Luigi Novi: It's easier to hie in the largest city in a state than in one of the largest in the world? How so?
Maybe it's just one of those facts "lost" to history.
Luigi Novi: Or "cut" from it.
Since this movie came out shortly before I went to Italy, and is now hard to find, I ended up going to a small $5 theater seven blocks from my house last night to catch the 7:40pm show, and had the entire auditorium to myself. Given that each issue of the first four-issue miniseries was $2.50 when it came out, the movie would ironically cost half as much. My verdict?
Eh.
It was nothing special. It was nice to see how they translated Mike Mignola’s vision to the screen, but there was no sense of urgency, or connection between the various scenes in the movie and the climax. In the Seed of Destruction miniseries, the first Hellboy story on which the plot of this movie is mostly based, there is a linear progression from one scene to the next. Professor Bruttenholm (pronounced “Broom”) calls Hellboy, who comes to his side, just before Bruttenholm is attacked and killed by a monster. We then see the monster was under the control of a Mrs. Cavendish, who was being held under the duress of Rasputin. After confirming Bruttenholm was dead, they summoned Hellboy, Abe and Sherman to Cavendish’s manor under the guise of enlisting his aid in finding her three lost sons. After retiring for the night, Liz is attacked and kidnapped by some thing, and Abe and HB go looking for her, which leads HB directly into the confrontation with Rasputin and the giant squid-like creature. This all happens by the end of the second issue. Compare this to the movie. The fights between Hellboy and the Hellhounds and other monsters just seemed to appear out of nowhere, did not appear to lead into the next scene and got repetitious and boring. The movie was held up at times with the addition of John Myers, a totally unnecessary addition the story, which was added simply to act as the audience’s POV, when no such device was necessary in the comic. Adding Myers slowed everything down, reduced HB’s screen time, delayed the introduction to Liz, as well as more expository material about her, and led to more useless scenes involving a soapy love triangle, grinding the film to a complete halt. When it was time with the final showdown with Rasputin, it didn’t seem to arise from what came before it, but rather just the acknowledgement that it was time to wrap up the movie. This scene came immediately in the comic, and it wasn’t even the end, but just the middle of it! There was little sense of urgency in this scene in the movie, and I didn’t even understand what Rasputin was doing with Liz. Was he taking her “soul,” or something? What for?
---This isn’t to say that there weren’t some areas where the movie improved on the comic. Putting the Allies and the Nazis in the same location during the ritual in the opening of the story made a lot more sense than how it was in the comic. Hellboy’s attire looks better, and that moisture collar Abe wears make sense. The greater sense of detail given to Abe’s looks is also nice. Kroenen is a near-absent cipher in the comic, but is given an important role in the movie. Ditto for Ilsa, though less so. The fact that the final confrontation in the movie takes place in the chamber in Russia where Rasputin discovered Sadu-Hem makes a bit more sense than having Rasputin journey to the U.S., with Sadu-Hem suddenly show up in the lake surrounding the Cavendish manor in the comic, which seemed a bit more far-fetched (even if the Cavendish manor was a slightly more original-looking locale). Most of all, Hellboy’s stone arm is actually explained in the movie, and is a necessary component in the climax, with his demonic origins actually playing into the villain’s plans. The effects look pretty good. The “hellhound” is a gruesome-looking improvement in terms of detail over the giant humanoid frog in the comic.
---But between clunky pacing, overabundance of exposition and expository characters, repetitive fight scenes, a climax that is far too telegraphed, and a plot structure that seemed to have little coherence, I found the movie to be very disappointing.
---Good thing I only had to pay $5 for it.
---NITS & NOTES:
Rosie O’Donnell was the squad commander, and she took away all their guns
During the Allied raid on Rasputin’s portal-opening ceremony in the beginning of the movie, the American soldiers invade the altar area, and Kronin, Hitler’s assassin, fires at them with his pistol until he runs out of bullets. He then pulls out his blades and kills them up close as they charge at him. But wait a minute—why are they charging him? He may have run out of ammunition, but they haven’t. Why don’t they just fire at him? Why do they charge him, just to get sliced with those twin swords on his wrists? Granted, he turns out later to be bulletproof and impervious to injury, but at this point in the sequence, this aspect of his nature has not yet been established.
