hellboy, the latter confronts Bruttenholm as to why he didn't kill him years before; Bruttenholm claims he saw potential in him. Dissatisfied with the answer, Hellboy leaves but is magically transported to Baba Yaga's house. In exchange for an eye, she reveals the location where Nimue plans to restore herself. Hellboy reneges on the agreement and Baba Yaga curses him. On the way to Nimue's location, Daimio reveals to Alice that he was the sole survivor of a were-jaguar attack.
Nimue kills the witches who betrayed her, except for one. While Alice and Daimio battle zombies, Hellboy confronts Nimue, who subdues him. She poisons Alice, allowing herself to escape. The surviving witch directs the team to Merlin, believing he can save her. Merlin cures Alice and reveals that Hellboy's mother was human and a descendant of King Arthur. Merlin offers him Excalibur, but refuses it after receiving a vision of himself using the sword to raise the apocalypse. Nimue attacks London with her plague-like powers.
The trio return to M11 headquarters, where they find everyone dead and Bruttenholm missing. They reach St Paul's Cathedral, where Nimue is hiding, only to be confronted by Gruagach. Daimio transforms into his jaguar form and aides Hellboy. Nimue kills Gruagach and pleads with Hellboy to side with her. After he refuses, she propels him into a hidden crypt, revealing King Arthur's tomb and Excalibur. After Nimue kills Bruttenholm, Hellboy pulls Excalibur, causing demons to rise and kill as he assumes his true form. Alice channels Bruttenholm's spirit, who appeals to Hellboy's humanity. Hellboy then decapitates Nimue, sending all the demons and Nimue's head back to hell. Hellboy and Bruttenholm exchange farewells, and Daimio gets rid of the special bullet.
Six months later, the trio raid a cult club where they find the water tank of Abe Sapien. In a mid-credits scene, Hellboy meets his hero, Lobster Johnson, at Bruttenholm's grave. In a post-credits scene, Baba Yaga talks to Koschei, asking for his help in exchange for giving him a chance to die.
The Verdict:
I'm firmly aware that this film has been regarded as a massive flop in the box office but I'm going to offer my thoughts regardless since a few of you asked after I saw it opening weekend. I saw it for free with the benefit of having free movie passes/gift cards, so I didn't walk away from the film with a sour outlook on it as people who actually paid to see this.
Casting
David Harbour is fine with his own take as this new/reboot Hellboy, even though some of the jokes fell flat on delivery. I'm glad that he didn't try to rehash how Ron Perlman played the character. There's far too much of that in Hollywood when it comes to these superhero reboots in my honest opinion. Just do your own thing with the titular character and let the haters deal with it as they are always going to have something to complain about anyway. I was surprised (or rather shocked) that this was the first film I have seen in a very long time whereas Milla Jonovich isn't almost completely naked in some manner of the film. I thought that was going to be a given with this film's R-rating. Ian McShane is pretty much himself in every film he's in, I don't know what else to expect from the guy. No offense to Daniel Dae Kim playing Daimio, but he came off extremely bland in almost every scene he was in. I don't blame that on his performance, I credit that to the script that he was given. Daimio (the character) is that tired straight laced soldier trope that's done to death in a lot of these films like this. I didn't care for it when Joel Kinnaman did it while portraying as Col. Rick Flag in Suicide Squad and really didn't care much for it here either. He becomes less of a tool by the time the credits roll, but Daimio spends far too much of the film coming off as interesting as watching paint dry. Even when he finally gets into the action during the finale as a were-leopard, there still wasn't anything compelling about his character that made me want to see more of him.
Narrative
The story is a little all over the place at times, but for the most part, it recycles the same beats as the original films by del Toro, regarding Hellboy's origins and his conflicts on dealing with having to hunt down and kill his own demonic/supernatural kind versus his own predetermined fate as the destroyer of mankind. That journey to see Hellboy struggle with his own personal identity of where he fits in this world is one worth seeing in this film, but ultimately comes off as a big case of "been there, done that" since we saw the original two Guillermo del Toro-made Hellboy films.
