Hellboy is not a well known comic book outside of the circle of people who read comic books. While over the years, Marvel and DC’s main line-up of superheroes have become well known to the public through their appearance in every type of media known to man. There are hundreds of other comics and publishers, that have yet to be translated to the big screen. Guillermo del Toro had wanted to translate Dark Horse Comic’s Hellboy to the big screen for years, and passed up a number of other movies to work on it. Honestly, I’d say Guillermo’s style was perfect to craft the world of Hellboy, which was full of supernatural beings and magic.
As much as Hellboy’s name seems to insinuate that this is
going to be a heaven versus hell supernatural death match, Hellboy’s demonology
draws much more heavily from the ideas of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. We
see visions of the massive imprisoned and tentacled elder gods who lie at the
edge of the universe waiting to brings the apocalypse down on earth.
Lovecraft’s mythos is then mixed in with a number of other elements, and
combined they score a lot of points in my book. One of the best things about
Hellboy’s world is that every being is original. There has always been two ways
to go about crafting a supernatural world. You can define a set number of
creatures and beings, and just have variations on them, or you can craft every
single character to be their own unique being, with no two the same. While the
first can be just as amazing, the later is always something special and is what
has been created in Hellboy.
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| Does that loo like a flaming Jesus in the background or is that just me? |
Personally, I think Hellboy is almost one of the least
interesting characters in the movie. Sure he is some kind of demon embodiment
of the Devil, big, red, tailed, hooved and horned, but his story is generally
explained, whilst so many other interesting characters are shrouded in mystery.
Abe Sapien for instance is introduced with about a line or two of dialogue
explaining his name and how he was discovered, but you know there is so much
more there. Then we have Liz Sherman, who doesn’t have a different skin colour
or anything strange hidden under her clothes. But that doesn’t mean her pyrokinetic powers
aren’t awesome, especially in blue. Then there are the villains. Rasputin is our standard thug type villain and as far as we are aware of human, until the
end at least. Ilsa doesn’t get much mention, but she is interesting because,
you know... she is apparently immortal. Then there is their minion Sammael, at
least I think that is his name. The strange clockwork superassassin is never
really explained, but damn was he cool. Overall, there was so many neat and
mysterious individuals that they could almost all make their own movies. That
is the difference between a movie and a comic, how much time you have to tell a
character's story.
As for the story of Hellboy, it isn’t overly complicated at
least if you just accept some things are magical and might not be explainable.
Sometime during WWII the Nazis opened a portal to another dimension, or
universe, or reality, or whatever. Nazi experiment equals major points in my
book. While the Americans of course managed to stop them from summoning the
Cthulhu like beings, Hellboy still managed to pass through. Now 60 years later,
he works with the Bureau of Supernatural something or other, which Dr.
Bruttenholm explains awesomely. This was probably my favourite line in the
movie; “there are things that go bump in the night. We are the ones who bump back.”
So, now a bitter Hellboy fights evil wherever it appears, and of course year later, are
evil Nazi scientist Rasputin has returned. Hellboy of course overcomes all
problems and in the end saves the day. It really isn’t that complicated, but it
is good.
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| I like how all of his bullets come commercially packaged. |
Hellboy mixes a good amount of imagination, humour, and
action to create quite a fantastic experience. It is a little lacking in terms
of overarching plot, and has to pack a lot of ideas and craft a world in
a short time, but luckily it took itself a little over 2 hours to do it. The
special effects are well done, and the CGI is by no means tacky or obvious. Abe
Sapien’s makeup takes over 4 hours to apply, and almost as many to remove. At
some points they would actually leave some of it on overnight, so that it would
be faster to redo the next day. Hellboy himself also takes quite a few hours,
as only his eyelids are that of actor Ron Pearlman. Recently, Ron Pearlman, put
back on the makeup in order to fulfil a sick child’s wish which was the event
that originally brought the thought of rewatching Hellboy into my mind. Ron
Pearlman isn’t the most well known Hollywood actor, but he has gotten around,
and he has a voice you’d recognize anywhere. Whether he is narrating the
Fallout opening, fighting mutants or making a child’s wish come true, Pearlman
is a great man and actor, and is an example for some of those more stuck up
members of the film industry.
The rest of Hellboy’s
cast is great as well. With John Hurt and Rupert Evans playing their parts
perfectly and Selma Blair doing a splendid job at being the rather depressed
Liz. There are quite a few others, but another notable performance is that of
Doug Jones as Abe Sapien. While the credits make no mention, Abe is actually
dubbed by David Hyde Pierce, but he thought that Abe was so entirely Jones creation
that he refused to take any credit. Guillermo del Toro also voices a large
number of characters himself as well as making quite a few cameo appearances
alongside Mike Migdola the writer of the Hellboy comics. I’d say you’d be hard
pressed to identify all the references to him in the movie.
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| The glimpse we get of Hellboy's home are hilarious, with the man's love of cats and the shear amount of food he consumes. |
Overall, Hellboy is a great fantasy outing, and a very interesting
world. While the sequel wasn’t as loved, I am going to rewatch it and see what
I think. This is all of course, in anticipation that a third movie does in fact
get made. Since Ron Pearlman became Hellboy again for that child’s wish he has
expressed desire to do a third movie. I do believe that Guillermo del Toro
himself has expressed a similar interest and it seems that things are aligning
such that we may see a third Hellboy movie in the works. I for one would be by
no means disappointed.
Link:
Hellboy IMDb
Link:
Hellboy IMDb
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