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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Hell's a-poppin'

  
 
Hieronymus
20:15 / 31.05.03
A few pictures to wet one's whistle on the Guillermo De Toro directed take on Hellboy.



There's also pics out of Abe Sapien, the G.I.s that found Hellboy, and shots of some of the villains here and here.

And John Hurt plays the Professor who raises him.

I want this thing out right now.
 
 
Hieronymus
18:10 / 21.06.03
Every picture you could ever want leading up to Hellboy's premiere
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
06:36 / 26.06.03
I so cannot fucking wait at all.

Anybody read any advance reaction on the script or anything (preferably spoiler-free)- is it gonna be as good as I desperately want it to be?
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
15:47 / 21.11.03
Here's the trailer.

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1808404362&cf=trailer
 
 
Hieronymus
16:40 / 21.11.03
Is it any good? I'm waiting until Monday when they release it to Quicktime.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
14:02 / 22.11.03
Looks like a piece of shit dude. That said, the guy playing Hellboy seems to have charisma. Abe on the other hand... it's Niles dude, fuckin' Niles
 
 
Tamayyurt
17:13 / 27.11.03
Damn, still haven't seen this and that last post has left me wanting to cry... anybody else seen this? Who wants to raise me spirits?
 
 
invisible_al
19:03 / 27.11.03
EH? Have you not seen the trailer? Hit's all the spots for me, Hellboy played by Ron Pearlman! Much in the name of Squarmous tentacled goodness? Hellboy hitting a car and throwing it over himself?!
The gang walking through an Antartic temple. Rasputin and Nazis doing their thing and looking properly evil.

It's looking good, the trailer isn't actually that well put together but hopefully this will mean the film is .
 
 
CameronStewart
19:05 / 27.11.03
I think it looks great, personally. Guillermo Del Toro has also gone on record as saying that this first trailer is the "studio" edit, made to appear as mainstream and palatable as possible, and that subsequent trailers (including the one set to debut during the SuperBowl) will be darker in tone and closer to the final film.

I have faith that the comic's creator and the comic's biggest fan will produce a pretty decent film adaptation.

Ron Perlman is so perfect as Hellboy.
 
 
Krug
20:08 / 27.11.03
Pearlman (sp?) looks fantastic.

Can't be arsed about anything else.
 
 
CameronStewart
20:27 / 27.11.03
>>>Pearlman (sp?)<<<

Perlman.
 
 
rakehell
01:40 / 28.11.03
And music by Dimmu Borgir for the trailer. That's odd.
 
 
Tamayyurt
03:06 / 28.11.03
Just sw this (twice) and I thought it looked great.

Guillermo Del Toro has also gone on record as saying that this first trailer is the "studio" edit, made to appear as mainstream and palatable as possible

Yeah, you could tell. It's almost kiddy, but I'm sure the movie won't be.

The only problem I had was that Hellboy kinda looks fake and not as cool and Abe. But I'm sure they're going to digitally touch him up and play with the lighting so in the end he'll look more realistic.
 
 
Tamayyurt
22:13 / 04.02.04
subsequent trailers (including the one set to debut during the SuperBowl) will be darker in tone and closer to the final film.

So, the SuperBowl's come and gone and I didn't see it... did anyone catch this better Hellboy trailer? And where can I find it online?
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
23:36 / 04.02.04
Why does that geezer have two corks stuck to his head?

Any idea when it's out in Britain?
 
 
Just Add Water
08:03 / 05.02.04
corks = sawed off horns.
 
 
Hieronymus
22:24 / 03.03.04
So the newest trailer is out. A little slicker than the last but... does anyone else watch it and get the heebie jeebies that this is one of those comics that won't translate well to film? It's very... LXG-esque.
 
 
Hieronymus
20:19 / 01.04.04
Well the movie is out this weekend and the reviews are slowly rolling in.

This one in particular and what little I've seen of the clips makes me damn apprehensive to see this. Crappy wirework and stupid scenes look like they'll undermine the crap out of any slick factor. Case in point...

Hellboy also occasionally featured really cheesy moments that ruined the feel of the film. In one scene Hellboy saves a box of kittens while battling Sammael, then declares to the owner that it's just his job. Ugh. Then in another scene Hellboy is running in mid-air ala Scooby and Shaggy as a bridge falls apart underneath him. It didn't look that good.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
15:41 / 02.04.04
a review that is bizarrely positive here
 
 
Haus of Mystery
21:48 / 02.04.04
That is bizarre.
 
