Why The HELLBOY Reboot Was So Bad | Cynical Reviews

was of good [Music] the latest adaptation of Mike Mignola's comic book series 2019 s Hellboy is a reboot of the film franchise as established by the - Guillermo del Toro films which featured Ron Perlman as the titular demon who fights the forces of evil with his cool attitude and powerful gaming hand it's also a good example of how not to reboot a franchise and of how much like a date with a boring supermodel something can start off as a great idea but ultimately result in disappointment del Toro was inspired to make a third Hellboy film after being touched by the sight of Ron Perlman dressing up as the character to fulfill the make-a-wish request of a six-year-old boy with leukemia unfortunately a dispute over the script led to a falling out with Mineola that ended both their friendship and his interest in the film and Perlman refused to return without his involvement see so it was instead decided to completely reboot the series but from this hardly auspicious start things seem to have gone from bad to worse during the film's opening weekend a report was published by The Wrap based on testimony from some of those who worked on the film detailing plenty of backstage drama comparable to that on showing Dance Moms including a series of disagreements and tensions between director Neil Marshall and the film's producers who among other things were alleged to have fired Marshalls preferred cinematographer in order to send the director a message about who was really in charge of course this is all the case of he-said he-said and for professional reasons everyone involved either denied it or refused to comment but I believe the proof is in the pudding which is an utter mess I will be comparing the film to Del Toro's 2004 Hellboy film but I want to be clear Hellboy 2019 is not bad because it's not a del Toro film nor even simply because it's a reboot it's bad on its own merits and it gets even worse when stood in comparison to what came before and if you're going to reboot something you have an obligation to make it better and I can't speak to how it compares to the comics because despite them being on my wish list for quite a while I never got around to reading them a call to Manola the intention was to stay closer to the comics although I'm not sure that would really be a compliment given how it's turned out there's a bunch of sloppy mistakes like continuity errors goofs such as shots where the zippers and the actors costumes are visible and weird edits which individually wouldn't be worth commenting on but when put together demonstrate a lack of care and attention to detail but by far the biggest issue the film has is with its writing and the number of sins that commits in this regard would fill all of the nine circles of hell the story was inspired by three Hellboy comic book storylines which is fine in and of itself but the way they've been put together in the effort to create a single storyline it resulted in more than a few scenes having only a bare minimum of relation to the overall storyline with a lot of fat that could have been trimmed with a few rewrites and a story that's disjointed and flows poorly many key plot points character arcs and moments of story progression are either not properly established make no sense or actually contradict previously established facts and the dialogue is often just stupid don't touch it about faith she's a vindictive [ __ ] we carry everything committed in our bloodlines much like the film itself sometimes it wanders into funny bad territory this is no mortal weapon but mostly it's just dumb it also has its fair share of pacing problems like moments where the film should be speeding up but then grinds to a halt before abruptly shifting forward again it's really jarring the film also egregiously breaks the show Don't Tell rule with its over reliance on exposition in the original as cliched as it was to have Myers be the newcomer in order to have lore explained to him and thus to the audience it worked because it made sense within the context of the story and setting they kept the amount of exposition to a minimum and they worked it neatly into the dialogue but the reboot does none of these things the sheer amount of exposition particularly in the first half of the film is nauseating not only as having characters essentially talked to the audience the laziest way to convey information to them but here it doesn't fit naturally into the conversations occurring on screen with the exception of ian mcshane as hell boys adopted father professor broom it's not delivered engaging ways so it's boring to listen to and it makes no sense because often characters will explain things to another character that that character would in all likelihood already know three weeks ago we sent Ruiz to investigate a nest of vampires we haven't heard from him since Armand is reliable source told me where I can find him but surely Hellboy would know this already it's explained to him for the benefit of the audience when he should already know that information so it comes across as very forced and unnatural why kidding I'm telling you all this and even worse the film often repeats its exposition sometimes very soon after the information