Anyone want to talk Hellboy?

Trailer is here

There is a trailer of the upcoming Hellboy movie here, and it looks good. All the characters are just soooo weird, and I love it. Where else can you see a huge red demon with a stone arm who shaves his horns, and hangs around with a fish man? I’m really looking forward to this, and hoping that it won’t be an LXG type fiasco.

I don’t really know anything about Hellboy other than what I’ve read on the movie website. I’ve never even seen a Hellboy comic. Any Hellboy (the comic) fans seen this yet? Does it compare with the comic? Are there any books I should try and get hold of before seeing the film?

Never heard of Hellboy, comic or movie. But I saw that trailer not two days ago, and damn if that didn’t look cool. It’s got Ron Perlman in a starring role! It features the voice of David Hyde Pierce! If it ever comes out in Europe, I am so going to see it.

I just took a look at the official comic site, and that guy is Ron Perlman. Great casting job, even if it was kind of a no-brainer.

I Love the Hellboy comics- very stylized art, and I like the subtext of free will- Hellboy may have been intended to be the beast of the apocylipse, but that dosn’t mean he has to be. I mean, why destroy the earth? He keeps all of his stuff there!
Seriously good stuff. That and the Goon by Eric Powell. Check 'em out.

Hellboy is… quirky.

I’ve been reading Hellboy for years; I like the fact that Mike Mignola is dedicated enough to quality that he only does a Hellboy series when he feels he actually has a story to tell, as opposed to doing a monthly series, whether he feels like it or not.

I would recommend reading “Hellboy: Seed Of Destruction” for anyone interested in the character. It includes the origin of the character, and provides a sort of general guide to the story and feel of the series, although it leaves out much of the humor that would later come to be a part of the whole thing. I have it on reasonably good authority that the movie is kinda/sorta based on “Seed Of Destruction;” it seems likely, considering that the Dr. Kroenen and Rasputin characters are seen in the trailer, as well as Professor Bruttenholm (or a guy who seems a lot like him).

(Dr. Kroenen: Nazi officer in a sort of gas-mask containment suit thingy. Looks like a Nazi version of Darth Vader. In the book, was actually very pleasant and polite, even to people he was dissecting alive…
Rasputin: former Russian mystic, now a fairly powerful sorcerer, devoted to bringing about the Apocalypse for obscure reasons of his own. Used the Nazis’ resources to his own ends.
Professor Bruttenholm: elderly European professor-lookin’ guy, one of the founders of the BPRD, and Hellboy’s surrogate father.)

I do kinda worry a little. Mignola manages to make Hellboy work by delicately balancing suspense, action, horror and humor in such a way that makes it look easy… and I have no idea how this is going to translate into a movie. On the other hand, the director has done fairly well in the past… but we’ll see. The moment in the trailer where Hellboy remarks “How big could it be?” right before a huge tentacle grabs him and drags him away is damn near a classic example of the sort of humorous moment you find in a Hellboy book…

I love the comic, just checked out the movie. SELMA BLAIR IS IN IT? Guess I won’t have to do too much cajoling to get my girlfriend to see this. I thought Vin Diesel was supposed to play Hellboy. Either they fixed his nose and gave him a chin, or that’s not him.

Just watched the trailer… some of the CGI looks pretty bad, but it looks like some of the most fun you can have in a CGI movie.

Well, they still have a couple of months to work on it.

I heard a rumour that originally the character of Hellboy was going to be 100% CGI. Someone took the director aside and explaine how audiences can’t empathize with CGI creations like they can with real people, particularly with Hellboys relationship with Liz.

He was convinced and cast Perlman.

The funny thing about Hellboy comics is that I keep buying multiple copies of some of them and not buying others by accident. I’ll see one on the shelf and I’ll think, “Do I have that one? The cover’s got Hellboy standing in mist looking out toward us in kind of a three-quarter view, he’s a little hunched over, he’s holding that cool old gun, and there’s Nazi symbols, skulls, and broken masonry in the background. Hmm, better look inside. Ah, there’s that scene where Hellboy falls through a floor. I do have this one.” But, since that describes every single one of these (don’t get me wrong, very well done) comics, it turns out that I DON’T have that one after all. So I’ve got about three copies of Seed of Destruction and no copies of Box of Evil, or whatever it’s called.

