ellboy was yet another in the endless series of comic book movies now being churned off the assembly line. At one time comic book movies were a sort of novelty or oddity, but since it now seems like at least 1/2 of the action movies being released are adaptations of comic books, we should probably stop commenting on it. After all, it's not as if more than 10% of the people seeing any of these movies have ever actually read the comics. Batman, Superman, Spiderman; sure, everyone's seen one of those comics at some point. But Punisher, Hellboy, LXG, and Constantine? I think not. I certainly haven't, though I pay enough attention to geek culture to at least have heard of most of those titles, before they became movies.

My point here, if I have one, is that it's sort of pointless to go on calling various movies "comic book movies" when they're brand new to most people (with Batman and Superman and all of the other universally-known comics already having been turned into movies) and don't have enough of a reader base to mean anything to the movie's bottom line.

It's obvious why studios are so hot to adapt comics; the rights fees are reasonable, and it's easier to take an existing story with characters and a background mythology than it is to invent your own from scratch. Every movie maker tweaks and modifies the best of the comic for their movie (at least in theory), and since comics are obviously a very visual medium, there's already character design, world design, color choices, etc. It saves a ton of initial design work, in addition to creating the whole plot, characters, and everything else from scratch.

Hellboy is one of the more obscure comics to make it into a movie, and it turned out to be a pretty good film. Not great, but better than most, even though it could have been a far better movie, with a bit better plot.

Hellboy
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 7 
Action: 7
Humor: 6
Horror: 5
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 5
Overall: 6

I really need to add a "concept" rating, or something like that, since the concept of Hellboy is very interesting, and that's why I gave script/story a good rating. The actual movie script though, in terms of what they do with the character after the excellent opening and world set up, is very mediocre, and it disappointed me. As I discuss in the full review below, it's just never really exciting or suspenseful or perilous. I never doubted that Hellboy would win in the end and that the bad guys would lose, and the plot had lots of very dumb stuff in it. So while it tried hard, and had a lot of good action and great visuals, and the script was good at dialogue, the story just wasn't very involving or terrifying, considering the fate of the entire world was at stake. 

My original review follows.

April 3, 2004

Malaya and I saw Hellboy on Friday night. The following will be very vague about actual plot events in the film, so there are no spoilers to worry about. Most of the reviews I've read have a lot of spoilers, at least in terms of the plot, since this ain't exactly Batman or Superman or even Spiderman.  You've got to explain what's going on here to most people, since most people have never heard of the comic book the story is taken from. I'm not going to do that, since I figure if you want spoilers, you can read any other review out there. Ebert's is typically good, and he gives the movie 3.5/4 stars, so he obviously liked it.  More than I did, though he is confused by one plot element that I've seen several other critics comment on, that made perfect sense to Malaya and to me as well. Basically the critics were too busy taking notes rather than paying attention to the plot.  More on that in a bit also.

Anyway, it's Hellboy. I knew nothing of the comic, other than the barest of outlines based on reading the movie synopsis and several reviews. I like the idea of it thought, all the melding of dark Christian myth and the occult and elements of Lovecraft's Mythos, combined with a modern sensibility and the wry humor of the demonic hero. And all of that works pretty well in the movie; it's not just false advertising hype.

My quick review:

• Overall: 3/5 stars.
• Atmosphere, visuals, sets, character design, CGI, etc: 5/5
• Acting, casting, performances: 3/5
• Plot, narrative pull, emotional investment: 2/5

By far the best things in the film were the sets, the set design, the visuals, etc. There is a great museum set, a nice subway set, a lovely underground tunnels set with dripping water and weird lighting, several awesome outdoor sets where it's always pouring down rain or snowing like a blizzard, and the glorious underground tunnels set in the end of the film that's full of weird machinery, huge gears, spiky walls, and other stuff that's entirely impractical, unnecessary and without function, but still very cool.

It was a gorgeous movie filled with tons of things that I thought were very cool.  The main monsters (the ones you see him fighting in the trailer) weren't that impressive; they were too monochromatic and had too many moving parts for the eye to focus clearly.  The two eyes in one long socket was a nice Lovecraftian touch, and the flowing tentacles for a mane were cool also, but overall it had too many moving things and was shaped too weirdly and looked too much like an animated clay model, with its dark gray coloration.  I never lost the sense that it was just a special effect, even when it was crashing into things and fighting with Hellboy.

There is another, much larger demon that looks great, and there are various scenes of an outer space alternate dimension sort of thing that are just gorgeous.  Great imaginings of Lovecraft's Elder Gods in their space out of space, though this isn't specifically a Lovecraft movie. They seemed very believably vast and alien and malign.

Hellboy looks pretty good too.  I never had the feeling it was anything other than a big guy in a lot of makeup, but he's convincingly real and the times when he does superhuman stuff seem believable. He's superhuman in his constitution, absorbing punishment that would turn a person to jelly many times over, but it hurts him, and it looks painful, so you've got empathy for him.

So if all of that's great, what didn't I like?

Well, I wouldn't say I disliked anything other than the new FBI liaison guy, since he's ineffectual, stupid, unprepared, unprofessional, and generally annoying.  He's the "normal guy" stuck into all of this weirdness, and while that's a mandatory plot element for this sort of weird movie, I think they overdid it in this one.  He was like that guy in the horror movie who keeps not believing there's a monster even as person after person is picked off. Not that he didn't believe in things in Hellboy, but he was just perpetually surprised by this or that or the next thing, and it got old in a hurry.  I didn't emphasize with him at all, though at the end he was starting to behave like he could actually adapt to changing situations, so perhaps in Hellboy 2 he'll be less annoying.  His bio on the movie site talks about his brilliant mind and strategy, and while there was zero evidence of that in this movie, it at least gives us some reason to want him around in the inevitable sequel.