 
Hieronymus
22:38 / 02.04.04
I'm not even sure if that reviewer even saw the film. Reads like the most phoned-in, devoid of substance review I've ever seen.

Going to see it in a few hours. Will weigh on this tonight.
 
 
CameronStewart
05:53 / 03.04.04
Minor Spoilers, I suppose, so look out.


I thought Hellboy was good, but sadly not great.

Perlman was brilliant, just beautifully perfect casting, and the opening ww2 scene, and the end in the catacombs in Russia, were pure Mignola, the most literal adaptation of a comic yet.

I didn't like all the stuff in the city (Prague is hilariously unconvincing as New York). Hellboy running around rooftops and subway tunnels just didn't feel right. The title sequence with the "Is Hellboy Real?" tabloid headlines also felt entirely incorrect to me.

The action sequences looked great but didn't have any real sense of excitement or urgency - they were just...there. Blowing up the huge tentacled monster at the end lacked a feeling of triumph, I didn't get any catharsis from it. Not really a climax, just a...stop.

I liked it, it's certainly better than LXG or Daredevil or Hulk or most of the Batman movies, BUT... I don't think it's as great as I was hoping it would be, or as everyone on Aint It Cool is making out to be.

In fact, since I saw it (I caught an advance press screening last Monday) I've been thinking about it and the more I do the more I realize it was a very frustrating experience. It's a film that was obviously made by people with a very clear and deep affection for the source material. Every actor was perfectly cast, all the production design was beautifully and faithfully translated from the comic - all the things that we comic book fans usually bitch about, finally, at long last, here's a movie that got it RIGHT. And yet, when it was over, I was unmoved. It failed to excite on any level other than the initial glee of seeing the drawings come to life. It's so close, but yet so far.

X2 was a film that played very fast and loose with the source material, but managed to hold together thanks to exciting and clever storytelling. Hellboy is sadly the opposite - a movie that is incredibly faithful to the comic's look, but at the expense of an engaging story.

I'd like to see this movie, that was made by people of passion - people who understand that the right actor is worth more than 20 million dollars of CGI - be rewarded. I'd like Mignola to make more money, so he can continue doing great comics. And I'd like it if the interest in comic book properties in Hollywood continues, so that comics awareness can spread large. For these reasons, I hope it does well at the box office.
 
 
woodenpidgeon
08:11 / 03.04.04
Cameron,

I have to agree with you. I too saw an early screening a couple of weeks ago.

there's something infuriating the more you think about it. I think the biggest problem was the writing. Ron Perlman was great-- Abe was too--- but they spent to much time trying to make Hellboy a character that you care about and it fails.

They should have cut the BPRD almost completely and just start with Hellboy in the middle of it all. There were some good moments-- but this isn't the great comic adaption at all.
 
 
Hieronymus
16:35 / 03.04.04
I think for me it was very much the same way as Cameron's view on it. It had some really nice moments, much of it born from Perlman's huge, huge acting chops and the acting of the entire cast. But between the very ropey CGI and the fall-flat dialogue of some scenes.... I dunno. It was a nice little film that's good scenes were automatically cancelled out by the shoddy ones. Just when you thought it was going to build in excellence... it disappointed you with the next scene (The Scooby Doo run-in-the-air at the bridge was like a blast of cold water when I saw it. As was the dumb ass Kroenen scenes with the guards).

And all through the movie you could tell this had Guilllermo's stamp. Very reminiscent with Blade 2. Cool visual ideas, absolutely stale delivery. The man has the laziest love for CGI I've ever seen. He just hoses the film in it with reckless abandon, hoping you'll forget how cartoonish it looks.

See it if you're a Hellboy fan as they tweak things in the movie that the comics didn't really touch on and see it if you want a frivolous fun flick to spend a few hours on.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
17:11 / 03.04.04
i've never really read Hellboy, and don't know a lot about it, but I thought the movie was pretty cool. Not a great movie I'd watch over and over, but I thought it was quite adventurous as a popular culture movie. Black Magic Nazi's? Thule Society, Rasputin, some guy with a surgery fetish and sand for blood? Totally interesting.

