Hellboy (2019)

"You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro in your life until you see the reboot of “Hellboy.”"
— Christy Lemire

Hellboy (2019)

Genre:	Superhero
Photography:	Color
Running Time:	121 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	April 12, 2019
Directed by:	Neil Marshall
Written by:	Andrew Cosby
Distributed by:	Lionsgate
Starring:	David Harbour Ian McShane Sasha Lane Daniel Dae Kim Thomas Haden Church Milla Jovovich
Previous film:	Hellboy II: The Golden Army^GMW

Hellboy is a 2019 British-American supernatural superhero film based on the Dark Horse Comics character of the same name. Directed by Neil Marshall, the film stars David Harbour in the title role, alongside Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, and Thomas Haden Church. It is a reboot of the Hellboy film series, and the third live-action film in the franchise.

Plot

While battling a trio of rampaging giants, the legendary half-demon Hellboy encounters Nimue the Blood Queen, an ancient resurrected sorceress who's out to avenge a past betrayal. Suddenly caught in a clash between the supernatural and the human, Hellboy soon becomes hell-bent on stopping Nimue without triggering the end of the world.

Why It Sucks

Yep, this is an actual scene in the film.

This film more feels like a massive "kick-in-the balls" to not only its fanbase, but also to Guillmero Del Toro and Ron Perlman due to the fact that Hellboy III was canceled for this, as well as Milla Jovovich saying that this movie is actually good and that it would be a cult classic, when its failure would prove the exact opposite.
David Harbour was an extremely poor casting choice for Hellboy.
- The reason why David Harbour was chosen was at all because Mike Mignola saw Stranger Things and David had questions about Hellboy, meaning he had absolutely no idea who Hellboy was, which is a huge "no-no" when it comes to casting.
- David also cannot take things seriously, even though Hellboy is a serious character (to be fair, he does crack jokes at times).
- The makeup on him is absolutely terrifying. While Ron Perlman wasn't that pretty-looking, at least he wasn't an eyesore compared to David Harbour. The makeup is also extremely unfaithful as well, since Hellboy never had long hair, nor was his goatee extremely long.
- David Harbour was also too fat to play Hellboy, so he had to exercise just to play the role. And even, he's still way too chubby-looking to play Hellboy. It could be possible that him being "muscled" was actually photo-shopped, leading to false advertising.
- Even Disaster Movie chose a better actor of Hellboy, and that is a parody.
Very poor acting. Most of the characters just only show one emotion, while David himself tries to be like Ron Perlman for the first half of the film but ends up using his normal voice in the second half, and Milla Jovovich tends to be too dramatic over her lines.
Mike Mignola did barely anything to the reboot, despite being the creator of Hellboy.
Loads of plot holes, including:
- How did the wrestler become a vampire at the beginning? How did Hellboy even know him?
- Why did they have Nimue become a villain rather than Rasputin?
- How can a simple jaguar attack manage to make Ben Daimino into a were-jaguar?
- Gruagach becoming big for the final battle at the end. As Alice started, "how did he get so f*cking huge?"
In the origin, Rasputin is now a normal human being that can be easily killed by a burn (yes, a burn) by some Nazi hunter. He also tends to act like a wizard rather than a supernatural human being, which contradicts his character in the comics.
The plot is nothing but a rehash of the original film, with only a few differences.
The characters continuously swear in nearly every sentence they say. The biggest offenders are Alice, Gruagach, and Professor Bruttenholm, so much to the point that even the first line has an f-bomb in it.
Similar to swearing, it also contains excessive gore, even in unnecessary situations.
The ending just involved Hellboy and his friends raiding a club, actually murdering people in the club showing that Hellboy and his friends became cold and heartless. Also, it revealed Abe Sapien at the last second. This was only added at the end just for sequel baiting.
Poorly done special effects and CGI that look almost exactly like the CGI from the 2004 film (because the 2004 film's CGI aged extremely poorly). For instance, the blood looks more like ketchup.
There's a scene where people die by a plague, in which the plague more looks like dust coming out of the body, which is nothing but a direct rip-off of Avengers: Infinity War^GMW and its sequel, which are both far much better films and have been beloved by both critics and audiences.
Bad cinematography. Some scenes are just too dark, while other scenes are too bright.
False advertising: Many of its posters indicated Hellboy becoming Anung Un Rama ended up just being two scenes, with one being simply a vision.
- Hellboy becoming Anung Un Rama should also be something you should not spoil, either.
- As a matter of fact, Anung Un Rama was only shoved into advertisements just to make the film seem "cool." The proof is that the poster on this page literally indicates the tagline "Legendary AF" with the acronym "AF" standing for "as f*ck."
- This could've been a big role as to why this movie bombed.
The marketing itself was also unbelievably stupid.
- At one point, David Harbour said if his Twitter account gains 666 thousand followers, he'll do a hell-infested wedding with his new wife. Yes, really. It's unknown if he even did that or not.
- David Harbour also said that Hellboy (and we're seriously not joking about this) can't have sex because he's a demon. Not only did nobody want to hear that, but also that isn't true, because how else did Liz get pregnant in The Golden Army? Also, that claim, right there, is a perfect opportunity to pander towards SJWs. If that's the case, this could have been another factor that caused the film to bomb.
Hellboy somewhat roars like a lion when he's Anung Un Rama.
Hellboy's "hero" is literally called "Lobster Johnson."
Just like Kirk Cameron, Uwe Boll, Tommy Wiseau, Darren Aronofsky, Rob Reiner, Dinesh D'Souza, Paul Feig, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, Elizabeth Banks, Logan Paul, Cara Delevingne and Derek Savage, Milla Jovovich could not handle the slightest form of criticism. She blamed the critics for slamming her "raddest" films, then decided to self-praise the film, and even went as far as to say it would be a "cult classic" and that fans would have a "blast."
- David Harbour, himself, also tried to defend this film saying they did their best, but yet thanks to so many complaints, it's not gonna work out. Basically, he said that the film shouldn't be for the fans, which is an another "slap-in-the-face" to the fans. He also said that he wasn't in control of the film, despite being the main actor of the film, which also shows he was just trying to avoid controversy.
When the first trailer was released, Angry Joe released a reaction video of it. Lionsgate blindly took the video down, which spawned major controversy and severe backlash. The video later was put back up.
Its depiction of graphic violence is needlessly nauseating, even for an R-rated film.
- Gruagach literally goes on a murderous rampage ripping body parts from Catholics simply because he can't find Nimue's head. The most graphic is when he rips a tongue out of one and eats it.
- When Hellboy becomes Anung Un Rama, he spawns demons from hell, in which they go on a murder spree and kill random people in absolutely revolting and disturbing manners.
- The scene where Nimue gets sowed back up.
- Baba Yaga eats dead children, and the worst part? We actually get to see hanging corpses of dead children shown on-screen.
Most of the soundtrack is filled with rock songs, which is very unfitting for a movie based on Hellboy, and the dramatic songs are poorly made.
Just like people had a random grudge on Superman from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, people in this movie somewhat have a random grudge on Hellboy. Even his father plotted to kill him.
The opening of the film had King Arthur bury Nimue to where not even "the devil himself can see it." After that was implied, the title card of the film (Hellboy) shows up, also implying Hellboy is Satan, which is obviously lying.
- Not to mention, the film even thought there was a different King Arthur.
The removal of Liz along with the replacement of Alice is pointless. Alice is just the same woman but with a different power, and she's British.
Professor Bruttenholm is portrayed as a dumb moron in this movie and is considered a minor character. Even though he was also a minor in the original, he had more character than he did here. Also, Hellboy and Bruttenholm can't get along, rather than being like father and son in the original.
Very pointless scenes that are never mentioned again such as Alice's unconsciousness (which contains a very annoying screech), Baba Yaga having supper with Hellboy, and the 1992 flashback where Hellboy hunts down baby Gruagach who disguises himself as a human baby.
Professor Bruttenholm dies by a poke. In the original, he died by being stabbed by a sword, which is far more graphic than that and making it even worse, the original was PG-13 rated.
- To make this far more stupid, Hellboy chooses to become evil after his father's death, meaning he waited for his father to die in order to become evil.
Ben Daimio has an extremely racist role to where he is continuously beaten up and insulted by Hellboy himself, even to the point where he is called "uglier than a monster."
- Believe it or not, despite this, this managed to be released in South Korea, anyway.
The post-credits scene leads to nothing. It's just Baba talking to a random person, who just wants him to kill Hellboy, so she can let him die.
This film cannot take itself seriously at all. For instance, the aforementioned ending at WIS #10 didn't have a point, only except to end the film in an "exciting" way. Before that, the ending could've been the fact that we learned that Ben plotted to kill Hellboy, but gave up afterwards, but no, they had to keep shoving the R rating somehow.
- Another offender is when Professor Bruttenholm explains about the Osoris Club, Hellboy continuously eats pizza in an unsettling manner during it.