Zander

The trailer looks a bit stupid, but then trailers often do when they’re fueling the hype for a new summer blockbuster.

I’m not too worried. This is not going to be another The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which, for those who are not familiar with the Alan Moore comic, was an adaption in name only. In the comic, Alan Quartermaine is a haggard, hollow-cheeked opium addict who at the beginning of the story is drawn out from his zoned-out near-death existence in a seedy London opium joint to join the League; in the film he’s a heroically pistol-touting Sean Connery – enough said. Oh, and those car chases through the streets (what?) of Venice. That’s what you get when you let Hollywood work over a classic.

Guillermo del Toro, on the other hand, is a bona fide comic-book fan. He is also an artist who has made films (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone) of considerable artistic value and beauty. This film is a labour of love.

My only worry is that that the studio, which presumably has control over the final cut, will dumb it down and make it too blockbusterish. The comic is so visually elegant, dark and brooding, full of silences. In short, I’m hoping the film will capture the essence of the comic. We already know that Ron Perlman rules.

Nah. Guillermo has wanted to do Hellboy for years. It’s well known that he wanted Ron Perlman, with whom he has worked with twice, almost right from the start, and that he fought the studio to convince them to cast Perlman, who has never had a leading role, and who is not exactly your typical Hollywood action hero material. The studio

That ended a bit abruptly. The end of that sentence is: “…wanted someone like Vin Diesel.”

I’ve been a huge Guillermo del Toro fan since Cronos, so I’m really looking forward to this. I just really hope the studio doesn’t screw with del Toro’s cut and try to make it “Spider-Manish”.

I think the makeup looks fantastic. I know nothing about the Hellboy comics, but what I’ve read on the movie website looks really weird in a cool way.

Hey! I resemble that remark.

I know a few people working on the Hellboy CGI, and they do have some time left. CGI in trailers is traditionally preliminary, as film-quality shots can take months upon months to finalize and complete.

I’ve read a few Hellboy comics and I hope to god this one isn’t a flop. So far it looks great, I was really excited when they got Ron Perlman to play Hellboy, and the director is apparently pretty good too. The trailer kind of gave me LXG flashbacks, but it was just a trailer. I know Mike Mignola is extremely involved with this project, and he’s very protective of his creations so I expect it to be a solid movie at the least, with the potential to be great.

I’ve been a Hellboy fan since the first story in DHP (and then the mini-series stuff in the back of Apeman and O’brien) and a Mignola fan for a lot longer, so I’m rather hyped and rather worried about this film. I REALLY hope it works, but I’m nervous that it won’t. I know there’s been minor character tweaking, that -shouldn’t- alter the storytelling or personalities, but I fear it might!

I can’t get over the feeling this should have been animated. Mignola was a development artist on Disney’s Atlantis the Lost Empire, and despite what you might say about the film’s story or overall quality, visually it was amazing! If only because it gave us fanboys a glimpse of what might be, oneday, an animated Hellboy in Mike’s inimitable style.

And Zander, I too have that problem (accidentally re-buying Hellboy TPBs I already have and forgetting to buy what I don’t have! I now carry a list of what I already own. The cover’s are all a bit same-ish).

Oh, and it’s be nice to finally have a full line of Hellboy action figures! (DarkHorse released that one figure a few years back which is great, but where’s the Abe and Liz figures to compliment the collection?).

Oh, and for those further intrigued by the visual style of the Hellboy comics, DarkHorse published a hardcover Art Of Hellboy recently that covers a LOT of art and design work from Mike Mignola’s preliminary material.

And props to Kevin Nowlan for designing the Hellboy logo (and to the film company for retaining it, kind’ve, on the film poster).

gone…

I’ll own up to being a biiiig Hellboy fan. All the TPBs (some autographed), one of the novels, several of the kickass action figures (one still in the box), a BPRD t-shirt, Mignola’s “Comic-Con Sketchbook” from a few years back, Hellboy pin on my hipster Dickies jacket… And thus, the potential of being the laughingstock of my friends if the movie blows. “This is what you’re totally into?!?” I barely avoided that with the whole LXG fiasco.