And, the sight of the Seven Gods of Chaos was pretty insane. This is one dark movie touching on a lot of very arcane concepts.
 
 
eddie thirteen
17:40 / 03.04.04
Oh, I dunno...I mean, I know it's cool to dislike a movie that will so clearly appeal to fanboys, but I gotta say, I really enjoyed this movie. All the things that made me grind my teeth about things like Spider-Man, the first Blade, Daredevil (God help us all) and, even, to a degree, the X-Men movies, which I basically liked -- i.e., some painful acting, *hideous* dialogue, crappy "epiphanic" moments that underscore why sitcom writers refer to such "I learned something today" scenes as "the moment of shit," and just way too much fucking Angst -- none of that was in evidence here at all. To completely sound like an eight-year-old, I think my biggest complaint was the squandered potential for lots and lots of different-looking creatures (as opposed to, like, the SAME slimy, tentacular, perpetually-undying creature over and over again). Hell, I didn't even mind the relatively swift resolution of the plot...personally, I don't find anything at all cathartic about the twenty-minute climactic fight scene that seems to have become the order of the day for these movies (I find them kinda boring and annoying, actually), and was glad to see such a scene sidestepped here.

I guess a lot of it comes down to what you really expected to see when you entered the theater. I laughed a lot, I thought Perlman was great, the visual ideas were fresh, and it was wonderfully, completely devoid of pretension. I also should let be known that I think there needs to be an immediate moratorium on comic book movies -- superhero comic book movies, anyway -- but if they're gonna make them anyway, I'd rather that more of them displayed this kind of purity. I don't think that, at any point, del Toro felt that he was being called upon to "elevate" the subject matter to the level of Art, make Hellboy a relevant social metaphor for our times, or whatever. I think he just wanted to make a good movie for ten-year-olds.
 
 
eddie thirteen
17:40 / 03.04.04
Whoa...the new board does weird things...
 
 
deja_vroom
18:40 / 03.04.04
Wow, Cameron. I didn't see this movie yet, but why I have the feeling that this is the same thing I'll be thinking when I leave the cinema?
 
 
Tamayyurt
04:57 / 04.04.04
Yeah, I saw this last night and it was good but I didn't leave the theater in awe... Hell, I haven't even thought about it until now. I think Abe was my favorite thing in the movie. He was just so strange and great and the underwater bits looked perfect.

It's obviously not as good as X2 but it's better than DD, Hulk, and yeah, even Spiderman (but not by much).

And even though a BIG part of the problem was the rather flat writing... I do think part of the problem was the lack of horrible monsters. Sammy got kinda boring after awhile.

I could write more but.... shrugs
 
 
Simplist
17:23 / 05.04.04
I think Cameron pretty much nailed it above. I'd also add that making Abe Sapien over into C-3PO with gills was a pretty bad move.
 
 
Simplist
17:30 / 05.04.04
Unrestrained negative review here. While I actually agree with most of what the reviewer said, the sincerity of the cast and crew was so apparent that I doubt I'd have been able to be quite so scathing myself.
 
 
gridley
17:58 / 05.04.04
I thought it was great. Easilly one of my ten favorite comic book films of all time (not that it had to fight too hard to make that list).

Great-looking and fun. I might have put a little less Sammie in it, but that's all I'd really change. The scene with Hellyboy and the kid on the rooftop was awesome.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
14:16 / 14.07.04
Finally caught this on DVD and, yeah, I guess I'm the same page as everyone else. Really good movie but not ass-out fantastic. What I really loved, though, was the really fantastic visual detail in everything, all the sets, all the monsters, the 7 dark gods in the sky (man, that was an awesome shot), et al. I didn't mind the writing so much because, hey, Hellboy's never been, um, well, I didn't mind.

And yeah, the pure gooey love of everyone involved was very transparent. I actually liked the kittens fight scene (mainly because all that broken glass stayed in his jacket, how cool was that?). I was definitely impressed, I'm sure I'd watch it again, simply because it's so gorgeous.

One thing that fell majorly flat were the villains. Not a whole lot of menace there, but I loved the design and ferocity of Sammael.

"Can you hold onto him for a while? He's so negative."

Class.

Do I really need to say I liked it more than X2? You guys had to have known that by now. I will say, though, that it's definitely just under the Spiderman twins for favorite comic movies, although that says more about the state of the genre than the quality of Hellboy.

Overall: Fun, gorgeous, and immaculately put together movie.
 
 
Simplist
17:16 / 14.07.04
Hm, didn't realize the DVD was out already. Guess I'll have to give it a second chance. Why do I think it will somehow work better on the small screen...
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
18:07 / 14.07.04
I think it comes out in a week or two. Ah, New York, City Of Disregarded Streetdates.
 
  
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