was first given sit down here that's the end that's the vampire you went silent about three weeks ago it's like it was written for an audience who's attention span wouldn't last a single tick tock video in fact if you imagine the film to have been written by twelve-year-old boys for other twelve-year-old boys a lot of stuff starts to make sense especially their lack of understanding about how to make a mature movie they wanted to emulate the darker tone of the comics more closely and they saw the success of Deadpool as an r-rated comic book movie as giving them a license to up the age rating while failing to grasp that the violence and obscenity of Deadpool works because it made sense with his over-the-top character so their way of making the reboot more adult was to throw in a bastard in shite load of swearing jokes about strip clubs and large amounts of gore which just comes across as gratuitous and it's not even good gore because the CGI ranges from OK to god-awful and somehow manages to look worse than the originals which came out 15 years before this faux maturity has also affected the humor the film is not nearly as funny as it thinks it is neither a you tell boys always had it's quips and one-liners but in the reboot they're far more eye rolling ly corny and far less funny and nuanced than in the original and are the sort of thing you'd expect a bargain bin Duke Nukem to say we're in there and in the original Hellboy recognized when a situation was serious and would then only make jokes in order to put others around him at ease are you okay whereas in reboot some of the jokes he makes just makes it sound like he doesn't care looks bigger in the courtroom this ties into the serious issues this film has with its tone which jumps around as much as a cooktop Easter Bunny sometimes as the result of incompetence and sloppy presentation and sometimes by deliberate writing choices for instance multiple scenes that are meant to be dramatical serious are ruined because they felt that the characters had to make stupid quips and comments there are ways to do this well but they weren't done here moving on to the characters in the original all the named characters even the ones we're not supposed to like are given some characteristics beyond those necessary for the story which made them more relatable and even likeable they're given at least some development that makes them feel like actual characters and thus worth caring about but in the reboot all of the secondary characters are one-dimensional and completely underdeveloped they have no flavor at all I don't think they have a single personality trait beyond that required for the story thus they're more like caricatures are not worth getting invested in nor does it help that most of them are either idiots and/or [ __ ] this also applies to some extent too Hellboy himself to his credit I do think David Harbor does a good job portraying this different younger and less confident version of Hellboy even though he looks older strangely I don't think the makeup did him any favors and I don't have an issue with them taking this approach the problem is that he isn't fleshed out in the original he was given plenty of flavor he likes cats cigars and candy bars and he has a lot going on for him this Hellboy likes to drink that's about it it seems nothing beyond his job and his existential crisis his personality and motivations are poorly established so he comes across as a bit whiny and shallow and a lot more boring the film is also very confused about his relationship to the world at large in the original it was made very clear that he was meant to be kept a secret with the government going to great lengths to cover up his existence he's also not allowed to go out unsupervised and is kept in quarantine when not on a mission all of which makes complete sense but in the reboot the issue is much more ambiguous the world seems to think that he exists so you'd think the Bureau of paranormal research and defense the organization he works for would be trying to keep him a secret right well no they let him go on a mission unsupervised with no backup and no way to track him until they find him via Twitter and no I'm not joking that's literally what happens now define me Twitter you don't exactly blend are you serious and there were basically no repercussions for him wandering off and exposing his existence to the world and when he's wandering around the streets of London in broad daylight they make no attempt to hide him and nobody gives up this makes no sense I get that they didn't want to just copy the first film but this is some really important show that can't just be ignored and it plays an important role in hell boy's identity or it would if they hadn't just ignored it as you can imagine the world-building is comparable to a Jenga tournament for the blind none of the organizations that are supposed to be dedicated to confronting the paranormal act like they take it seriously at all you might want to put this down to their incompetence or arrogance like with the asaurus Club but the fact that they all do it and their failures are never commented on in the film leads me to think that it's just terrible writing this film is ass you know Hellboy reminded me