Wow, someone who likes publicity more than Lance Ito and Anna Nicole Smith combined
Why in the world would Manning, a director at the FBI, appear on a Larry King-type talk show to talk about the existence of Hellboy? The FBI doesn’t do this.
He was just out getting his morning paper in that shot
Interestingly, in the blurred photograph of Hellboy that the Larry King-stand-in character shows Manning, Hellboy has bare feet, and shows his two big toes. What’s odd about this is that even though his is how he looks in the comics, in the movie, he wears thick combat boots.
They’re based in Newark because the Bureau considers carjacking to be a “paranormal” activity
Just out of curiosity, does Newark really have more paranormal activity than say, New York City? Given what a largely populated city New York is, wouldn’t putting the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in New York make more sense, especially if Hellboy ends up fighting a lot of his monsters there? Why Newark?
Personally, I thought the Directory with the map indicating “You are Here” and “Hellboy is Here” was a bit much
If the BPRD’s very existence is kept secret from the public, and its Headquarters in Newark is fronted as waste management facility, why does it have such an elegant-looking ground floor lobby, complete with a huge BPRD logo on its floor?
Nice to know all of Bruttenholm’s advanced degress are put to good use
When John Myers first meets Abe Sapien, Abe asks him to turn the pages of the book he’s reading. How does Abe normally do this? Is he only able to read when a steady stream of visitors happen by who can periodically turn pages for him? Sure, Professor Bruttenholm was there, but does he really turn each and every page for him? Isn’t he a busy man? Why don’t they just set up a mechanical device to turn pages for Abe?
Apparently, ALF was one of the people who worked on the script
I don’t remember the exact exchange when Myers first enters Hellboy’s lair at the BPRD, but when they mention that he “likes” kittens, I understood—mistakenly, I later understood—that he eats them, which I found awful. It also didn’t make sense that the movie would show them walking around looking all cute if they were food. When he rescued the box of kittens in the subway, I began to get further confused. Again, I don’t remember why I understood that he ate them (perhaps Clay was talking about what HB liked to eat, and then mentioned that he liked cats soon after?), but apparently I’m not the only one who made this mistake, as there are a few on the imdb boards who made it too, as seen at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/board/nest/7567359.
If the sequel follows the pattern of the Blade movies, does that mean Hellboy will get to slice Wesley in half with a sword?
In the movie, Rasputin has Kroenen kill the guide who took them to the lair in Moscow where the second ritual took place, a scene that does not take place in the comic, wherein he is alone by the time he finds the place. When the guide falls onto the circular area of the floor, his blood (more than he should have, I think), fills in the grooves carved into the circle. Did anyone else who saw this think it was ripped off from the end of Blade, when Wesley Snipes’ character was nailed to a similar upright device?
It’s New York. It’s nothing New Yorkers don’t see every day.
The first time Hellboy is seen chasing after the Sana-El “hellhound” in public the movie, it’s Halloween, which provides a cover for him. But during the second chase, he and the hellhound fall through to the 8th ST. subway platform filled with commuters. How will his identity be kept secret now?
Giving plot logic the shaft
Also, Hellboy and the hellhound struggle while falling through an immensely tall shaft, falling at least a couple of dozen stories until they crash through the ceiling of the 8th ST. subway platform. But wait a minute—Hellboy, Clay, Myers and the other BPRD guys were already searching for the hellhound in an underground tunnel. No indication was given that they had ascended up a structure, certainly not a couple of dozen stories. So how can they now fall that far down, and only be at the 8th ST. subway platform? Just how far down under the surface do the creators think that subway platform is?
You’d think in a Hellboy movie, it would’ve been 666th ST.
During the first portion of this subway platform fight, the signs around the platform say “Palmer St.” To my knowledge, there is no such street in Manhattan with such a name, particularly where a subway stop is located, according to my subway map. In addition, in subsequent shots, the signs say “8th ST.”