The biggest part of the film that seems to be lost in this narrative is that Baba Yaga is the one who sets the events into motion to have Nimue revived, but she schemes behind her back to have Hellboy kill her anyway, which doesn't make much sense at all. All of this just to obtain one of Hellboy's eyes seems a little along the veins of Killmonger (Black Panther) and Lex Luthor (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) levels of stupidity in terms of cooking up a far too elaborate plan for the simple end result. This isn't the only instance of this either as the film has a LOT of odd ball moments like this in terms of pacing and storytelling. Nimue is presented as the biggest threat to the modern world, yet the B.P.R.D. has time to send Hellboy off on a detour as if their sub-division in Europe are NPCs in a role-playing game with the side quest to assist them in slaying giants. While I did appreciate the misdirect to use the double cross as a means to explain Hellboy's origins, it still was a waste of time (outside of the very entertaining fight against the giants...) and just added to the muddled-up nature of the narrative here.
Don't even get me on how conveniently lazy in terms of writing, yet ironic, that Excalibur (along with King Arthur's grave) was right there below the place that Nimue was using as her evil lair during the film's finale. That made the whole previous scene and dilemma with Merlin cursing Hellboy for not taking Excalibur (after using all of his remaining magic to bring it to that location) utterly pointless in a sense after he cured Alice of Nimue's poison.
I think an easy resolution to the narrative's shortcomings was to just eliminate the whole nonsense about Baba Yaga plotting behind Nimue's back out of the plot completely and limit Baba Yaga's role to simply as the informant that gives Hellboy the clue to stop Nimue before she got her full power. Then they could tease her being the villain/mastermind in a potential sequel in the credits as planned. The plot should have revolved around Nimue's return to power and her attempting to manipulate Hellboy to her way of thinking. That way the film would have maintained it's theme of having Hellboy's internal struggle of whether to side with humanity/B.P.R.D or to side with her and the rest of demon kind as he begins to fall for her seduction. That would have given the film more opportunities to shed light onto Hellboy's relationships with his "father", Trevor Bruttenholm, and ally, Alice Bonaghan, while potentially having more opportunities to make Daimio into a character with more depth than he's presented with here.
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| As cool as that was, Alice seemed as shocked as the viewers seeing that she was able to punch the Holy Ghost out of that fool. |
I have no problem admitting that Hellboy is one of the few comic book properties I'm not overly familiar with over on the Dark Horse Comics end of things, but from what I have read from production and cast interviews from the film is that the comic creator(s) were pretty hands on in terms of the narrative and tone of this film. For all of the people whining and complaining that it's not true to the Hellboy formula then you might want to take a beef with that to the creator of the comics, Mike Mignola, as well. I like Abe Sapien as much as anyone else who watched the original two Hellboy films by del Toro, but I'm not going to completely crucify this film for the lack of that character.
I felt like this was the perfect film to just shut your brain off to and just sit back and enjoy it for the ride that it presents. I'm glad that I wasn't familiar with the Hellboy comics for I wouldn't find myself nitpicking and drawing comparisons to all of that. I do that enough watching Marvel and DC's stuff - it was a welcome break from that here. I came to see Hellboy kick some demonic ass and we got that, more or less.
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| Guten Tag. |
I'm just mad that we didn't get more of Lobster Johnson.
Effects & Action
I don't know what the hell was up with the vomiting corpse effect for visualizing how Alice's powers as a spiritual medium would work but it looked fucking gross (Baba Yaga looks like nightmare fuel too BTW...) to me. I know this was a massive eyesore in terms of people shitting on the effects for the film when it was heavily green screened - not very well for that matter either. That was reoccurring theme with the visual effects in this film, you knew it was painfully green screened for the most of the action sequences. I get it - this film pales in comparison to Guillermo del Toro's previous work. I went into this film expecting a downgrade in visuals, similar from Death Race (2008) to Death Race 2050 in terms of directorial approach.
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| FINISH HIM!! |
Watch It or Don't Bother?
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| Shots fired... |
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| Hear me out though... |
Wait for this one to hit the Redbox machine or Netflix... It's not everyone's cup of tea. There's a lot of promise here for something great, but not too much to sink your teeth into outside of the action sequences. Hear me out though - in no shape or form do I think this film deserves all of the negative reviews and low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. I feel that more people were more butthurt at the replacement of Ron Perlman with David Harbour and the lack of Guillermo del Toro at the helm of directing and his unique vision in the past that rather looking past the film's shortcomings and seeing that it's not that bad of a film. This isn't Catwoman, Green Lantern, Suicide Squad, nor even BloodRayne level bad. This is a completely watchable superhero film that would have fared better as a direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray release rather than a full blown theatrical one. I think that if the original del Toro Hellboy films didn't exist (along with the alleged script and plans by del Toro to do a Hellboy 3 with Ron Perlman at the lead again before that was nixed) and this came out roughly a decade ago we would be all singing a different tune about this right now.
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