a lot of my experiences with 2018 s the predator in that the more I thought about it the more problems arose and the angrier I got and as we now dive into the film itself from start to finish I think you'll see what I mean the year is 5:17 ad known as the dark ages and for good reason what that particular year is known as the dark ages shouldn't it be in what is known as the dark ages if they've just told us what year it is why are they showing it on the screen as well and why is the text just in a plain white font it doesn't fit with the aesthetic of the movie it looks like a cheap YouTube video anyway there's a war going on between humans and monsters and King Arthur yes that King Arthur not to be confused with all the other famous King Arthur's of course has come to surrender to our villain in way after she unleashed devastating plagues on mankind Milla Jovovich does what she does best by making her performances campy and over-the-top as she knows how it's entertaining to watch but as a villain you just can't take her seriously but with Merlin's help author ambushes her her army runs away and her witch's coven betray her Arthur decapitate her but she doesn't die so he cuts her into pieces and has them scattered across the country this intro is basically an info Tom the originals prologue did this much better with pieces of information being conveyed either by the action or through the dialogue as necessary exposition was weaved into the action and it was far less ham-fisted not to mention hammy we're then introduced to Hellboy in the present-day as he goes to look for his friend agent Ruiz in Tijuana Mexico he finds Ruiz taking part in a wrestling match Ruiz points out his existence to the crowd and goats him into stepping into the ring in the process of fighting Ruiz starts to turn into a vampire to calm him down Hellboy gives us a couple of lines about how they used to play guitar together which is an attempt to give this character some depth before he dies so that that death has some impact but it feels very rushed and forced it he takes for ease his mask off and now the crowd shot themselves Hellboy kills him by accident and as he dies Ruiz whispers something about Hellboy's destiny and the apocalypse which is the only way this scene relates to the rest of the film it's not like the vampire ever mentioned again it would have made more sense to have this scene as the film's prologue it would avoid the early info dumping allow that information to be given through flashbacks later on when appropriate and set the tone for the rest of the movie far more accurately than this pantomime shot devastated by the death of that guy we just met Hellboy wanders off to get drunk discovering his location boy Twitter the BPRD sends two agents to retrieve him only to to bring him in really the guys are [ __ ] diamond they don't think they're coming a bit light and his horns have had a bit of time to grow back in so did it really take them that long to find this important government asset and living proof that the supernatural exists and again why was he not being supervised nor tracked but anyway professor broom wants him back at the BPRD base in Colorado he's feeling shocked that he accidentally killed Ruiz and while broom insists that Ruiz was a monster beyond salvation this plants a seed of doubt in his mind about the binary distinction between men and monsters but there would have been far better ways to do this like if Ruiz his death hadn't been an accident if Ruiz hadn't been attacking people but Hellboy had been ordered to take him out anyway or if a BPRD agent had emerged and killed Ruiz while Hellboy was trying to save him this would have given him a much better reason to question the BPR d's authority and become sympathetic to monsters although it does lead him to question how different he is from the monsters he hunts although clearly there is still a difference because he doesn't hunt people speaking of which broum tells him that the asuras Club an English society of monster hunters have requested their aid to fight Giants and Hellboy casually mentions that he knows rah rah a mera once in the underworld who's the close book I know it's meant to be a throwaway joke but this raises some serious [ __ ] questions so Hellboy arrives in England and goes to the asuras Club where its leader Lord glaring repeats brooms info-dump your father and I go back a long way yeah we know broom already told us that we could just get on with it perhaps we should just show you yes for [ __ ] sake yes it's a curious feature of giants that they occasionally rise from their graves and wreak havoc but then why don't you destroy the bodies and when they go on the hunt why don't they take any equipment with them to destroy the joints forties he then meets Elizabeth Hatton who's a medium and an excuse for even more exposition she explains that she Clara and broom were part of a seance before the Second World War which somehow gave them the power to age slower this is the film's convenient explanation for why broom is still alive 70 years later and why they didn't cast someone who looked appropriate age this seance told them that a creature would come forth to destroy mankind the third thing you worried about did it show