A nit that’s a real turn-on for Dr. Kevorkian
I was quite familiar with the story of Grigory Rasputin’s death, in which he was poisoned, stabbed (I think), shot and drowned. Interestingly, the movie also states that he was bludgeoned and castrated as well. While I myself forgot about the bludgeoning, an aspect that most accounts mention, stories of his castration are mostly discounted as apocryphal today, and it is difficult to even find an account of his murder that mentions this aspect. The most comprehensive and detailed account of his murder I could find online is at http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa020801c.htm, which mentions all but the stabbing and castration. Another page at the same site mentions his autopsy’s findings at http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa020801c.htm, and states that alcohol was found in his system but not poison (it is believed that Rasputin survived the poison because his extreme drinking habits reduced the acidity of gastric juices, rendering the cyanide is non-volatile, but whether this would cause it to not show up in an autopsy, I don’t know), as well as three bullet wounds, and a small amount of water in his lungs. No mention is made in this passage of any stabbing or castration, but then again, it doesn’t mention any evidence of being bludgeoned either, even though the prior page describes in detail how he was beaten with a dumbbell, so I wonder if the passage on the autopsy’s findings was worded in a way to mention only the things the author found significant, and not that its omission is to be construed to mean that the autopsy didn’t find evidence of bludgeoning. (Perhaps Rasputin’s head and face were so mutilated so as to make mention of “evidence” of it pointless.) The comic, incidentally, made no mention of castration or stabbing, but also omitted the clubbing as well, mentioning only the poison, shooting, and drowning.
Myers: “Did the Earth move for you too, Liz?”
When following Myers and Liz on their date, Hellboy leaps across the rooftops. Wouldn’t doing this make a HUGE sound to its inhabitants, as well as to Myers and Liz?
He stepped onto the Audience Credulity Platform. It goes higher and higher as the movie progresses.
Also, we see HB leap onto one rooftop, and as Myers and Liz walk further up the street, he leaps to a second, missing it, missing the ledge by quite a bit. From our POV when this happens, we see the ledge, and then we see his hands climbing over the edge of it. But a subsequent pull back shot from the other side of the building showing him hanging on shows nothing underneath him that he could’ve used to climb up to the ledge.
It dumps it into the screenwriter’s office, from the looks of this movie
When examining the apparent corpse of Kroenen, Professor Bruttenholm says his blood turned to dust long ago. So how does he remain alive? How are the organic components of his body oxygenated? How are nutrients delivered to them? How are his body temperature, pH status, fluid volume and salt concentration regulated? How does his body remove waste material?
Russia’s the last country from which he has to get photographs for his “Crazy Monsters from Various Countries” photo album
Why is a top-level director like Manning going on the mission to Russia with Hellboy, Myers and Liz? (So that he and Hellboy can resolve their animosity by bonding over a cigar.)
A pendulum? Great, all I need is another reminder of how slow time is passing while watching this movie
During the final sequence in Russia, HB and Manning are crossing an exterior catwalk bridge between two parts of a building, and after the door behind them closes, HB sees the one ahead of them begin to close, so he grabs Manning, and throws him toward the door, and Manning lands on his back (not hurting himself in any way, oddly enough), sliding all the way through the door into the small cylindrical chamber behind it, the door a mere foot or two from the ground by the time he does so. HB then spends the next few moments dodging a huge swinging pendulum bludgeon, that gradually destroys the bridge section by section as it swings back and forth like a pendulum. But by the time he himself gets to the door, it still is far enough above the threshold of the doorway before closing for HB to get through!
---DIFFERENCES FROM THE COMIC:
The Torch of Liberty, the Captain America-type character from which Hellboy receives the huge gun he uses as an adult, is absent from the opening sequence of the film, which makes sense, not only because that character is owned by Mignola’s colleague John Byrne, but also because it would be harder to accept the world of Hellboy if the viewer also had to accept that there are spandex-clad superheroes populating it too. In addition, Professor Malcolm Frost and medium Lady Cynthia Eden-Jones are also not present during this sequence.
