Hellboy (2004)

Before you ask, no I haven't seen the Hellboy film that came out this year. I honestly don't know anybody who has.

The concept of Hellboy has never appealed to me. It came out in an awkward time for superhero films before the Nolan Batman movies and the MCU where we were still trying to find the right way to do a superhero film. Not that they were all bad around this time. The Raimi Spider-man films were at the height of their powers and the original X-men trilogy were proving that superhero films could be done. But at the same time, you had Ang Lee's Hulk, Catwoman, Ben Affleck's Daredevil, and Spawn trying to bring some dark credence to the genre and failing. And somewhere in between the campy, wink and a nod vibe of the Raimi Spider-man films and the bruiting WAY TOO SERIOUS Daredevil, you had Hellboy.

The movie starts out with an origin story that I really like. During World War 2, Hitler begins toying with the paranormal. After a platoon of US Soldiers distrupt a ritual to open a portal to hell (or another dimension with demons and shit), they find a baby demon and name him Hellboy.

Years pass and the FBI creates a covert branch focused on fighting the paranormal and the weapon they use to combat these creatures from hell is Hellboy (played by Ron Perlman in some amazing prosthetic and makeup, seriously, I think he looks great)

And on top of the fact that the makeup looks great, Ron Perlman is a treasure and is perfect for that role.

Hellboy is both tough and smooth, but at the same time he's a stunted man child who likes cats... a lot. He is gritty and fights demons but at the same time has a complicated relationship with his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm, the scientist who found him (played by the late John Hurt).

There's a lot to like about this character and for playing a character that I don't think a lot of people know, I think Ron Perlman does a really good job.

The movie is mainly seen through the eyes of a new FBI agent who is assigned to be the partner/attendant to Hellboy, Agent John Meyers (played by Rupert Evans). Oh boy is this guy boring

and very useless to the plot. I haven't seen the sequel to this film but I'm glad they got rid of this guy because he adds practically nothing besides a vehicle for the audience to get to know this wacky supernatural world that we're entering.

He gets more pointless as he perpetuates a sort of love triangle between Hellboy and Selma Blair's character that in my opinion came out of no where. Meyers is being a good guy and helpful to Hellboy and then he takes Selma Blair out for coffee and makes a move on her when he's very aware that Hellboy has a thing for her... that didn't make a whole lot of sense to be honest and was kind of dumb.

The far more interesting parts were when the movie delved into the weirder supernatural parts and characters.

Hellboy is clearly interesting, but then you have Selma Blair's character who has pyrokinesis abilities or the fish creature who would later star in the Shape of Water in 2018 (and I'm only sort of joking with that, while he's voiced by David Hyde Pierce, he's motion captured by Doug Jones who played the fish creature in Guillermo Del Toro's Shape of Water).

When Hellboy is interacting with these characters or John Hurt, it gets really interesting. As boring as Meyers is, for the majority of the movie he's just along for the ride and witnessing all the crazy supernatural stuff going on, like the villains.

The villains on paper were probably really great, but in execution they're pretty paper thin. Karl Roden plays Rasputin who I guess was possessed by a demon who wanted to open the gate to hell or something? He's got a random blonde lady and a Nazi assassin who was clearly the best villain, both in action and design.

Honestly, the story and plot of the villain was kind of hard to follow in detail but getting the jist of it isn't hard. Rasputin wants to release hell hounds into the world and eventually open up a portal to hell. Hellboy tried to kill the hell hounds and stop that from happening. Cool? Cool!

One of the coolest things about this movie was the creature design and practical effects used in this film. In a time where CGI was just starting to be the paradoxically good and bad monster it would eventually become, Guillermo Del Toro tried to utilize creature prosthetics and practical effects throughout this movie and it's kind of a wonder.

Do I know that that monster to the left is fake, yes. But the way it was designed and the way it moves was fascinating, especially in the world we live in where CGI is everywhere. When JJ Abrams uses practical effects in Star Wars everyone gives him a round of applause while Guillermo Del Toro has been doing that for years.

I am not a huge connoisseur of Guillermo Del Toro but the costume design and monster design in this movie just beyond amazing that I want to delve more into his films and see them just for that element alone.

Now unfortunately, because there are so many practical effects,  the action has its moments where it becomes very slow and lethargic. While it can be good because it provides weight and meaning to punches and such, it does kind of date itself as a film. Is it horrible? No. But you're not going to find high octane action in Hellboy. On top of that, the times where CGI is used, it's pretty obviously 2004 CGI.

Oh also...

I don't care how pointless or fake this part looked, having that animatronic zombie on Hellboy's back might have been one of my favorite parts.

Hellboy is just a wacky concept overall. A demon who is raised to fight the paranormal Nazis with the help of a telepathic fish monster named Abe Sapien and a girl who starts fires is a pretty weird concept for 2004. Oddly enough they really lean into that wackiness and make the execution just as crazy and wacky as you could in 2004. I understand the appeal. It was a different time so I could see something like this having a real appeal, especially if it was the darker story that was actually good unlike Catwoman or Spawn, that wasn't campy or too mainstream like Spider-man or X-men.

Hellboy filled an intriguing counter culture at a time where the mainstream superhero culture was still being defined. While the story is a little bit of a mess and hard to follow, the up and character interactions were so weird and fun that I almost didn't care. It's not a perfect movie by any means but I am glad I can say I've experienced this area of superhero films, at least a part of it.

Am I going to see the new one now? No, that looks terrible...

But what did you think of Hellboy? If you saw it in 2004, how does it hold up today? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!