Released: April 2019
Director: Neil Marshall
Rated R
Run Time: 120 Minutes
Distributor: LionsGate Studios
Genre: Action/Fantasy/Horror
Cast:
David Harbour: Hellboy
Ian McShane: Professor Broom
Milla Jovovich: Nimue/The Blood Queen
Sasha Lane: Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim: Major Ben Daimio
People make mistakes. Actors, engineers, diplomats, scientists, and even cashiers make mistakes from time to time. It’s a part of life; nobody’s perfect. However, sometimes even the smallest mistake can have serious consequences. In the film industry, mistakes can be very, very costly. Some of the biggest box office flops were a result of somebody screwing up. Usually it’s not necessarily the actor that screws things up, but sometimes it’s the casting director, producer and film director that can cause some serious damage. Even a movie studio can really screw things up. I’ve seen it happen with movies like Alien 3, Justice League, and The Lone Ranger just to name a few. I’m a huge fan of the Hellboy films with Ron Perlman, both the live-action films and the animated ones, so when it was announced that LionsGate would be rebooting Hellboy with a different actor in the lead, David Harbour. Let’s just say that Guillermo del Toro, the director of the first two films, should have been allowed to do his third film, as this new film really was a mistake.
The film opens in the Dark Ages with a brutal sorceress, Nimue, unleashing a monstrous plague across the land. A handful of brave knights including King Arthur(yes, that one), confront Nimue, and using Excalibur, cut her into several pieces to be spread across the country. This was done to prevent her from devastating the world. In modern day Tijuana, Hellboy was sent to retrieve an agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense who had gone missing tracking down a nest of vampires. Returning to England, Hellboy is informed that somebody is trying to bring resurrect Nimue in order to destroy him and the world. Teaming up with a psychic, Alice and a soldier, Major Ben Daimio, Hellboy races to defeat the forces of evil before they destroy the world. The new Hellboy isn’t the first film to bring King Arthur into the mix, but it’s been done better in so many other movies. I don’t know how much time they spent trying to write this story, but it needed a few more re-writes. This was not a very good story to reboot the franchise. It’s your typical “stop the bad guys before they destroy the world” setup, but again, I’ve seen it done better. It literally goes through the motions, checking off each box for a movie of this kind.
Speaking of writing, let’s talk about the characters: They are all assholes. There’s nobody here that’s actually worth giving a damn about, not even Hellboy. If you’re going to have a story about trying to stop the apocalypse, you need characters that you care about and can relate to. There’s none of that here. Even the bad guys aren’t given enough to really sink your teeth into. It all devolves into stereotypical motivations like, “This guy wronged me at some point in the past, so I must destroy him.” That’s it. Even Nimue isn’t given much beyond wanting to destroy humanity. The acting isn’t awful by any stretch. Milla Jovovich is clearly having a blast hamming it up as the main villain, and I actually get a kick out of Sasha Lane as Alice. Ian McShane is always a delight to watch, even in bad movies. I’m just not a big fan of his portrayal of Professor Broom. My issue here is with David Harbour as Hellboy. I’m not blaming the actor at all. He’s giving it everything he’s got, but the character was written in a way that kind of forced Harbour into doing his best Ron Perlman-as-Hellboy imitation. I just wasn’t buying it.
Whoever did the soundtrack for this film needs to be taken out and beaten with giant wooden stick, because the song choices in the film make absolutely no sense, whatsoever. They don’t fit at all, and the main score of the film is generic trash. I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying the soundtrack for this one. Let’s talk about some of the good stuff now. From a visual standpoint, this film is very interesting. The creature designs and the sets are absolutely fantastic. The Baba Yaga witch was genuinely creepy. Some of the bigger creatures and demons that show up later in the film are pretty damned cool. It’s also really cool when Hellboy first touches Excalibur when he has visions of a world that’s been destroyed. Some of the practical and gore effects are pretty good too. Also, this is a very violent movie. It’s got a bit of a mean streak and I kind of appreciate that, but was it really necessary to see people torn to shreds every 20 minutes for no reason? I’m not opposed to a good blood bath, but considering that we had two movies that were PG-13, they didn’t really need to rely on the level of violence that we got in the new film. That’s just the film-makers compensating for a lousy script. The action is pretty good and really fun at times, but it rings a bit hollow. Again, it goes back to the writing which wasn’t very strong in the first place.
After Hellboy was released on the 12th, it came to light through various industry insiders that the production of the film was severely problematic. According to Dark Horizons, it was revealed that there were clashes between the director, some of the actors and a number of the producers. From what I understand, David Harbour and Ian McShane re-wrote some of their lines without Neil Marshall knowing about it; Harbour himself walked off the set a number of times, while Neil Marshall’s cinematographer was fired, and there a number of interruptions between Marshall and the rest of the crew. Apparently, Neil Marshall wasn’t even allowed a final cut for his film. This explains a lot of the problems with the movie. Does that mean that everything was true, though? It’s hard to say. When you’ve got multiple perspectives on the matter, it’s difficult to know who is telling which version of the truth, but there was obviously problems behind the scenes. You can tell just by watching the movie.
Is Hellboy the complete disaster that everybody says it is? No. At least, I don’t think so. There were aspects of the film that I really dug. I liked Hellboy’s look, the action sequences and creatures like I stated before. While the CGI is questionable at times, the quality seems strangely appropriate for a film like this. It also moves pretty quick and isn’t really boring. That being said, this is one of those cases where the film-makers should have held off on the reboot and gave Guillermo del Toro the resources that he needed to do a third film with Ron Perlman. Both del Toro and Perlman really wanted to do it, but the under-performing second film didn’t make it feasible. Will we get another Hellboy? I doubt it. The box-office stats for this film are dismal as are the reactions from critics and audiences. I don’t hate the film, it’s just not the film that it needed to be.
My Final Recommendation: This one is on nobody’s side: 5/10