I didn’t like it much, either. I’m not a reader of the comics, so there is probably a lot I missed. But what I didn’t miss was pretty boring, and not very good.
The dialogue was pretty tepid, IMO. I agree with Gary, the jokes fell flat (when you could hear them), and the Hellboy/Liz/Agent Myers love triangle was forced and empty. Jeffrey Tambor’s character had some truly shit lines (the clockwork guy shows up and slashes at him, and he looks up and says “Hey! What the hell is your problem?”). Then, he suddenly likes Hellboy after hating him the whole film.
There were quite a few inconsistencies in the writing, too. In the beginning, Hellboy declares that he works alone. Except he doesn’t, ever. They make a big fuss about Hellboy “breaking out” and being photographed in public, then he spends the rest of the film in public fighting demons, and nobody cares. At the end, Liz does her fire thing, and it somehow must have affected Hellboy, since the Nazis were able to subdue him, even though he’s immune to fire. The way Liz was brought back was cheesy, too. Except the clockwork work guy, the villians sucked and were evil simply because, well, they were. Why does Rasputin want to destroy the world? Why does the Nazi Fraulien love him?
I liked Perlman well enough as Hellboy, though. The guy’s under a ton of makeup and he can still be quite expressive. He needed better lines, though.
And my own personal nitpick: Hellboy throws throws Tambor sliding under a door falling shut, then he dicks around dodging swinging stuff and still can slide easily under the door, now higher than it was when he threw Tambor under it.
Inconsistency was indeed the film’s biggest problem. The plot was inconsistent, the tone was inconsistent, the characterizations were inconsistent.
It’s clear that Del Toro can direct a big action movie very well, but equally clear that he doesn’t know how to write one. There were just way too many glaring, rookie mistakes.
And yeah, that thing with Hank Kingsley and the falling door? Total bullshit.
It’s very attractive, visually. Not quite “Mignola brought to life”, but it does look good.
The first half does a great impression of being a great film. But there are no payoffs. Nothing is a set up for anything.
Characters meander, and shit just happens. The only reason they win anything is because the main character has a big stone fist.
And it also has my main pet-peeve, although in a slightly modified form: Talking, intelligent, villain transforms into creature that can do nothing but screech using craptacular stock sound effects.
It felt incredibly anti-climactic. The final villain was just tedious. I saw a midnight showing, and I remember thinking “is that it? that’s the big bad? jeezus, hurry up this utterly predictable fight and let me go home.” I didn’t stick around long after the credits started rolling, cause it was already 2:20 am and I had been up since 5 am the previous day.
Perlman sounded mangled under all that makeup, and I could barely understand him when they had a stogie in his mouth, which was pretty much 3/4 of the time.
The movie also had more than its fair share of plot inconsistencies, even for a comic book movie!
The best scene, visually, was the casket in the rain. That’s about it.
This movie just feels tepid. I think all the good advance word set up high expectations, but this didn’t even come close to delivering.
I watched a fuzzy version from the Internet, so I can’t talk about the visuals or really what anybody looked like exactly, but I agree with Whitta about everything else - all very bad. Virtually every line Hellboy had was a sarcastic one-liner - all very bad. I really can’t understand why this is getting generally glowing reviews.
And here’s a question wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a spoiler:
Near the end, Hellboy is getting beaten up by a whole pack of those lizard monsters he fights all the time. The girl and the other guy are watching. The girl tells the guy to slap her. He does, then he hides while she explodes, killing all the lizards. The movie then immediately cuts to a scene where all three of them have been captured by the evil guy. Did I miss something or was the part where they get captured just left out entirely?
semi-spoiler to answer above spoiler:
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they went straight to being captured. i assumed since liz blasted everything they were all knocked unconscious
can anyone tell me what happens at the ending credits? i doubt it will be worth downloading or seeing again but i am still curious.
I’m seeing a lot of complaints about Perlman being muffled or whatever by the makeup. I’d be willing to bet that 90% or more of his dialogue in the film was looped, along with the rest of the cast. That’s just what he sounds like.
Erik- There’s a scene where the blonde villian is standing around with the bad guy and then see Meyer and say: “Oh, one of them is conscious.”
Russel- Remember that scene where he’s asking Hellboy to hurry up just before the Hellboy vs. a bunch of monsters scene? In the middle of the credits, there’s just a quick not-very-funny joke scene where he’s still standing there trying to talk on the radio.
For what it’s worth, I also saw the movie yesterday, and thought it was entertaining. I saw it at the Coronet here in San Francisco, and most people in the theatre (it was about half full), laughed at the majority of the jokes, and most also clapped loudly when the credits rolled.
That’s great and all, but Hellboy is immune to fire, Liz’ not excepted (otherwise, the dramatic kiss couldn’t happen). So, what knocked him unconscious? Shitty writing, that’s what.
I thought everything was explained pretty well. Didn’t make it a good movie though…
Also I guess I am not sure why Rasputin felt like he needed to summon Samael in the first place… that part didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But hey whatever.
Everything Rasputin did was merely to maneuver Hellboy into the right place so he could act as the key to open the not only open the door for those elder god thingies, but break them out of their crystal prison.
Although it may have appeared otherwise, his opening the portal in the 40’s wasn’t to bring them through, but to bring Hellboy over. He could not unlock the crystal prison without him, or more speficially without the older version of Hellboy.
The growing population of Samael’s was just a conveniently large enough threat that would prompt the government to send Rasputin’s big red key to the place he provided the clues for the team to find.
It’s interesting to note that the real climax of the film wasn’t the final battle, it was Hellboy making his choice about opening the gate. The monster at the end just happened to be a side effect of Rasputin’s mutliple trips across the veil of death allowing a lesser god who happened to be Rasputin’s master across, hence the relative ease at which he was dispatched.
Now, all of that doesn’t mean I didn’t think the last half of the film wasn’t slow, meandering and unfocused and it certainly had a growing sense of “meh” about it. The first Samael was good, but once it became just another Alien’s rippoff, I quickly lost interest. And the final battle would have better served the pacing of the movie had it been cut, because it really leaves people who expect the climax to come later than it did feeling really disappointed at just how quickly it ended.
And what the hell was the point in just completely abandoning Abe in the plot roughly halfway through the film?
Personally, I would have preferred a movie which kept the monster fighting very much in the background, and instead concentrated on the idea of the characters dealing with their situation and lives. You know, film it as regular joes who just happen to be hellspawn, fish people and pyrokinetics trying to make a buck and find happiness at the end of the day. But that’s just me.
This was one of my biggest problems with the film, and a large part of its unfocused feel. They go to great lengths to introduce this ensemble cast, who then slip in and out of the story seemingly at the whim of the writer’s short-term memory. Abe, Hellboy, Myers, Liz all disappeared for large chunks of the film only to reappear five minutes after we’d totally forgotten about them. Building Abe Sapien up into an interesting and sympathetic character for the first two acts only to competely shelve him for the rest of the movie was definitely the most egregious example of this, however.
I think Del Toro tried to take on too much and perhaps the story would have functioned better with fewer supporting characters.
