HELLBOY:
THIS REBOOT CAN GO TO HELL!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: * out of 4
David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, and Ian McShane in Hellboy (2019)
The half-man, half-devil hero returns to the big-screen in this new reboot of Hellboy based on the comic book series of the same name created by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics. Hellboy originally made his theatrical debut all the way back in 2004 with the first Hellboy movie directed by Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water fame and Ron Perlman as the titular character.
The first Hellboy movie with Ron Perlman was a fun part of my childhood around the time I started watching comic book movies like X-Men and Spider-Man. With its imaginative creatures and environments, blend of exciting action and humor, and memorable characters it was a great time to be a ten or eleven-year-old watching that movie.
Apparently, a lot of people agreed as it earned mostly positive reviews from critics and audiences, performed well at the box-office, and spawned an awesome follow-up in 2008 with Hellboy II: The Golden Army that’s arguably superior to its predecessor. Fans including myself waited ecstatically for a third installment of the series…but sadly it never came into fruition.
The film was originally intended to be a sequel to Hellboy II: The Golden Army but Guillermo del Toro chose not to return after not being offered the writer-director credit he got from the previous two movies and wishing to direct his own script for Hellboy III. This led to Ron Perlman refusing to reprise his role as Hellboy unless del Toro was involved in some shape or form.
So, in its place we got this R-rated reboot directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday, Centurion) and David Harbour (Kinsey, Revolutionary Road, Stranger Things) as Hellboy that tries to go back to the bloody roots of its source material. Not to mention R-rated superhero movies have become extremely profitable thanks to Deadpool so maybe Hellboy can capture that same balance of excessive violence and a sense of humor…Nope!
Hellboy (2019) is a chaotic, joyless, and surprisingly dull mess that fails to live up to the previous films and the original comic. Just about everything that made del Toro’s Hellboy movies unique and fun is gone and replaced with a gloomy, mean-spirited tone, horrendously choreographed action sequences, and a plot that ranges from generic bad superhero movie fare to complete utter nonsense.
The film follows Hellboy, an immensely powerful cambion working for the government organization Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense founded by his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane-Deadwood, Coraline, John Wick trilogy) to combat paranormal threats in the world. When an ancient sorceress known as Nimue, the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich-The Fifth Element, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Resident Evil franchise) is resurrected with a thirst for vengeance, Hellboy is called to the English countryside alongside B.P.R.D. military member Ben Dalmio (Daniel Dae Kim-Lost, Hawaii Five-0, Angel) and a mysterious woman with psychic abilities named Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane-American Honey, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Hearts Beat Loud) to stop Nimue and her endless army of monsters from the underworld before she unleashes a deadly plague onto the entire planet.
The film also stars Thomas Haden Church (Wings, Sideways, Spider-Man 3) as Lobster Johnson, Penelope Mitchell (Hemlock Grove, The Vampire Diaries) as Ganeida the Witch, Sophie Okonedo (Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Hotel Rwanda, The Secret Life of Bees) as Lady Hatton, Brian Gleeson (Logan Lucky, Mother!, Phantom Thread) as Merlin, Alistair Petrie (The Bank Job, Rush, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as Lord Adam Glaren, and Stephen Graham (Snatch, This is England, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and 5) and Douglas Tait (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Star Trek (2009), Thor) as Gruagach.
Overall, Hellboy (2019) is a poorly-made reboot that tries to be “darker” and “edgier” than the previous films but severely lacks the imagination, fun, and even characters from the other Hellboy movies. No Liz Sherman and no Abe Sapien aside from some of the worst sequel-baiting since Woody Harrelson in Venom, instead Hellboy is partnered up with a woman who can puke spirits of dead people and a clichéd military soldier with a hatred for paranormal beings acting as a giant plot device for Hellboy’s ego…who needs a mutant fish-man and a lady literally on fire when we got these cardboard cutouts?
Most of the side characters are forgettable aside from Ian McShane as Trevor, he definitely portrays the character differently than John Hurt did in the earlier films. Hellboy and Trevor almost have like a Tony and Howard Stark kind of relationship with Hellboy dismissing him and claiming him to be a bad parent, I actually would have liked to see more of that explored.
The plot ranges from your typical bad superhero movie story from the 90s and early 2000s like Spawn or Daredevil to flat out ridiculous with what I consider the worst tie-in to the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur in a movie since Transformers: The Last Knight…yes, I went there! Even Hellboy himself acknowledges how lazy the Excalibur plot has gotten in film lately when the legend of King Arthur comes into the story.
The creatures and special-effects aren’t as impressive as the other films and look more like rejected concepts from the previous films and Guillermo del Toro’s table scraps. Instead of giant tentacle monsters, tooth fairies, Forest Gods, and a Golden Army we get a talking warthog on par with Bebop from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, an undead army of CGI clusterf*cks, a man who transforms into a jaguar Incredible Hulk style, and one of the main characters being kidnapped as a baby and replaced with Gruagach posing as the baby (What is up with bad film adaptations of Dark Horse comics and terrifyingly psychotic CG babies?).
While I still consider Ron Perlman to be the definitive Hellboy due to his distinct facial features working through the character’s makeup, David Harbour is not a bad replacement. He doesn’t try to replicate Perlman’s performance but takes this character we’ve seen before and adds his own spin to it, this Hellboy is a lot more aggressive than Perlman’s plus he looks really damn cool in the full makeup and costume, though he could crack a few more jokes and if the script gave him better material to work with I think he would have made a great Hellboy.
Hellboy (2019) is an unfortunate misfire that tries to be dark and edgy but has no idea how to execute it properly and just becomes a dull and lifeless reboot. My advice is to avoid this disastrous reboot at all costs and revisit the two Ron Perlman movies instead.
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