up oh yes you did come on we're eighteen and a half minutes into the film it's way too early for this reveal and why is she telling him all this it has absolutely nothing to do with his current mission it's just an excuse for the film to show his origin story which is then told through a flashback legendary Nazi hunter Nocturne arrived guten tag what look I know this character is from the comics but this is ridiculous and it results in the tone of the scene bouncing up and down like a fat yo-yo beware of my claw for I have come to inflict justice on all of you this is meant to be a serious revelation for Hellboy an impactful exposition of his origins but it's completely ruined like this otter [ __ ] just so they could force in this reference to the comics like for [ __ ] sake Patton and broom was sent there to kill whatever creature the Nazis summoned which turns out to be Hellboy broom goes to shoot him but then the vision cuts out so we don't get to see broom hesitate or interact with Hellboy such that he changes his mind and chooses to adopt him unlike in the original given her willingness to talk about all this there's absolutely no reason for her not to show Hellboy more of the vision and therefore help establish brooms motivations it seems to be the case that the film is literally telling rather than showing because she then tells him that broom raised him to be a force for good rather than a weapon of evil something that they could have shown in the flashback but just refused to I guess that would have been too much effort and then she says your father never told you did he why he was really there that night must have slipped his mind this very heavily implies that Hellboy already knew his origin story and the event we just saw except for brooms original intention to kill him so why not just show him that part why would she show him the whole thing if he already knew it what was the point it's just to show the audience and give them some fanservice but this level of shoehorning in information is patronizing and unacceptable and again what the fact does any of this have to do with his mission why is he being told any of this and his this a massive breach of trust between her and broom naba that's ever addressed earlier there was a rather hammy scene between the witch Baba Yaga and a pig monster called GRU Agha try saying that with a full mouth in which both Baba Yaga and far too much information are revealed far too early basically they're both out for revenge against Hellboy so she directs him to where he can find the parts of NIM ways body his first destination is st. Sebastian's monastery where he murders all but one of the monks with a lot of unnecessary gore he then forces the surviving monk to show him the way to the part of NIM way his body stored in the crypt opening to break the seal but Merlin said this during the opening scene so why is this being repeated only the words from a man of God may break this holy seal why does this film constantly assume that we have the attention span of a gadfly with a serious addiction to crack the monk refuses so Gorgoroth rips out his tongue and puts it in his own mouth which somehow allows him to talk using the monks voice the film is trying to be clever with this solution but I feel like this is too big a loophole in the rules there's more to saying words than having a tongue after all even assuming that this works and that Baba Yaga somehow knew and told him the words that he needed to say why the [ __ ] does he make that expression while he's saying them now it's just been established that monsters can't touch Maya and it's very reasonable to think that the men who hunted monsters would have known about this so then why wouldn't they make the entire box out of iron or cover it with iron plates and weld it shut problem solved it's not like they'd ever need to open it again but this is consistent with the trend we'll see throughout the film of people who are supposed to be dedicated to fighting the paranormal being incompetent and irresponsible so far it appropriately enough back at the asuras club that the traditionalist toughs are getting ready for their giant hunt hitting themselves out in really stupid and impractical gear they don't bring any guns or even ranged weapons with them instead relying on those electric Spears which is an idiotic tactic and they're even wearing armor what is the use of armor against a [ __ ] giant it's because they emphasize tradition above all else but this is supposed to be an order that's dedicated to fighting monsters how have they not been wiped out before this why does anyone take them seriously they come across a bunch of people slaughtered by the Giants with trucks pointing towards three Giants as hatton foretold I would be prepared to accept them relying on her foresight rather than modern technology because I guess it's consistent with them being old-fashioned idiots if that foresight were itself consistent but it's not clear how it works because sometimes she can see the future but she didn't foresee them all getting slaughtered by Giants and the club being massacred by a monster all of which then happens so either she didn't tell them in which case why not and [ __ ] her or she didn't foresee these