The only thing that kept me from really liking Hellboy, was the movie Hellboy.
I’ve never read the actual comic that it’s based on (I’ve heard it’s quite good), but the movie is a dismal failure filled with lame dialogue, a confusing-at-best plot, and more wooden acting than a Pinocchio film festival!
Hellboy could’ve been a fun character, but he just gets tiresome about a half hour after he comes on screen. Apparently he’s got a thing for this woman who can summon fire bursts (convenient for all involved since he’s fireproof), but their relationship is never really explained or explored in any real way. A sign a la silent movies reading “Our hero pines for his lady fair” would’ve been more effective than the approach taken by the script. One particularly tiresome scene involves Helloby taking love advice from a 9-year old boy while spying on the girl and another man from a rooftop and then pelting the man with a rock.
My favoire character was the C3PO-ish Abe Sapian who was apparently some sort of merman with psychic abilities, but he gets hurt about two-thirds of the way through the movie and is never heard from again.
The villians, Rasputin, some gas-masked nazi Wolverine knockoff (made of sand we find out later), and some woman hatch a plot to get Hellboy to open the gates of hell. At least that’s what I was able to piece together after discussing the movie with my wife for almost a day afterwards. Some scraps of paper are involved and Hellboy’s father figure is killed for some reason, but I never really understood what was going on.
Most confusing was some creature that apparently spawned two more of itself after being killed being entirely wiped out at the end of the movie. How does that work anyway?! Shoudln’t it have just created more as a result?! Again, it’s never explained.
Here’s the thing – I love comic book movies! Spiderman? Great! Spiderman 2? Awesome! X-men 1 & 2? Oh baby! I even played hookie from work to see the Hulk when it came out. (A decision I later regretted, but that’s another blog.) I was ready to really enjoy this! But in the end it’s just two lame hours I can never get back. Damn you Hellboy! (Oh wait, too late!)