'Cept it wasn’t being performed by Nick, which was a disappointment.
I was disappointed they didn’t have The Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” which, as I’m sure you all know, has the chorus:
I don’t have a cite (I think the story was on newsarama.com), but I did hear a rumour about two months back that Del Toro and Mignola were in discussions with a Japanese animation house (I want to say Studio4ºC, but I don’t think that’s right) to do an animated Hellboy series.
The coolest part was the bit about all the original talent supplying the voices (which I do find hard to believe given the little I know of Hollywood, et al). The implication being that Perlman IS Hellboy, and as long as there is a representation of him in film then Perlman would be supplying the requisite talent.
Like I say, twas probably only a rumour, and nothing may come of it. But it would be very cool! But that said, one of the things that has made the comic so cool is the random nature of it. There is no monthly title, just stories as and when Mike has something to say. Would a weekly/daily/whatever animated series dilute the concept? Would it still rock?
and most importantly, would it look like Mignola art?!?!?!?!
In the movie version he essentially sold his soul to the Inferno, gaining immortal life, more or less. He may not have been brought back by Rasputin, but rather just the Infernal bureaucracy putting him on the first handbasket out of Hell. Note that his fighting style with the sword things is actually a special combat style of the Inferno.
Just piping up as a person who saw and quite enjoyed Hellboy. Both as a film and as a comic. A note. Anyone who takes either too seriously should really work out some issues with a professional. Hellboy is a confection, aimed to be pleasing and to, maybe, give you a smile. It isn’t rife with deeper meanings but draws on a deep well of mythology and folklore to evoke that feeling of depth. It is blatantly Lovecraftian in that Mignola is unapologetic about how much he likes old HP but with it’s own spin.
I find it somewhat weird that people had any problems with the monster baddies being too ‘alien’ as opposed to being ‘demonic’. Mignola’s Hellboy world is a big mishmash of Lovecraftian extra-dimensional space monsters and a Hellish otherworlds related to our more commonly accepted bad places and a pulpy Indiana Jones ‘Nazis who toy with Mysticism’ kind of place. The Sammaels seemed appropriately demonic to me, the ‘God’ at the end was all kinds of Lovecraftian ‘Cthonian’ (tsk tsk to those people painting them as ‘Cthulhu’). And Rasputin and the Nazis were pretty much what you’d expect from that lot.
Questions of Motivation: Here’s the deal. Rasputin is insane. Looking for rational motivation out of someone who is looking forward to the horrific end of the world is a waste of time. They mention the fact that some minds are more lkely to be attuned to the ‘Great Old Ones’ (lets face it…that’s what these guys are) and those people end up being pawns of said bad guys. Meanwhile Hellboy’s desire to ‘fit in’ (as sledgehammered by the horn filing business) is really a common theme in the comic world and lets remember that a significant portion of our audience are comic reading geeks or were comic reading geeks and can really relate to that typically teenage angst. If we don’t wanna see that theme might I recommend…um…well geez if it doesn’t come up in all sorts of movies I can think of that aren’t even remotely related to comics…ah theres one…Adaptation. I thought HB’s scene up on the rooftop with the young lad was perfect, a great look into how even this big, bad ass just wants someone he can connect with.
In the case of screwy alternate world movies I always enjoy them the most when I sit back and try to figure out how it all hangs together. Does the world seems consistent within itself. Does what the charcters are doing seem to make sense within the context of their world. Hellboy gets high marks for that. I concur with a previous poster who found Hellboy’s isolation one of the more irritating things. In the comics HB is just part of the world. He’s frequently seen meeting ‘just folks’ who aren’t all freaked out by his existence and it also makes the reader accept that ‘weird’ is really par for the course.
This movie was made with obvious love of the material and care for quality getting up onto the screen and deserves success. I think I’ll book one more trip to the theater in the hopes that a 2nd Hellboy movie gets to tell another quirky Mignolan story with overtones of Lovecraftian goodness.
Great film.
Pacing completely screwed towards the end; after the rather anticlimactic “battle of wills” with Rasputin, the huge tentacle monster is supposed to be some kind of climax, but barely registers. On the other hand, it also highlights Hellboy’s wry, annoyed, super-casual attitude towards monsters; the tentacle scene might have been intentionally designed that way.
Someone mentioned the BPRD chief being annoying. I thought exactly the opposite – while clearly grumpy kind of guy, he wasn’t your typically moronic beaurocrat, and his “realistic” acting style, plus the fact that he had a point when he accused Hellboy of recklessness, helped paint him as something other than an annoying cypher.
Rasputin was a forgettable character. Of course, he’s rather pathetic in the comic, as well, but at least you get the impression that he’s a mean, mysterious and powerful guy who is not easily killed. In the film he comes a cross as a little, I don’t know, human.
Biggest gripe: No frogs. Best line in Seed of Destruction: “Sir…? Sir… you’ve got frogs…”
I’ve seen it twice. I liked it a lot more the second time. Of course, I was fighting off a migraine during the first viewing. But I did get the sense that it would be a movie that I’d like more and more with repeated viewings after seeing it the first time. Without actually working on a list, I’d say Hellboy belongs in the top 10 of comic book based films.
I do have one question for those who’ve read the comics (which I do intend to pick up sometime in the near future). Is Ilsa supposed to be based on or inspired by the infamous, real-life Nazi? (The same one who inspired the exploitative Isla films.)
There’s a lot of interviews and articles about the movie at CHUD.com. I believe one of those mentions Prof. Doktor Herman von Klempt possibly appearing in a sequel, but as a floating head, rather than a head in a jar. But I believe that idea is just based on casual discussion between del Toro and Mignola.
And I too would have enjoyed seeing Liz Sherman’s clothes burn off during the Sammael climax. Not for the sake of nudity (which I wouldn’t expect to see in the movie), but for the sake of common sense. That said, how is Liz’s fire, and its effects on her surroundings (including her clothes) represented in the comics?
Anyhoo, there should be a lot of extra stuff on the DVD…