things in which case why not and [ __ ] this movie because I hate it when plot devices like foresight are added into movies and then only used when they're convenient for the story with all the inconvenient consequences ignored anyway they stabbed Hellboy in the back and then you know what this [ __ ] does they've betrayed him because they find it an insult to work with someone they consider a monster and hatton wants him dead so he can't start the apocalypse so again what was the point of her telling him all that if she's just gonna kill him off there's absolutely no benefit to her and if anything it would make him more suspicious so why did she bother except for the audience's benefit it would have been much better to tease this information out gradually with a bigger reveal later on because then we wouldn't yet know exactly why they wanted him dead so we'd be curious but the writers can't allow us to be curious because they think we're idiots your head will make a wonderful addition to art gallery are you [ __ ] kidding me the joints Club comes in from the right of the screen right in front of him you're telling me that not one of these master joint hunters saw or heard these giants approaching over a river where there's plenty of open space for them to be seen the guy on the right even glances across the river two seconds before and apparently sees nothing for only half an hour in and I want to give up already meanwhile ninh way catches up on human culture in a house requisition for her by gargantuan didn't know if you'd be hungry a wife you know a thousand years in a box and I'd be starvin any substance I require get over yourself then she offers some Jaden Smith levels of deep social commentary please sort with singing competitions this could have been interesting if they'd had it affect her motivations and her contempt for Humanity further down the line but this really just feels stapled into the script Hellboy wakes up a bit worse for wear and sees the Giants eating what's left of the Asura skies some giant hunters they were are these joints ninjas so he fights the Giants in what is essentially an extended God of War QuickTime event complete with gratuitous kill animations although with far worse CGI blood after he passes out he gets rescued by some people in a van he wakes up in an apartment owned by Alice who's a CEO who can speak to the dead which is how she knew where he was just just go with it and we really need to talk about her accent this American actress can't do an English accent to save her life switching between American badly imitated cockney and cut-glass English aristocrat often within the same sentence you might want to leave major this kind of thing isn't pretty not gonna lie it was very frustrating for me to listen to I don't really care that they changed the characters race but how hard could it have been to cast an actual English actress he recognizes her because she recites lines from the poem Jabberwocky because she's called Alice like Alice in Wonderland get it it's really clever and subtle this is briefly explained by having him read through the looking-glass in a flashback scene but did she seriously expect him to remember exactly what he was reading 17 years before are they really trying to make this the way he remembers her she says the ghosts of her dead parents told her that she should kill him while she has the chance because he will bring about the end of the world which again we already know also he did save their daughter when she was a baby so that seems a bit harsh but she doesn't kill him for that exact reason instead she gets them under the table because she detects the incoming BPRD raid I just don't know why you were so angry with me you couldn't have knocked that's a very good question because his broom later admits he knows that Alice is a seer so he would know that she would have seen them coming so there was no point smashing their way in and how did they know he was there are they now tracking him and again they're not doing anything to keep him hidden look at all these people who are watching why the fact are they just letting him walk around Hellboy confronts Broome about his intention to kill him in 1944 but Broome dismisses this is not being the right time because he wants to introduce him to ben de mio head of special ops for M 11 basically the English BPRD ed scrying was originally cast for this role but when he discovered that the comic-book character is portrayed as a Japanese American he pulled out so that an Asian actor could be cast instead I mean okay good for him but then why did they change the character to being English rather than American and again why didn't they cast an English actor of Asian descent or at least one who can pull off a decent English accent instead of whatever the fact Daniel Dae Kim is doing and I thought we were supposed to be fighting monsters not working with them who you calling monster power you look in the mirror recently Scarface that meant to be humor they have an ugly contest and then Broome tells Hellboy about the raid on st. Sebastian's which leads to yet more repeated exposition they know that the Osiris Club has possession of one of NIMH waste parts so they head to the club to retrieve it