Hellboy Review

[Floyd-the-k]

 In the Spectator of 4 September, Mark Steyn does quite a good review of Hellboy. You can read the whole thing on the link below.
 He says
 When popular culture gets more arty, it often gets more self-referential: that’s what happened in musicals and westerns, and my sense is that it’s happened in comic books, too. The folks who created Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Captain America just got on with it. Sixty years later, it all seems to have a hard time crawling out under the weight of everything that’s gone before. On the page, you can get away with it. But once you put it up on the big screen it can easily seem tired and formulaic
  I think he has a point here. However, he likes the movie because Perlman is perfect and
- way it understands that you can have energy in the stillest moments – like Hellboy and some nine-year old kid he’s bumped into on the roof of a building, just sitting yakking about stuff,
 here again he has a point - I liked that scene. He also likes the female lead and the movie`s pace. I loathe Steyn`s politics but when he`s in good form, his movie reviews are terrific

Link: A pretty funny read

[Art]

I read a reviewin, I think, The Times that basicly went the lines of "This is genre shit, I actyually found it suprisingly enjoyable but still genre shit, so one star out of five".

[Generally Contrary]

Gahh!  I wish you hadn't pointed me in the direction of Mark Steyn.  I'm now so angry...

[GordonR]

I saw it last night.  Liked it, with the following exceptions -

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- blimey, you didn't half get sick of those demon hound things.  By the time they came on for their third fight with Hellboy, it was "haven't we done all this already?"

- Liz was a bit crap, wasn't she?

- the end was pretty anti-climactic.  And Men In Black already did the 'getting swallowed by the monster and blowing it up from inside' thing.  Oh yeah, and why didn't the bad guys kill Mayers instead of chaining him up so he could help Hellboy at the vital moment?

[Woolly]

I know im repeating myself a bit, but.....

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...that scene fairly near the end when Hellboy and that government bloke who doesnt like Hellboy are both stuck on the bridge thats falling to bits. The editing is absolutely dire, (see how long it takes for the sliding door to close), and then suddenly the government bloke thinks Hellboy is great and calls him 'son', or something like that. Incredibly poor film-making and character sub-plot.

Thats not the only scene that pissed me off, but its the one i hate the most!

Essentially though, the film is still great fun, so please dont let a miserable whiner like me put you off seeing it!

Wul

[Mr D]

That scene stank with Hellboy's floating over the collapsing bridge and the stupid amount of time it took the door to close.
I thought that the guy seeing Hellboy actually DO SOMETHING and save him directly changerd his mind, at least in the short term, because he's basically a selfish fella. It has to affect him for him to give a shit.

And I liked the 'What the hell are you doing to that thing?' cigar sequence actually!

[Art]

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Rasputins may have really cool looking mates and have the abiolity to mysteriously appear out of nowhere in a really creepy way, but his plan is totally unfocused.

"I will open the gates of hell! No I won?t, I'll unlease a plague of frog creatures, No, hang on, I'll open the gates of hell again! No, acually I'll die! Again!"

why didn't the bad guys kill Mayers instead of chaining him up so he could help Hellboy at the vital moment?

It's a Villain thing, we wouldn't understand.

[Art]

The good news: It did well enough in the states that there will be a Hellboy 2

The bad news: That means no Mountains of Madness

Also they've done occult nazis, cthulhu beasts and rasputin, so can't really use those elements agin till at lewast the 3rd film if they have any level of decency, so it'll have to be about a big mine full of cultists and child workers under an indian castle or something...

[Art]

Heh. Bloke from larry Sanders was total "Characterisation by casting".

[GordonR]

Rasputin was really crap, wasn't he?  And what was the Nazis' original 1944 plan?  Unleash the Seven Gods of Chaos to destroy the world?

So much for the 1000 Year Reich idea...

I liked the cigar bit.  And Hellboy's line just before he dropped that huge cog on Nazi Clockwork Zombie.

"All for you, buddy."

[Mr D]

I thought that most of Hellboy's oneliners and gags were delivered perfectly. It really made me laugh!

[Art]

Ron Perlmans great. He deserves more than Beauty And The Beast, Alien 3 and a Stella Artois ad.

[Mr D]

He's got more hasn't he? He's done loads of work with the Batman cartoon series and was in Blade 2... Video and cartoon voices a plenty, Alien Resurrection...

[Art]

heh. Those don't really come to mind as career highlights either. He was great in City Of Lost Children, and his small but brilliant role in The Last Supper, and as the retard in The Naming Of The Rose.

Other lowlights: The Magnificent Seven TV series.

[Dunk!]

A Silent Satanic S&M Clockwork Contortionist Zombie Ninja Nazi Assassin.

Ticks all the boxes on my 'Qualities needed in a good bad guy' list.

It would be hard to push bad further.