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It’s hard to even pin down how it would be as an adaptation because as a film it’s so poorly made. The pacing is awful, the characters are rarely if ever given anything to do other than exposit, and the CG ranges from “oh...” to “I guess they couldn’t afford union work.”
That said, all the character changes make little to no sense. Bruttenholm becomes a callous, rude manipulator. Hellboy is essentially a manchild. Alice is Johann now, maybe? Or something? The Baba Yaga was okay until she started flailing around with kukri (?) knives. And poor, poor Daimio, being turned from a tragic monster suffering from his affliction into a third-act fist-pump action heavy.
Ouch.
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[QUOTE=ckmoak;4450951]It’s hard to even pin down how it would be as an adaptation because as a film it’s so poorly made. The pacing is awful, the characters are rarely if ever given anything to do other than exposit, and the CG ranges from “oh...” to “I guess they couldn’t afford union work.”
That said, all the character changes make little to no sense. Bruttenholm becomes a callous, rude manipulator. Hellboy is essentially a manchild. Alice is Johann now, maybe? Or something? The Baba Yaga was okay until she started flailing around with kukri (?) knives. And poor, poor Daimio, being turned from a tragic monster suffering from his affliction into a third-act fist-pump action heavy.
Ouch.[/QUOTE]
I think the film was obsessed with being "badass". Personally, this is poison for good writing and it puts up a wall between the viewers and the characters, making the whole thing a hollow spectacle. As you say, Daimio is stripped back so that he's almost completely constructed around his third-act fist-pump moment.
It's like there was someone in all story meetings that asked [I]"Is it badass?"[/I] and this was the barrier of entry for scenes and characters to make it into the film.
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I agree. I also wonder whether there was a script/loose cut that was muuuuuch longer that the studio balked on and chopped into what we got.
It really is a shame the rumor of a Netflix shared universe mode turned out to just be rumors. Somebody, someday, will do these stories justice.
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There are just so many massive issues with pacing in this film. You can completely disregard any source material changes, that's not the issue with this film. It's just top to bottom poorly constructed on an editorial level, none of the big beats of the film land like they're supposed. Too much of the film is just raw exposition - particularly Bruttenholm and Hellboy's relationship. You never really feel a deep bond between them and yet that's supposed to be the big emotional payoff of the film. Too much of their relationship is told and not shown - and that can be applied to the rest of the film as well.
So many beats in this film feel like a list of themes and plot points rather than actually conveying them through acting and film form. I'm not faulting any particular actor since I've seen basically all of them in very capable roles before, but rather I think the actors were poorly utilized by the director, writers and producers. Meanwhile on the visual end there's some nice lighting and set design here and there but I never felt it all came together to amplify the story or emotions of a scene.
It's highly tempting to draw direct parallels to what Del Toro's films did right compared to this film but I don't want this post to come across as "Old Hellboy films good, New Hellboy bad". It really has nothing to do with that, simply put Del Toro is a very effective storyteller and doesn't get bullied by producers - whether his films succeed or fail, his films never feel made by committee. They certainly didn't need make Hellboy 3 to make another good Hellboy film, but I wish someone with the same level of creative freedom as Del Toro had made this film.
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Finally saw the film and while I can forgive the changes in characterization and could almost overlook the pacing what really killed it for me were the poor creature effects...I mean that's the big draw to Hellboy when you get right down to it, and the monsters just weren't convincing in the least. Even Hellboy didn't look that great, the facial features looked very rubbery and in several scenes where he actually punches someone with the Right Hand of Doom...it very obviously squishes which stone just shouldn't.
There were some fun moments though that showed you what could have been but they few and far between.
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Oh I forgot to point out the WORST sequence in the entire film - when Hellboy and crew walk outside after having met Merlin and receive a freaking text message about Nimue attacking the London base. I mean jesus christ, forget the fact that a conventional text message would never be used to deliver major information in a Mignola story, just on a basic storytelling level that is such a comically muted way to go about that.
Then the whole travel to and from Merlin basically consists of teleportation via editing, I mean it's seriously embarrassing the way that whole part of the film is put together.
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Forgiving that the Del Toro films looked better...
Forgiving that it’s tonally so different to the comics...
Forgiving that the R rating is both unnecessary to the plot and to the source material...
It was bad. Poorly written, poorly paced, badly edited drivel. Shallow villain work, crappy finale, unearned bulltuchy.
And what was with Gruagach? He wanted to return to his original form, which in this film was a tiny pigman, which he was. We never saw him as a giant pigman, or had the indication that Hellboy had anything to do with his loss of power.
I hated it.
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The best part of the film was Harbour getting surprised it had some fans.
[video=youtube_share;VjmAnezJGN0]https://youtu.be/VjmAnezJGN0[/video]
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[QUOTE=zerodemon;4640507]
And what was with Gruagach? He wanted to return to his original form, which in this film was a tiny pigman, which he was. We never saw him as a giant pigman, or had the indication that Hellboy had anything to do with his loss of power.[/QUOTE]
My understanding was that he wanted to be a pampered baby, then live a nice life as a human but HB screwed it up by blowing his cover - that's why he was mad.
I only just saw the latest movie recently, and I didn't think it was so bad. My problem was that it didn't really give us anything new or take the franchise anywhere. The new bad guy and new supporting characters were fine, but not impressive. If "Hellboy" were a monster of the week tv show, I'd just say it was decent. But as a feature film, totally underwhelming.
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Just saw it for free on Youtube. Egads what a mess. Hellboy looks like Eric Stoltz in Mask. He appears to be sort of pink instead of red, the story is a mess with too much crap jammed into it. effects do look pretty cheap, the beheaded shots of Nimue especially look bad. For a movie that supposedly had Mignola as a consultant it really failed the source material.
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The problem with the movie is that it did not have a director. Credited director Neil Marshall frequently disappeared from the set.
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[QUOTE=Serpico Jones;5229741]The problem with the movie is that it did not have a director. Credited director Neil Marshall frequently disappeared from the set.[/QUOTE]
I hadn't heard that before but it certainly makes sense.
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[QUOTE=thwhtGuardian;5231391]I hadn't heard that before but it certainly makes sense.[/QUOTE]
Makes more sense why he did now:
[video=youtube;E5XQH6yTlvY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5XQH6yTlvY&t=79s&ab_channel=CriticalDrinkerAfterHours[/video]
And it also explains why the film was so bad.
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Neil Marshall has had a weird couple years, his significant other was allegedly involved in blackmailing studio heads
[url]https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/charlotte-kirk-fiance-all-i-could-do-was-try-and-get-through-it-4069717/[/url]
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Some background on the 2019 film's behind the scene issues.