Hellboy insists that Alice comes with them because she's the only person he trusts now honestly with a few rewrites the entire section involving the asuras Club could have been skipped over and the overall plot would have been none the worse for it at the club Alice senses that something is wrong and rushes in to find that everyone has been slaughtered by crush knack wait so this one monster was able to single-handedly kill everyone in this ancient society of Monster Hunters did they not have any more defenses was it just those guys they find that Hatton has been killed too so Alice uses her medium powers to get her to talk which is a pretty cool plot Divali crap that looks horrendous she gives Hellboy a vague prophecy about a queen needing a king and him finding his true destiny but it doesn't need to be vague at this point because we've already been told several times that his destiny is to bring about the end of the world this is all backwards Hellboy fines gamin stealing NIMH ways arm and pins him against a wall Nimoy materializes out nowhere to distract him by talking about his potential and how they don't have to be enemies and they can rule together you know the usual [ __ ] which gives go-go-go-go at the chance to escape or I agree the jokes getting old so from now on he is pig boy Hellboy tells them that he knows Pig boy which leads to a flashback showing us that pig boy was a changeling who swapped with Alice as a child Hellboy discovers the ruse and forces pig-boy to return Alice before he escapes up the chimney these people live in a London tower block what London tower block has a chimney back in the present he'll voice starts to feel sympathy for them way based on nothing maybe she just wants monsters to come out from the shadows and live again so she gets another shot at wiping out mankind all about her not for sure but you know that monsters are bad because as far as we know all the monsters you've encountered so far have been dangerous to people so her coming out from the shadows can't be a good thing but you think she's misunderstood because she gave you a compliment what happened to not trusting anybody this shift in attitude towards monsters has not been justified meanwhile some blind witches who never appear again stitching him way back together while pig-boy explains that he hates Hellboy because he branded him with iron and took away his chance of an easy life as a human child the lazy cat back in London the gang go to the m11 headquarters which is fronted by a fish and chips shop called codswallop which I did appreciate but what happens if some punter off the street wants fish and chips and this big red fella walks in what are they supposed to do then they're doing as bad a job hiding their existence as the writers worship thing out this sprint so they go downstairs and broom shows them all the books they have containing information on em way and expects them to read them but isn't this what they have research teams for this would be like if James Bond had to write his own mission briefings Hellboy questions the BPR DS moral authority acting like a whiny teenager in the process your moral high-ground is found a pile of books again every monster you fought has been dangerous so where is this coming from this shift in his personality has not been properly established he's starting to show sympathy for the monsters because he's starting to think that he is in fact a monster in the original it was established that the world treats him this way so it makes sense but here no one seems to give a [ __ ] so how has he come to this conclusion this could have been set up but all that supporting it is Ruiz who was dangerous and out of control and NIM way who just stroked his ego and on the other side of the scale we have brooms original mission to kill Hellboy which he abandoned obviously are you telling me that these things are supposed to put Hellboy over the edge he doesn't understand why boom spurred him and resents that he has been turned into a weapon against his quote brothers and sisters he didn't seem to care when he was killing the Giants use your other hand you idiot he gets magically transported to Baba Yaga's house then they explain things to each other that they both already know of course about how Hellboy took her eye and banished her to this separate dimension then he barely reacts to her killing children and serving them as food so much for monsters not being evil he makes a bargain with her to find out where NIM Wei is in exchange for one of his eyes she wants to seal the deal with a kiss which looks really gross and takes away from the seriousness of this moment she tells him to go to Pendle Hill to find NIM way and that he has until midnight midnight why is it always midnight he breaks their deal on the technicality so she curses him and throws him back into the real world and this whole scene would have been completely unnecessary if the BPRD was even moderately good at its job glad to see you straighten your priorities out I'm not taking orders from you old man I'm just drawing my own line in the sand a line based on what the kids being killed was a bit much but all the other innocent casualties were fine what are his motivations so they set off for Pendle