watched hellboy 2 again for the first time since it came out, i still think it is better the first one and also (sorry) one of my favorite del toro movies
i honestly like it better than a lot of the hellboy comic books too. there are definitely some cornball moments (the soundtrack feels like it is from a movie 10 years older than it is), and it does the thing that i didnt start looking out for and being sick of until the MCU era was underway where the movie begins like 3 different times and all of them could have been cut without losing anything
but damn the costumes and creature designs and sets are just so cool. itâs up there with the fifth element for me in that regard. i wish more boring hollywood blockbusters had this many weird little goblin men in them and shit
*(in this case there is text on the screen to remind you who hellboy is, a useless flashback sequence featuring Young Hellboy being told the background of the villains of the movie, then a title sequence that takes way too long, then a âvillain introduction/macguffin heistâ sequenceâthis exact sequence occurs in like half of all of the marvel movies)
people having different taste than me! oh terror! oh woe! bind me to a shipâs mast then set it adrift, unmanned! crash down the very sky to crush my afflicted head!
this is what guillermo del toro said when he uploaded his first draft of The Shape of Water to literotica.com/contests/fishfuckfest2013 and it failed to gain any positive attention
i like most of the hellboy comics a lot, but i guess i may have read them all too fast or something. even though the art is great, at a certain point i just got sick of every major story arc being like âit turns out this character is actually at the center of a great and arcane prophecyâ over and over again. it just becomes predictable at a certain point.
By the way, did anyone actually watch the 2019 reboot? From clips I have seen online, it looks like it has both 10x as much ultraviolence and also a lot more post-MCU âWell THAT just happened!â energy
But, again, to double down on my mild Hellboy comics shade, I think part of the blame for turning Movie Hellboy into an irritating sarcastic catchphrase vessel is because the way he is characterized in the comics is actually⌠not good! Heâs a character who is apparently fun to draw, but mostly just exists for more interesting characters to talk to.
I only made it through half of the new one. About the one hour mark it got to Babies Like Iron (probably #2 scene in all of Hellboy (after is that a monkey? heâs got a gun! etc.)) and every decision is wrong, mistimed, poorly delivered, etc. I think Mignolaâs real gift on the page is pacing, and he knows how to deliver a joke. Neil Marshall has never met pacing, and seems to have only a faint idea that there are things called âjokesâ which might be located somewhere in this script? Hopefully theyâll happen if he just lets it all play?
The violence is jarring and strange (there can be Huge Swaths of Blood in the comics, but the effect is different on the page; itâs like Dr. Manhattanâs dong in the original comic vs. his prominent swinging blue glowstick in the film?) and so are all the fuck-words.
I love Hellboy! I love that he is Just Some Dude. Red guy, grows horns, son of a demon, Beast of the Apocalypse. Heâs the liminal center that mediates between the straight world and the weird, transitioning from investigator/observer to Monster Punchman and back. Refusing his doom through the mechanics of work and then plain stubbornness. Heâs your weird quiet uncle that seems totally implacable until the werewolf grows three sizes and he really turns his mouth on, because it hurts, and the only way he can cope is letting everyone know how much it hurts. I probably relate, too much.
I think comic Hellboy has as many jokes as movie(s) Hellboy, but comic Hellboyâs jokes are better, or at lease reflect a characterization that isnât âthis 60+ year old demon man is emotionally 13.â
I think Golden Army is my favorite of the Hellboy movies as well, though I have seen the new one 1.5 times. Itâs got Milla Jovovich! And sheâs a witch so sheâs Milla Jovowitch. Yes this post was written just to make that joke.
I didnât think David Harbour would be a good Hellboy but I guess you literally can just paint any guy bright red and have him play the part. I would watch another Hellboy with him.
Iâve only read Seed of Destruction, The Right Hand of Doom and some of the assorted stories. Mignola is a legend and I love the comic as framing of retelling old folklore. I donât really care about Hellboyâs origin or his destiny as much though and wish the movies wouldnât focus on it to the extent they do but I guess a mass audience would want to know just whatâs up with this character. Iâd be fine to just hear more old weird stories but now I realize if Hellboy didnât actually look distinctive and cool and stuff I wouldnât have read it and then found out I like old folklore.
Ideally a screen Hellboy would just wander through the BPRDâs case files going âwould you look at thatâ and âCRAP!â and sometimes punching a Koschei the Deathless, or an inexplicably frankensteined gorilla, or whatever.
itâs extremely cool that raimi managed to get a (relatively) huge budget for an evil dead sequel that was actually an excuse to do a harryhausen homage
I know this marks me as a certain kind of middleclass white nerd millennial man but Army of Darkness is basically the best movie probably? Like I canât think of a better movie anyway
Army of Darkness is an entertaining movie beloved by terrible people. I donât even know why, it doesnt deserve to have a rep for being loved by shitty nerds. Boondock Saints totally does tho
The way Ash, riding his impossibly reconstructed Oldsmobile mount around the castle grounds, yells âYeeeaaAAAHHH BABY!â is set into my skull in concrete
