“Hell No: A look at why Hellboy II let me way down”

“Oh crap.” –Hellboy

When you go to a movie, you’re entering a conflict on defense.  A group of people is going to come in front of you and display something to you, and you react.  Now, there are different kinds of movies, and many different expectations.

“Hellboy II” has an interesting mess of expectations going for it.  It’s based on a brilliant and reliable comic book, but the first film was at best “loosely” based on the comics.  Instead, it took some of the look, characters, and ideas and threw them somewhere fully different.  Hellboy doesn’t hide from the public, he isn’t madly in love with Liz Sherman, and he’s a lot more… mature in many ways.  Now, about that first film, it’s a good movie.  It sure isn’t great, because it has one of the most anti-climatic third acts EVER.  The movie deflates, imploding upon itself in a painfully dull fashion.  Which is a shame, because most of the movie was interesting enough, and it really does have some great moments.  And those moments are very well visualized by Guillermo del Toro.  His name brings a lot of expectations with this new film.  You can’t help but bring expectations based off of “Blade II” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to the film.

So, with the offensive line revealed, let’s be blunt: “Hellboy II” is overrated.

I do not, at all, understand this heaping of praise coming at this movie.  I keep hearing things about “Star Wars”, and I just want to say to everybody making that comparison, you can shut the hell up before I shove a proton torpedo up your rear.  About the only two things those two movies have in common is a lot of cool real-world effects and a scary lack of black people.  Yes, “Hellboy II” looks cool.  If you liked “Transformers”, you may like “Hellboy II”.  But, if you saw “Transformers” as the vapid piece of junk it was… well, let’s have a discussion. 

Here come the spoilers.

Half an hour into “Hellboy II”, I was pretty sure I was in for some suck.  This was for three reasons:

1) We had zero “development”.  None of the characters had looked at each other long enough to evoke anything more than a passing conversation.  And the reverse-development of Manning (Tambor) and Hellboy (Perlman) with their working relationship from the end of the last film was baffling.

2) There was a scene where people argued in front of a council.  Let me give anyone out there who wants to make a movie a tip-- council scenes are VERY HARD to pull off.  George Lucas can’t do it.  The Wachowski brothers can’t do it.  Peter Jackson did it ONCE, and that was because 50% of the people in his council have some pretty serious acting skills.  Anytime you stick a bunch of important, stuffy people in a room to have an argument, it usually launches into one guy giving a speech and getting pissy, and ends very blah.  Even though this council scene ended in a bloodbath, I was still not amused.

3) They had already told me, rather explicitly, how the movie was going to end.  Much, much more bitching on this point later.

So, half an hour in, I’m sitting there pulling a Hellboy.  “Oh crap.”  And watching this movie play out is a damned train wreck.  It’s like Del Toro made a list of stuff that has an interesting idea, and then made it boring and didn’t explore it.  Don’t get me wrong here and defend him on this by saying, “oh, that’s the point- to make these extraordinary things common”.  I’m gonna lay some money down that I’ve probably read more Hellboy than you, and I understand the way “absurd” works.  Demons lamenting that they’ve lost an acolyte to pancakes is awesome. 

( http://www.brandonbird.com/photos/pancakes.jpg ) Pancakes are normal things.  A demon eating them is funny.  But the real home run comes from the “oh no” factor of the other demons realizing that they have lost one of their crew because he ate pancakes.  The emotional pay-off’s.

The EXACT opposite of this scenario takes place in “Hellboy II”.  About fifteen minutes in we’re told Liz Sherman is pregnant.  This gives us a TON of potential for pay-off!  There’s the “you’re carrying the child of a demon” thing, the “how does this affect your relationship” thing, the “I’m a working woman, how will this affect me” thing… and what do we get instead?  For NINETY MINUTES we get this instead:

“Hey, HB, I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, Liz, what’s up?”

*explosion, distraction*

“Oh, Liz, did you have something to tell me?”

“Yea, I--"

*explosion, distraction*

Taking ninety minutes to tell the title character something I’ve been told in the audience… this is not a good plan.  And when they DO tell him, it doesn’t really DO anything.  It’s sloppy.  Just like Liz knowing at the very end of the movie that she’s having twins.  HOW DOES SHE KNOW THIS!?  There are loads of unresolved, unexplained bullshit-- all of it set to bad music.  The bad guy talks about uniting his elf people for war.  We see his elf people at the council of suck.  And then… no more elf people.  Apparently, this royal elf is basically the prince of a machine army and nobody else.  I don’t understand this.