Hill where NIM Wei is drawing her blood from the tree to regain her power we haven't had da miios backstory yet so Alice asks him about her many years before he was hunting down a monster in Belize with a special forces unit of which he was the only survivor although the violent deaths of his men don't seem to have affected him much and I'm sorry but what the [ __ ] is this an m16 the British Army never used these also why is it just the three of them going up against NIM way if she's such a massive existential threat does the BPRD not have any other field agents on the way to the tree they get attacked by zombies of some kind are they meant to be the soldiers she infected in the prologue are they the witches of Pendle Hill which Alice had just mentioned but in either case why there's so many of them they keep coming until Alice uses her ghost powers to punch their souls out which is pretty cool an army of monsters are at the top of the hill and her old witch's coven shows up which is pretty stupid considering they betrayed her in the prologue she Spurs the main one so that she can serve as a plot device in a few minutes Hellboy shoots her in the face and it looks awful and her entire army immediately runs away just like they did in the prologue [ __ ] hell they're useless she denies pig-boy his vengeance and sends him through a portal she tries to convince Hellboy to be her king but he refuses so she poisons Alice before making her escape before she disappears from the film entirely the surviving which directs them to Merlin the only person capable of curing Alice who conveniently survives long enough for them to slowly make their way to Merlin's cave he cures her that makes Hellboy promise to destroy him way in return that's going yeah maybe so why aren't you going after it that thing doesn't appear again either but at least they acknowledged it this time Merlin puts them both to sleep and then tells Hellboy that his mother was King Arthur's descendant who married a demon and gave birth to him and that he's destined to be king of man and the only one who can wield Excalibur which is the only weapon that can kill him way yeah I know I know just just go with it he goes to take Excalibur but it shows him a vision of the Apocalypse with him slaughtering humanity so he refuses it Merlin is adamant that he taken but why does he not know that bringing about the apocalypse is Hellboy's destiny given who he is and what he already knows how could he not know that is he somehow okay with Hellboy destroying mankind if it means destroying nim way and if so why this is definitely something that should have been addressed but having used the last of his power to bring Excalibur there he withers and dies so we're left none the wiser meanwhile NIM ways made her way to London spreading the plague as she goes so far the British government has failed to pinpoint the origin of the plague which is spreading at an unprecedented rate why is this super secret elite paranormal investigation organisation finding out about this plague by watching the BBC out there there's a fifth-century sorceress and her big monster who want to bring down the curtain on London and the world please tell me where the [ __ ] are you [ __ ] serious why don't you check Twitter ninh way somehow knows where the headquarters is and massacres everyone inside let's just accept at this point that these organizations are too incompetent to defend themselves unpassed caring we've got a girl what's wrong the blood green just took out the BPRD I thought that was Emma Levin when they arrived at their now destroyed headquarters that monitors are all static but when they need a prompt two of them flash a news report that directs them to st. Paul's Cathedral conveniently so they raced through the streets to get there really right now this is not the time to make this sort of joke and did they really repeat the same joke from the original but out of far less appropriate time so that was Emma Levin they head in to confront an in wave but are instead greeted by an incredibly swamp pig boy in the ensuing fight Daniel gets his leg trapped and has to resort to letting himself transform into a monster which is what he's been hiding all along but he gets knocked out pretty quickly having contributed nothing but NIMH Wayne needs Hellboy alive so she takes away pig boy's powers and kills him I don't know if that was meant to be funny but it's really jarring and another massive shift in tone she then smashes Hellboy through the floor revealing Arthur's tomb and Excalibur this was all to soften him up and make him more likely to accept Excalibur in order to kill her since he won't willingly embrace his destiny he still refuses so she kills broom in front of him right after this serious moment the movie ruins the tone again police now I know why even acting like such a [ __ ] dick even if we accept that her character would say that it's just so inappropriate to include this consumed by grief and rage Hellboy takes Excalibur which immediately starts the apocalypse this was either by his conscious choice or it wasn't but either way raises some serious problems in the original Hellboy deliberately starts to bring about the apocalypse because he has to in order to save