Reception

The film was originally supposed to be a third sequel to the original Hellboy but Guillermo Del Toro (director of both films) wasn't offered to direct the film, as it made him disgusted and left the film. Ron Perlman even left the film, because he wanted to work with Del Toro, and refused to do so without his involvement. The film was later changed into an R-rated reboot, which while disappointing fans, it did gain a generally positive reception.

However, when the film's first trailer dropped on December 2018, it gained mixed reception. Some were anticipated, while others unfavorably criticized it and compared it to Suicide Squad. It gained major controversy after Lionsgate blindly took down Angry Joe's reaction video, showing Lionsgate wasn't able to handle criticism. The second trailer dropped on February 2019, with a more positive reaction.

When the film was finally released, the film was universally panned by critics, audiences, moviegoers, and especially fans of the orignal films as well as the comic books, in which they all criticized its CGI, excessive gore, and being extremely inferior to the Del Toro films. It currently holds a 17% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a 51% audience rating, with a 31 on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews, and a 5.2 on IMDb (and yet, Milla Jovovich said that this movie would be a cult classic).

The film did poorly at the box office as it only received $40 million out of its $50 million budget. This was blamed due to poor reviews and lack of interest of Del Toro fans.

Two months after the release, David didn't think the film did well enough for a sequel, indicating that the film was going to have a sequel, but it got cancelled, sadly ending the Hellboy franchise.

Trivia

If you buy the movie for 4K, you can get a steelbook, along with a free copy of a comic book that the movie was based on.

Videos

Gallery

Milla lacking common sense by defending criticism
WageTheUglyDoll12 (under the name ThatOneStickman12 who also created this page) slams her defense of criticism.