There’s so much wrong with this movie.  I mean, sure, I laughed some.  And yes, it’s nice to see a movie do effects that aren’t all CGI.  But I can’t like it.  Maybe someday, somehow I’ll get dumber.  But for now I just can’t grasp what the hell Del Toro is thinking other than that he wanted to make puppets.  Some people are really harsh on “Blade II”, and I understand why.  It’s a little disjointed.  Something about it doesn’t quite flow right.  It needs a couple more character moments, a few more breathers, and needs to try a little bit less to be cool.  But ya know what?  The basic plot of that movie is a few small shifts away from identical to this… and it was far and away better.  Because we see Blade and his crew experience some stuff.  Feelings happen.  Choices are made.  As it stands, I'm not looking forward to "The Hobbit", but then again, I was only fully devoted to the first "Lord of the Rings" movie, and more dedicated to screaming in rage throughout the second film.

“Hellboy II” happens.  And it doesn’t make sense.  I don’t understand why the previously human-run BPRD sends in someone new from DC to command its main office who is definitely in the “freak” category.  I don’t understand how any of the relationship struggles “resolve”.  I really, really don’t understand what the hell ANYONE was thinking in dismissing Marco Beltrami and his brilliant, quirky theme from the last film for an unceasing assault of Danny Elfman giving us his very worst. 

But most of all, I do not understand the telegraphed pass.

There we are, the defense, the audience.  Maybe you don’t have all the expectations I do.  You haven’t seen this offense before, you don’t know its moves.  But within the movie itself we are told at the very beginning “there is an army, and you can challenge the leader of the army… hey, are you listening, Hellboy?”  Hey, did anyone notice the fact that the bad guy has a twin with a physical wounding bond?  So… like, if you hurt one, the other would go down!  So, we know what’s coming.  We know what the third act is.  And that’s fine.  That’s more than fine, that’s great.  Because at the end of the movie, you SHOULD know what has to happen.  John McClane is gonna have to blow up the bad guy.  Neo is gonna end up being the One.  The great movies know this.  But when you telegraph a pass, you HAVE to do one of two things:

1) Fake us out.

Or

2) Throw that pass while doing a backflip to a receiver who just barely gets their feet in-bounds before scoring. 

Don’t do these things, and your audience gets BORED.  I WANTED the movie to end.  I did NOT feel the need to keep sitting there.  As filmmakers you either have to hit us in a way we aren’t looking for, or you have to make what we knew was coming so out-of-this-world amazing that we want to hit the instant replay because it was just THAT GOOD.  Anyone out there remember that title game in football between Texas and USC?  And near the end, you see that Vince Young is gonna run the ball himself.  And you knew it was coming.  You knew he was gonna do it.  But the way, and the confidence, and the finesse is just so amazing that you wanna re-watch it.  Yea, Hellboy doesn’t end like that.

It just ends.

$100 mil.  That's a freakin' opening weekend, gang.  That's only $14 mil shy of the biggest non-sequel opening of all time... Spider-man. 

And let's not kid ourselves.  Tony Stark isn't Peter Parker.  This is a lesser Marvel character. 

So why?  Why did this movie make $100 mil?  I mean, there's been plenty of "lesser" Marvel movies that didn't make that in opening weekend.  Hell, Daredevil made only $102 mil in it's WHOLE DOMESTIC RUN. 

Why did this movie make a shitton of money?  BECAUSE MARVEL CONTROLLED IT.

In 2005, Marvel decided they'd had enough of Hollywood.  Based on that "awesome" X-Men: The Last Stand that was being produced at that point, I can't freakin' blame them.  So they said, "We're getting back all of our properties.  Jerks."  So, while Spidey and the X-Men aren't going immediately back to Marvel, the company has decided that anytime they CAN regain rights to their properties, they will.  And then, they make the movies themselves, with Paramount distributing.

Marvel got a seven-year $525 million revolving-credit deal with Merill Lynch.  And "Iron Man" is the first movie built off that money.  And she freakin' soared.  Strong casting, independent director, and a buzz that just CAN'T BE BEAT.  What was that buzz?  Two things: one, a lot of marketing.  Plenty of TV spots, lots of website talk, etc. Thing two? Reviews.  Reviews better than gold, and reviews you cannot buy.  I mean, all the "omg, GTA IV will sink Iron Man" bullcrap got blown out of the water this weekend by reviews.  Positive review, after positive review, after positive review.

Why the good reviews?  Because this was the first real superhero movie.  Screw X-Men.  Yea, I watched it, but everytime I have to see a 14-year-old play Rogue, I yell.  And piss off, Spider-Man, with your stupid Macho Man Randy Savage cage fight of lame.  Fantastic Four: Rise of the Almight Dollar and Reed Richards dance sequence can bite my shiny metal ass.  THIS movie treated me like an adult.  It treated me like it didn't need to market to me while it was playing.  It wasn't edited based off test audiences until it was the lamest thing playing at theaters.  And, outside of the DC Comics "Batman Begins" fluke (which, while it treated me like an adult, and was amazing, totally ignored the greater DC Comics universe) this was the first time this has happened.  I mean, even the highly enjoyable "Hellboy" owes me a few apologizes for Babe Ruth bars and a corntastic love story.