In the comic, the allies are gathered in one location with Frost, Bruttenholm and Jones, as well as the Torch of Liberty, using Jones’ psychic ability to determine where Raputin and the Nazis are holding their ceremony in another location, and after Rasputin manages to open a portal into the other realm for only an explosive instant, the Hellboy child appears in the Allies’s location. In the movie, the allies go to the Nazi ceremony, and the portal, which is held open for quite some time, is only closed because of the effects of the firefight that ensues, which IMO, makes far more story sense.
In the comic, the ritual took place on Dec. 23, 1944. In the movie, it took place in October (on the 12th, IIRC).
In the comic, the gas-mask-wearing Nazi officer present at the portal ceremony, Karl Ruprect Kroenen, is not given anything to do aside from being an “extra,” and never appears again in the story after this scene, except for a photo of him seen in a document, and brief ominous shot of him, Ilsa and Klaus Werner Von Krupt (the other Nazi officer) appearing at the very end of the story. No reason is even given as to why he wears that mask. In the movie, he is given a detailed background as Hitler’s top assassin who became addicted to surgical enhancements, and functions as a formidable villain throughout the movie, killing people with his expertly-wielded twin wrist-mounted swords. In the comic, he is referred to in a document as “Professor.” In the movie, he is not. Ilsa is also mostly absent from the comic.
The manner in which the creators duplicated the mechanical glove that Rasputin wore during his attempt to open a portal was very impressive, but in the comic, he had one on each hand. He wears only one on his right in the movie.
No indication is given in the comic that the BPRD is a department in the FBI.
The movie is based largely on the first Hellboy miniseries, Seed of Destruction, but also borrows from other stories, incorporating elements of them into its story. In the comic, Professor Bruttenholm died early in the first story, right after the first attack by what in the movie is the Sana-El “hellhound,” who killed him, and which in the comic was simply a large bipedal frog-like creature. Another story, a single-issue one-shot called The Coffin, featured Hellboy having to find a resting place for a corpse, lest a kidnapped little girl never be returned to her parents, and ended up carrying the corpse on his back, having to take him to three different churches before finding one where he could be buried, occasionally getting directions from the corpse, who sometimes spoke. In the movie, it is indicated that Hellboy can sometimes find a “talker” when looking through a cemetery of dead corpses by using a special necklace he carries with him.
Manning holds the title of “Doctor” in the comic.
In the comic, aside from his duster, Hellboy wears just biker pants and a weapons belt, and often throws away the duster as well during fights. In the movie, he wears a black shirt, long black leather pants, and as aforementioned, black combat boots. This is because comic book artists like drawing anatomy, especially that of well-muscled men, but I think the movie look retains more of the character’s dignity.
There is no indication in the comic that the circular objects left on victims by the hellhound’s tongue are eggs. The victims, merely die from exposure to it, Professor Bruttenholm being the first.
In the comic, Liz Sherman was not in an institution, but a competent member of the BPRD who would take the point when investigating cases with HB and Abe. Her flames were a normal yellow color, and not blue. Abe was able to freely walk around above ground without contact with water. In the movie, he needs a specialized hydro-gear collar to keep his gills in contact with water, which I thought was a nice touch. There is also no indication in the comic that he has an identic encyclopedic memory, or that he is a psychometrist, as he is in the movie.
As aforementioned, in Seed of Destruction, Hellboy, Abe and Liz, following Bruttenholm’s death, were summoned to a mansion called Cavendish Manor, which is situated on the promontory of a vast lake, and it is underneath this Manor and lake where their final confrontation with Rasputin and Sadu-Hem take place, following their investigation of the alleged disappearance of the three sons of the Manor’s owner, Mrs. Cavendish. After Liz is kidnapped, it is learned that her sons were turned into giant humanoid frog-like creatures that Rasputin controls, and that Cavendish was being held under his duress in order to lure Hellboy to the Manor to use in the ritual. He later revealed in flashback how he discovered Sadu-Hem in Russia, communicated with the dormant creature while in a trance, and that it journeyed underwater from Russia to the lake under the Manor. In the movie, Hellboy, Liz, Myers, and Manning journey to Sadu-Hem’s lair in Russia, where the confrontation takes place. There is no Cavendish Manor in the movie, or its female owner, and for some reason, Abe Sapien is left out of this sequence.