My main negative point about Hellboy though, was the lack of plot. It wasn't that it didn't have a plot; things happened in a logical order and there weren't any huge plot holes (several critics have said there were, but they just weren't paying attention to various clues and remarks, since it all made sense to Malaya and I, and neither of us knows anything about the Hellboy comic or story, so we're going completely by what we saw in the film) to overlook.  No, the problem was that I never cared how events turned out, and never had any doubt that Hellboy and the good guys would win.  Several of the good guys died, but it was never a surprise when they got it.  They might as well have had clipboards and red shirts on in a Star Trek episode, their dooms were so telegraphed.

I enjoyed the plot and the way things transpired, and it was intelligent and logical (for the most part) but I just didn't care.  There wasn't any sense of emotion to things, and part of that was due to Hellboy's character.  He's supernatural himself, a demon, so obviously other demons and monsters aren't going to scare him at all. But at the same time he is so cavalier and casual about it all that he seems almost disinterested.  A comparison that occurred to me was with Indiana Jones.  Indy isn't scared, and he fights like hell and always wins after a great battle, and he's a smart ass and can joke about things the way Hellboy does... but at the same time Indy is emotionally involved and you're rooting for him to overcome the huge odds against him.

I think it's largely because Indy fights humans with emotions, and his reactions and taunts are going towards a target that can appreciate and react to them. When Hellboy taunts a mindless killing machine of a demon, it's sort of funny and he's sort of cool, but it's ultimately pointless.  Nothing anyone says matters to the demon, and its only reaction to any sort of stimuli is to scream menacingly.  Indy's also good at reacting to danger from inanimate objects.  He runs from traps, he looks scared and weary when he runs from a huge boulder, etc.  And when he escapes, he doesn't stop to taunt the trap or the boulder, since if he did it would be silly and pointless.  Much as it is when Hellboy does that to another bloodthirsty and mindless demon.

I wasn't expecting Indiana Jones in Hellboy, but I never felt a sense of fear or awe when Hellboy confronted another potentially terrifying monster, and that made the battle scenes emotionally dead, despite the visual flair and intelligence they were executed with.  A better plot could have made a big difference, or different style in the story and direction, since while it was entirely competent, there wasn't any sense of building action or approaching climax. For another comparison, try Spartan, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago.  No one else saw that movie, and it was made with cold, professional characters that the viewer wasn't meant to feel emotional resonance with, but the plot was so clever and twisty, and bad things happened so suddenly that you were on the edge of your seat, never sure what was going to happen next.  I never felt anything approaching the edge of my seat in Hellboy, even when I had to scoot forwards to try and find the Jolly Rancher I dropped.

While I'm giving Hellboy a positive score, and I would recommend it to people who like occult stuff and horror stuff and fantasy stuff, I was sort of disappointed with the plot and storyline. It made sense, but I'd rather that it had been as illogical and full of plot holes as most action movies are if only there had been more characters I cared about and worried over, and a sense of rising action and suspense.  It was better than Xmen1 or 2, both in style and design, as well as plot, but it felt much like those movies did to me; that they were too full of characters I didn't like or dislike.  And the ones I did dislike I disliked for all the wrong reasons. (They were pouty or annoying or stupid, and often the good guys, rather than evil and sinister bad guys I loved to hate and root against.)

Despite my positive review, I find much to agree with in the negative ones, which are in the minority. For example, here's the Critic Doctor who apparently dozed off if he couldn't follow the plot, but who I'm quoting since I completely agree with his comments on the director's results:

Given a blank check, as he was with this and his previous "Blade 2", he has come up with films that are technically proficient but utterly lacking in any sort of human element. Both films, for example, contain elaborate fight scenes galore but since there is no reasons to care about who is doing the fighting, the scenes wind up playing as nothing more than demo reels to show what the boys in the effects department are up to.

Hellboy was a lot better than the completely soulless and action-heavy Blade 2, but it was still just sort of a cartoon or video game, where you watch stuff happen but never really feel viscerally involved in it. I never had any doubt that Hellboy would win the battles, and though I was still able to enjoy them for the visual splendor, there wasn't any real sense of excitement.

Lastly, Malaya liked Hellboy a lot, and we're both interested in seeing it again, though I suspect we'll wait until we can pay $15 for the DVD, with anticipated bonus features and deleted scenes.

¤ In other Hellboy news, check out the official site and click to the character profiles. Their biographies, written by the director, are damn interesting, and far more detailed than what you find out in the movie. I wouldn't consider them spoilers, since none of them reveal anything that happens in the movie, just the years before it begins, and and much of what they tell you don't find out at all in the film. Plus they're just plain interesting reads.

¤ Also, if you're interested in the comic, there's an online example of it on the Playboy site, of all places. I saw the link from Friday's Penny Arcade, where you'll also find some Hellboy discussion, though it's very brief, and both more positive and more spoilery than what I've said thus far.  After reading this online comic I have to admit that the movie has almost perfectly captured Hellboy's character, and the look is very accurately-depicted as well. I also think that his cynical and world-wise/weary outlook works better in a comic than it did in the movie.  In the film it just made me think he was bored and disinterested, rather than clever and fearless, as it does in the comic. At least judging by this one quick example.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.