I’ve been paying a fair amount of attention to the whole affair, and my biggest fear has to be the way in which the filmmakers will handle the humor. IMHO, Mignola barely pulls it off in the comic, and one of my biggest thrills in reading his stuff is admiring his mastery of writing; Hellboy comes this close to being a tedious Swarzenegger-esque smartass, but somehow always comes off as incredibly funny. The art rules, too, but we should all know by now that making a good-looking movie isn’t really that challenging.

The writing and story are what its all gonna come down to, and if they stick with Seed of Destruction, I think they’ll be juuuuust fine. Now, what I’d really like to see would be some shorts based on other Hellboy stories; you know, before “Return of the King,” you get a five minute short of that Japanese vampire story…

OK, I was downloading the trailer while I was working on the above, and I’m cautiously optimistic (in the words of Bart Simpson). I’m going to naively assume that they’ve “Hollywooded-up” the trailer and the movie will be less so, but it looks like they’ve really nailed the look of the characters at least. Liz, Abe, and the big guy himself are all pretty decent. I’m not seein’ Roger the Homunculous, though… Maybe next time out.

I heard Mignola was a development artist for Atlantis, but I thought he only designed a few backgrounds, and castles, but I might be confusing this with his work on Dracula.

And abour the Art of Hellboy, that is an EXCELLENT book, seriously, Mignola is a great artist. I didn’t buy it because the hardcover is like $100, but they’re publishing a softcover for about 20 dollars and then I get it.

Another cautiously optimistic Hellboy fanatic here. I’m concerned about two things from the trailer:

There’s a lot of exposition. I realize that this is necessary for a movie trailer, but then they had to get that footage from somewhere, right? Part of the beauty of Hellboy is that they don’t ever really explain anything; bizarre stuff happens and they don’t try to explain it, they just fix it (usually by beating it up). The comic is all about mood – a pervading sense of unease and dread that’s suddenly cleared away when Hellboy comes in and says, basically, “stop taking yourself so seriously.”

And there’s the “normal guy” agent. (“Agent Rivers” according to the website). I’m assuming the logic is that the audience needs somebody to identify with as we’re introduced to the B.P.R.D. Again, more exposition.

So I’m definitely not won over at all by the trailer, but I’m not too distressed yet. At least they didn’t have Hellboy riding around in a bad-ass car. And Selma Blair is an inspired casting choice for Liz Sherman. By all accounts, Mignola is closely involved in the production, and del Toro is a huge fan of the comic and is going to treat it the best he can. I’m just not 100% confident that “the best he can” is any good, since I haven’t liked any of his other movies.

Usually with adaptations I say that it’s no big deal, since it’s just one interpretation and can’t “ruin” the original source; the source material is still out there and available. But then I remember The Avengers and how much I was looking forward to seeing what modern-day effects and fight choreography could do for that can’t-fail concept. And then I remember that because the movie was so unrelentingly horrible, there will never be another attempt to do the franchise justice with modern-day effects and fight choreography.

dangergene’s suggestion of an animated series is dead-on. We can only hope that the movie gets good word of mouth, the comic gets more popular, the studios see that “geek” properties have potential (with stuff like LOTR), and goes in with Dark Horse to produce an animated series on cable. And then, they’ll want to do a real videogame from the property, and I’ll get put in charge of it! (As long as I’m dreaming, why not go all the way?)

Amazon has it for $35. (Which is about $70 Canadian, right?) I think it’s worth it for the character sketches alone.

I’ve done the same thing, except with single issues and not the TPB’s. I think there are several issues that I have two or three copies of. I’m assuming you meant The Chained Coffin and Others, because I always call it Box Full of Evil as well. (That’s my favorite Hellboy story, by far).

What I meant to say earlier is that I can’t detach myself from being such a fanboy for this movie, because I love the comics so much. I don’t think it’s just the greatest comic book series ever created, I think it’s one of the greatest things ever created. And I’m not exaggerating that much. The art is so good that Mignola is underrated as a writer, but I think the writing is as good if not better than the art. It’s heavy on the research and the mood, light on the actual dialogue, so that you really feel the sense of weirdness and dread as the story’s going on. The only comic I like better than Hellboy is Mignola’s one-shot (so far) The Amazing Screw-on Head, which is one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen.

“Is that… a monkey?”
“HE’S GOT A GUN!!!”