the woman he loves that makes sense the apocalypse was explicitly required as part of the deal and his decision to bring it about shows him fully crossing over to the dark side to embrace his destiny before them redeeming himself but here he just wants to kill NIMH way and there's no indication whatsoever that he wants to also intentionally bring about the apocalypse on the contrary it's shown quite clearly that he doesn't so why would he choose to do this and assuming it isn't a choice it loses a lot of its impact because it removes both his agency and an important part of his characters identity and instead feels forced and arbitrary just an excuse to show demons rampaging around London show off more gratuitous gore and get some good trailer footage this is only made worse by his going to accept an in ways offer to rule by her side when immediately before he wanted to murder her are you telling me that he immediately forgot the entire reason for why he took Excalibur as soon as he took it which was to kill her because she just killed his dad why does he now want to join her even when the original Hellboy was in a trance like this he didn't immediately forget the purpose for which he embraced the dark side and fell into the trance in the first place it's not like the sword wiped his memory because he recognizes his father when Alice channels his soul through her body so what's the explanation brooms ghost tells Hellboy that he's a good man and to start acting like it and stop being a Moody edge Lord that he can decide for himself what he is and not rely on prophecies and this convinces him to cut off her head and end the apocalypse so he does still have some agency I could have accepted him bringing about the apocalypse because he was brainwashed by the sword as lame as that is if they were at least consistent with it but they're not so [ __ ] it oh and talk about an anti-climax neither of them gets a chance to use their considerable powers in a final confrontation just one swing and it's over what a [ __ ] letdown she gives the cliched spiel about how it isn't over and how they're still destined to be together while you're don't you [ __ ] say it my feelings exactly Hellboy still questions why Broome didn't kill him as a baby so Broome explains that it was because he thought Hellboy would be mankind's best hope against the darkness and that raising him as his son changed him for the better so he did want to turn him into a weapon and he didn't see something good within Hellboy himself that's kind of depressing we skipped forward to Siberia six months later I guess because they needed a little more action and fanservice they tacked on a scene where they take out some kind of cult I think de mio transforms again but when he transforms back he still has all his clothes on which is really weird and then right at the end they find Abe Sapien very optimistically teasing a sequel which is unlikely to ever happen given the film's critical and financial failure Milla Jovovich was confident that the film will become a cult classic but I carry much doubt that Hellboy 2019 isn't a complete and utter failure it does have its good moments but the film is confused about what it wanted to be with elements of horror action and comedy mushed together into a jumbled up mess which embodies none of those elements particularly well it's not very scary it's not very funny and while some of the action is enjoyable it's not entertaining enough to justify a viewing even if you're a die-hard fan of this IP if you want to have a good time stick with the del Toro films I'd like to think that the failure of Hellboy 2019 represents what I hope is another nail in the coffin of this recent trend of inferior cash-grab reboots because as lazy and cynical as these reboots are they're ultimately justified by the audience's wallets and it's ultimately up to us to vote with but some of them [ __ ] out money so this practice won't be going away anytime soon and I suppose neither will I see you next time that's it for you soon many thanks to Avery Swanson for helping me edit this one he's a good lad and he makes youtube videos so go check him out once again a huge shout out to all of my lovely supporters on patreon if you like my stuff consider becoming a patron yourself if you're still here you deserve a medal or something because Jesus Christ this one was long feel free to follow me on stuff and join my public discord server links to all that stuff are down below thanks again folks and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 1,675,215

Rating: 4.8470812 out of 5

Keywords: Hellboy, Hellboy 2019, Hellboy 2019 Review, Hellboy Movie Review, Cynical Reviews, Cynical Reviews Hellboy, Cynical CJ, Cynical CJ Hellboy, Hellboy Review, Hellboy Reboot, Hellbot Reboot Review, David Harbour, Neil Marshall, Guillermo Del Toro, Ron Perlman, Mike Mignola, Movie Review, Film Review, Commentary, Critique, Satire, Parody, Bad Movie, Bad Reboot, Hellboy Comic

Id: SI3_xN2tICM

Length: 38min 53sec (2333 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ligamentperson45]

Great Job on the video!

[u/Genericshitusername]

Cool and good

[u/Viking_Lordbeast]

I liked the video but the dog barking self-censorship can get a bit annoying.