Somebody read a comic book.  They opened it, and they read it.  They took notes.  They hired people who read the comic book.  And they went to town.  Robert Downey Jr paid attention to who the hell Tony Stark is, and he went and played it.  So what did we get?  A movie without "cringe" moments.  A movie that truly transposed the things that allowed this character to survive decades, even if he wasn't at the front of things.  I know people reading this may not have read much in the way of comics, but we've had 15 Marvel Comic Book movies, and until this past weekend, not one of them had even MENTIONED S.H.I.E.L.D.  And you can't PICK UP an Earth 616 Marvel book for longer than six issues without somebody mentioning S.H.I.E.L.D.  The fact that we have "Avengers" coming down the pipeline with Roberty Downey Jr. and Edward Norton tenatively attached means we may finally get Marvel movies that aren't just based in small groups of characters.

Future is finally here.  Real comic book movies.  Hopefully "The Incredible Hulk" will continue in this vein... I know there have been some major arguments occuring over the editing of this film ("Is it too long?" "Is there too much story?" "I don't know if we should mention S.H.I.E.L.D."), but hopefully the box office numbers will shut up everyone and make them realize, "We can just make the movie we want, and not worry about that crap".  If this continues, that loan with Merill Lynch is gonna look like chump change, and the distribution deal with Paramount is gonna be the best deal ANY major distributor has. 

Thor, Dr. Strange, Captain America, Ant-Man, Black Panther, and more are on the way.  So, call me a True Believer, and know as long as this business model of "Marvel Studios" continues, I will continue to Make Mine Marvel.

'Nuff said.

Thanks to the wonders of the greatest comic book in the past five years (seriously, everyone should be pre-ordering the collection), I'm back on the smack. And why the hell shouldn't I be?  I mean, whether or not you're gonna buy a copy of GTA IV this next week, God knows you're gonna go see IRON MAN. So, the big question is... why the crap aren't you reading comics?  I mean, you watch movies about them... you play video games based on them... and yet you can't take the plunge?  I know it's intimidating to step up to the plate; especially when you're looking at titles that are about to hit 500 issues. Which is why I'm here to help, with my ideas on how you can support the industry that gives you so much joy.

• After you go see Iron Man this weekend, and are jumping up and down like a six year old after a two liter of Mountain Dew, go to your local comic book store.  "But it's scary" you say?  Sure, it can be.  But not THIS SATURDAY.  This Saturday is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY.  No shit.  FREE.  You go to your local comic book store, and they will give at least one free comic, from an assortment of special promotional issues.  Some of them a crummy, but some of them are AWESOME.  Sometimes publishers give big previews of new books they're launching, or books specifically designed to catch you up to speed.  Personally, I'm most excited about Dark Horse (who always is great for FCBD) doing a special Hellboy book, in part to promote the upcoming movie.  Check out the preview.  Wow.
• Check out Marvel's Digital Comics Unlimited.  This is the best thing to happen ever in the terms of "catching up" with modern comics.  Read greats like Exiles (it's like Sliders with X-Men), Cable & Deadpool (or "when the odd-couple uses guns to solve their problems"), or Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men ('nuff said)... from issue #1.  Some of the books at DCU you can read for free, but most come with the INSIGNIFICANT price tag of $10 a month OR $60 a year.  Well, well, WELL worth it.
• Just buy a book.  Whether it's a collected trade paper back or a single... take a chance.  Pick up a classic, like Watchmen (and if you're totally against spending real money you can even check out something like that at your public library), a simple "run" like the 50 issues of Y: The Last Man, or something new in single form like All Star Batman & the Boy Wonder (written by "big deal" Frank Miller with pencils by Jim Lee).
• Use the internet.  Try not to download too many books (you damn thief), but use it to develop your tastes.  One of my favorite things to do is read Wikipedia articles on comics until I find something that sounds good.  Find artists and authors who speak to you, and support them with your coin.

In short... read a damn comic book.  You can buy a subscription to one for less than four bucks a month (and many comic book stores will give you deals if you subscribe through them).  Stop resisting.  No longer is it uncool (or if someone tells you that it is, be sure to inform them that they can't go see The Dark Knight this summer). And if you don't spend some coin, then the industry is going to go under, because you're an asshole.  And if that happens, you have to answer to these guys, and their over-sized image:

You don't want none of that.  Trust me.