You might find it instructive to watch del Toro’s movies and then read the Strain books.
I’ve seen many, but not all, and I’ve enjoyed his work though I find it uneven. He’s a fantastic visual artist, but some of his films haven’t worked for me well as stories. I do wish he’d get to make a Lovecraft movie, though. A Cthulhu mythos sensibility permeates most of his work, and he’s the director that would have the best shot at pulling a good one off. At the Mountains of Madness never got out of development hell, though.
I haven’t seen the second Hellboy – I don’t really share his enthusiasm for comics – but someone once told me it had a Cthulhu element to it. I should probably just get over my aversion to Ron Perlman in crazy red make-up and check that out.
Yes it was. I can spoiler it if you like. I actually enjoyed the series for what it was, and I thought the origin story of the vampires was a neat idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if del Toro was heavily involved in the cosmology, but maybe not the character writing.
As much of a del Toro fan boy as I am, I have to somewhat agree with this. It’s almost odd the way he can create a really solid, fun story in some cases (the Hellboy films, Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth), but then fumble the ball with something like Pacific Rim (great visuals, but the story is…somewhat lacking).
That inconsistency is also what makes it easier for me to accept the assertion that he was involved with the writing of The Strain series at more than just a branding level. Plus, one thing I’ve always believed about del Toro based on interviews and his involvement with other projects is that he’s a really big fan of the genres he primarily works within. I have no trouble accepting at face value the claim that he worked closely with Hougan on the series.
I think the first one has more, actually. Did you see that one, Tom? Rasputin is trying to release tentacled Elder God type beings from the dimension in which they’ve been imprisoned.
The first Hellboy is great. The second, not so much. Golden Army has Seth MacFarlane doing the voicework for Johann Krauss, but it’s still too much of a muddled mess.
I enjoyed Hellboy 2 almost as much as the first entry. I thought the fairy tale approach to the plot brought a nice touch of sentimental wistfulness to the word del Toro created for Hellboy.
Hellboy 2 was okay, but I really didn’t enjoy the “humans destroy everything magical” gripe, plus they made Hellboy out to be a gigantic dick right from the beginning when they revealed that he got Agent Myers shipped off to Siberia. I thought that was a piss-poor way to write that character out.
Also, and this is nitpicky I know, it bugged me that they changed Liz Sherman’s fire to regular orange/red instead of the otherworldly blue it was in the first film.
Hellboy 1 was probably not super faithful to the comics (which I’ve still only read a little bit of), but clearly took them as primary inspiration. Hellboy 2 seemed a lot like Hellboy crossed with del Toro’s vision of faeries as seen in Pan’s Labyrinth. Which made it a much more identifiably del Toro movie and I thought it was neat in a lot of places, but I suspect it was kind of disappointing as a Hellboy movie.
Well, I don’t recall Hellboy moping about his room much in the comics, that’s for sure. It captured the spirit of Hellboy. It wasn’t a particularly well written movie. It wasn’t awful either. And it captured that Hellboy is sort of torn between two worlds.
Though the comics are curious in that Mignolia is either not interested in, or not very good at, carrying story arcs from book to book. That stuff is there, but each Hellboy book still feels really isolated from all the others, and it’s sort of hard to sort out what’s going on in the world at large. BPRD might be different but I’ve only read one or two of those IIRC.
Hellboy 2 seemed a lot like Hellboy crossed with del Toro’s vision of faeries as seen in Pan’s Labyrinth. Which made it a much more identifiably del Toro movie and I thought it was neat in a lot of places, but I suspect it was kind of disappointing as a Hellboy movie.
That’s sorta how it felt to me. It’s a Del Toro movie - and not an especially well written one (the memory of the entire sequence with the forest king where Drizzt is chiding Hellboy still grates) - that has some Hellboy characters in it.
I’ve never read the books, so last night’s episode was my introduction to the story.
It appears we’ve got very traditional vampires, suck blood, sleep in coffins full of dirt, don’t like sunlight or running water, super fast and super strong, convert anyone they feed on into more vampires. The mechanism is parasites, but it’s otherwise very old school vampires. I can see why Hepcat found vampires as monsters refreshing, what with vampires being whitewashed these days. I won’t say “Ricification,” since Anne Rice’s vampires were generally vicious killers. Twilightification.
My reaction was “meh.” It felt slightly stupid from the moment the aircraft controllers walked down to the stationary airplane, abandoning their posts. Groping the underside of the jet was silly and unprofessional. Nor did I buy the idea that they’d go straight for the plague theory, absent any other information. Rather, I would have expected rescue workers to storm on board, see the bodies, and then they call in the specialists. It’s not The Ship level dumb, but it’s not smart.
If I were an evil mastermind vampire importing another vampire, I’d have the getaway driver hired weeks before the plane showed up, and waiting in the terminal. Hiring him the night the plane arrives is sloppy. For that matter, hiring a thug like that to do the work is sloppy. I’d never trust someone like that to do anything critical. Muscle work maybe, but not a key role. That the thug almost screwed everything up by going for his gun demonstrates why hiring him was very poor decision making.
The CDC people are sloppy too. They found a sinister carved cabinet which is very likely the source of whatever killed the passengers, and they opened it without any protective gear.
There are some things that don’t make sense, but for which I expect explanations. Such as why the existing evil mastermind vampire can’t do all the infecting he wants, since a vampirepocalypse is clearly their plan.
Plot holes abound, but it still may be fun. The CDC stuff is off the charts dumb, though. The cargo hold was open to the plane’s cabin. Everything in both areas is potentially contaminated and shouldn’t be approached by anyone not wearing a full hazmat suit, and yet they just stuff it all in a warehouse and let folks in street clothes in? Yeah, right. Gus’s other criticisms are also spot on. Still, I’m a sucker for a good vampires amuck story, so I’ll be watching the rest of the season.
I was looking forward to this, never read the books or even heard of them. It was a pretty bad opener. Better than The Last Ship and enough for me to watch at least another one but it was just sloppy. Gus’ summary two posts up was pretty much my exact take.
having read the first two books, I can say that some of your issues have explanations. Of course a lot of the stupid procedural stuff was just that, stupid. Especially the handling of the box. Even if the box were totally benign anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have taken even minimal precautions with it, instead of basically going “Hey look, a creepy, suspicious, non registered box! Oh! its just dirt dont worry about it” I think this is going to be one of those series where you’ll only enjoy it if youre not overly critical about the loose plot issues.