This has very little to do with the movie, but I recently saw a photo of a theater that was showing Hellboy and The Passion Of The Christ right next to each other. It made me laugh.
That's it, nothing more to see here. Go on about your nitpicking.
Ok, so Hellboy is immune to fire. So why are his clothes? For that matter, why are Liz's clothes? Both of them are fully engulfed in flames several times during the movie, but their clothes remain just fine.
Oh, and as to how Kroenen survived: It's magic!
It was nice to see how they translated Mike Mignola’s vision to the screen, but there was no sense of urgency, or connection between the various scenes in the movie and the climax. - Luigi
I must admit that I am wondering why a lot of your critisisms of this movie are based on the notion of "The comic was better". I have never read the comic book so I like to think that I can judge the movie without the blinkers of the comic book on my eyes. That being said, as a piece of cinema it was only slightly above average.
Interesting that you made no reference to actors or directors in your critique either.
Ron Perlman- excellent
Selma Blair- excellent
John Hurt- excellent
Rupert Evans- About as good as the role (i.e. bearable)
Doug Jones (voiced by David Hyde Pierce)- excellent
Biddy Hodson- hubba hubba (translation- excellent)
Guillermo Del Toro's direction is patchy, and I would agree that a lot of the pacing of the film was garbled and incoherent. However, the visual world he created was atmospheric and appropriate.
I have to wonder if the abrupt nature of the film indicates that a lot more was shot but cut out for time, if that is the case then possibly a directors/special edition dvd might be on the cards.
My final verdict would be ignore the comic book and enjoy it for the brain candy it is.
Rodney Hrvatin: I must admit that I am wondering why a lot of your critisisms of this movie are based on the notion of "The comic was better".
Luigi Novi: They're not. They're based on my watching the movie, and my feelings about the lack of connection among the various scenes would've been the same if I had never read the book, or if the movie was original material. I merely mentioned the manner in which the comic did certain things as a form of comparison.
quote:Luigi Novi: There was little sense of urgency in this scene in the movie, and I didn’t even understand what Rasputin was doing with Liz. Was he taking her “soul,” or something? What for?
quote:Luigi Novi: Just out of curiosity, does Newark really have more paranormal activity than say, New York City? Given what a largely populated city New York is, wouldn’t putting the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense in New York make more sense, especially if Hellboy ends up fighting a lot of his monsters there? Why Newark?
quote:Luigi Novi: I was quite familiar with the story of Grigory Rasputin’s death, in which he was poisoned, stabbed (I think), shot and drowned. Interestingly, the movie also states that he was bludgeoned and castrated as well. While I myself forgot about the bludgeoning, an aspect that most accounts mention, stories of his castration are mostly discounted as apocryphal today, and it is difficult to even find an account of his murder that mentions this aspect.
quote:Luigi Novi: When examining the apparent corpse of Kroenen, Professor Bruttenholm says his blood turned to dust long ago. So how does he remain alive? How are the organic components of his body oxygenated? How are nutrients delivered to them? How are his body temperature, pH status, fluid volume and salt concentration regulated? How does his body remove waste material?
Spornan: Oh, and as to how Kroenen survived: It's magic!
I just thought that it was there because it's easier to hide in New Jersey's largest city than in one of the largest in the world. That's debatable, of course.
Luigi Novi: It's easier to hie in the largest city in a state than in one of the largest in the world? How so?
Maybe it's just one of those facts "lost" to history.
Luigi Novi: Or "cut" from it.
Because I think putting it in Newark makes it a bit more "out of the way". I don't think Newark is high on the list of places one would expect to find a secret government agency. And they had to put it somewhere.
Okay. But then what does being "out of the way" have to do with being New Jersey's largest city? If you had substituted "out of the way" for "New Jersey's largest city", that would've made more sense to me. But thanks for the clarification.