Hellboy (2019)

Wasn't bad as I thought!

I feel I should take the mentality of when I saw Dumbo when it comes to remakes or what have you, simply think of it as another story about this character. You can have your favorites and sure there will be superior and inferior versions but don't judge before you see. Open mind, and all that. This Hellboy was okay, I still greatly prefer the del Toro version but hey it's really not that bad. It's a fun comic book adventure with Hellboy facing against a witch who was around in King Arthur's time, and to kind of come to terms with who and what he is. David Harbour does a fine job, he's a pretty rad fella from interviews and the like and treats the character with respect. You always will get half a star if you put Ian McShane in anything and he's different than John Hurt but still fits in this movie and does a great job! I do have one tiny issue with this girl Alice, who in the comics was an item with the big lug and in this one she looks 16, which is funny cause she's only a handful of months older than me but beyond that I like her just fine. Milla Jovovich is a fine villain and actually has some motivation to being evil. Special props to still keeping some creature effects while still doing cgi, it's always greatly appreciated and looks pretty damn good. It's an okay movie, despite it's 5.5 star rating on IMDB and it's crushing 13% on Rotten Tomatoes which just puts further evidence to the fact that I don't agree with Rotten Tomatoes ever, it's a fine basic reboot that gives us a new Hellboy and a new story. Granted it's more a rental than a go out and watch it now, but I'm sure it will have it's fans now and in the future and that's no bad thing to me!

Now we can finally look back on some stuff, I know I've been practically a decade late revisiting movies like Aquaman and Bumblebee, but don't worry. Next week we go back for second helpings.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Man I feel like an asshole for waiting over 10 years to see this movie.

No really, Hellboy 2 is a sequel that may not surpass the original but is done just as great with tons to love and enjoy. So we pick up a few years after the first, the big red lug and Liz are a couple, Abe is still the same old Abe, and the world actually comes in contact with Hellboy. No out of focus photos, or rumors, I mean eye to eye on camera for all to see. I greatly like that the movie expands on the first mobie and does new things, like any true sequel should and the stuff they do warrants more love and attention for this movie. The fact that we get more fantasy influence in this, with elves, trolls, goblins, and even stone giants like in The Hobbit, even our main villain looks like King Thranduil, brings a lot to the table! You see more creature effects, new environments, interesting lore, I mean del Toro does it again and brings his stamp of quality on all aspects of production. Sets are well constructed and detailed, practical effects are commonplace with computer graphics used when necessary, a very good story made almost exclusively for the movie with no comic book history. The big reason I had an absolute blast with this movie is not only is the comedy more pronounced, you know with the first one it was a fairly serious story with bits of comic relief but with this one while still telling a very good story and knows when to be serious has a lot of laughs. There's a scene where Hellboy and Abe get drunk on beer and sing a love ballad, and it is utterly fantastic. It sounds ridiculous but when you watch the movie you're really gonna enjoy it. I love how they progress the characters, Hellboy is much of the same but is maintaining a relationship with Liz and gets some news before all is said and done, Abe is still the best part of both movies and I love him to death and even gets a girlfriend which is you know wonderful, Liz gets more character and time devoted to her, we even get this weird class 3 full roaming vapor in a steampunk robot suit with a german accent and you know what, I rolled with it pretty quick! I mean once you see as much as I have seen, you grow accepting of things no matter how ludicrous they are. So yeah solid sequel, fun abound for all, great quality in production and acting, and it's such a shame this movie came out one week before The Dark Knight. Yes, I'm serious. If Dark Knight was pushed back even 2 weeks, we'd probably have Hellboy 3 today. And boy howdy, is this new one going to have to impress me. Granted I'll keep an open mind but when Hellboy looks and kinda acts like that dweeby bounty hunter in Ready Player One I'm not holding high expectations. But dear lord, I've been proven wrong tons before on this show and it won't stop anytime soon so see you Friday.

Hellboy

Yeah, now we're talking.

Not gonna lie, I digged this movie even back in 2004, I was 9 years old and loved this movie and honestly it's as good as I remember it! It's a passion project by del Toro of a comic book not many people knew of but it worked and I really enjoyed it. It starts off pretty good with voiceover from John Hurt as we see some weird natzi science/occult experiment led by Rasputin of Anastasia fame, Ilsa she wolf of the SS, and a character with such a sleek design you almost don't care he's a nazi officer, being interrupted by american forces. Apparently the hotsie totsie nazis were trying to pull a Great Old One or perhaps an Eldar God from a dimension to conquer Earth, and somehow a little baby Hellboy was brought into this world, how I really don't know but whatever we got our movie now. Flash forward a good 60 years and Hellboy along with John Hurt and good ol' Doug Jones in Shape Of Water makeup once more, have themselves a defense force tasked to deal with monsters and retrieve occult items, and pretty soon Rasputin is on the move again ready to bring another Lovecraftian horror into the world so it's time to save the world again. First off, Ron Perlman is Hellboy those are some big shoes to fill, so we shall see Friday if they have. But he does it so well! He looks the part, talks the part, can kick ass and joke, pretty much perfection. John Hurt is awesome as always, and brings some heart to the movie. Doug Jones is excellent, makeup or not and can be really funny and has good brief moments that have a heavier atmosphere to it. That's what I really love about this movie, it can tell a story and have some heavy moments but it has a sense of humor and can give good comedy. It's very accesible almost to the point where I wonder why we have this fish out of water character Myers, because Hellboy and Abe Sapien aren't super weird or hard to read. I could follow everything they did and not be confused, so why do we need a newcomer to introduce everything? Besides to avoid prequel syndrome? I don't know. He's not really that integral and kinda boring, it's like one of two things I actually don't like in this movie. I also greatly love and appreciate the use of practical effects, they only use cgi if it's necessary, great makeup, excellent monster costumes, the sets are good sized and detailed, they do everything right! It's a solid, very enjoyable, awesome movie. I was genuinely surprised how well it held up over literally 15 years. Jeezus I am old. And next time we will look at the sequel that I have never seen despite my love for the first. Why? Beats me man, but I'm interested to see what's next!