Hellboy
Dir: Neil Marshall
2019
**
Following
the success of 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, director Guillermo Del Toro
had expressed interest in a sequel, saying, "I think we would all come
back to do a third Hellboy, if they can wait for me to get out
of Middle-Earth, but we don't know. Ron may want to do it sooner, but I
certainly know where we're going with the movie on the third one.” Indeed, the
original idea was always to make a trilogy of films. In May 2010, Guillermo del
Toro dropped out of directing The Hobbit and it felt like good news to
Hellboy fans. Just a mounth later Del Toro speculated that Hellboy
III might happen after his next project, but said that the screenplay had
yet to be written. And then nothing. It was two years later when, inspired by a
recent Make-A-Wish function in which Ron Perlman appeared in full
Hellboy makeup for a terminally ill boy, Del Toro stated, "I can say
publicly that now we are together in trying to do Hellboy 3". Again,
nothing. For the next few years Ron Pearlman would repeat his desire to make a
third film while Del Toro would tease but never commit to actually making it.
At one point Pearlman gave a passionate interview saying “For me to
do Hellboy 3, well it could kill me – in terms of physically demanding,
for a guy my age, but it's worth it because anyone who sits and listens to
Guillermo's version of how this thing ends is completely seduced. It's so
theatrical and compelling and if you liked the first two movies in any way,
shape or form, this is the ultimate one-two punch." Then, in 2015, del
Toro said that Legendary Pictures might fund Hellboy
3 if Pacific Rim Uprising does well at the box office: “The hard
fact is that the movie’s going to need about $120 million and there’s nobody
knocking down our doors to give it to us. It's a little
beyond Kickstarter.” After del Toro left the director's chair
for Pacific Rim Uprising, the deal fell through. We all knew it then but
in February 2017, Del Toro announced via Twitter, "Must report that 100%
Hellboy 3 will not happen." It felt like a death, albeit an expected one.
There were rumors of a spin-off however that kept the hardcore fans hopeful. In
2010, Hellboy screenwriter Peter Briggs was asked by
Universal to script a spin-off centering on Prince Nuada from Hellyboy II, and
provisionally agreed that Briggs could direct the film in New Zealand. Briggs
began work on an outline with co-writer Aaron Mason. Titled Hellboy:
Silverlance, the script was a B.P.R.D. story featuring Abe Sapien as
the main character with Hellboy in a supporting role. Moving into the new
B.P.R.D. headquarters in Colorado, Abe is troubled by his psychic connection
with Princess Nuala, and begins researching the elves' history. The film would
have shown Nuada's adventures throughout history, including his rivalry with a
fairy courtier who orchestrates Nuada's exile in hopes of marrying Nuala and
seizing control of the fairy kingdom; Nuada first meeting Mister Wink by saving
him from a troupe of soldiers during the Spanish Inquisition; and Nuada
in Nazi Germany, engineering a pact to keep various supernatural entities
safe during World War II (with Nuada and Kroenen fighting in a friendly
match for Project Ragnarok men.) Doug Jones would have played both Abe and the
Angel of Death, who strikes a bargain with Nuada. Rupert Evans's Agent
Myers would also have returned. The story climaxed at the new B.P.R.D.
headquarters, with the return of Rasputin's summoning gauntlet. Universal
wanted to proceed with the project, but it emerged that del Toro's Hellboy
3 was still a possibility, so Silverlance was shelved. In 2015,
Briggs received another call from Universal, saying that Hellboy 3 had
been cancelled and asking him and Mason to return for a
reworked Silverlance, with producer Lawrence Gordon involved.
The caveat was that Hellboy could not appear, but the writers managed to get
the character a cameo appearance at the climax. If successful, the film would
have launched a From the Files of the B.P.R.D. spin-off series but in
May 2017, Briggs affirmed that, with the announcement of
a Hellboy reboot, the Silverlance project was dead. A
fucking reboot. You had one of the the world’s greatest directors, who had made
two amazing films already, with an actor born to play the lead character ready
to suit up once more, and you decide a reboot is the best way forward? It is
confusing how studios seem to loose money because they are too scared of loosing
money. It’s the same old story. Mignola at least was writing the new film and
it was a t first a follow on film but Perlman was unwilling to star without del
Toro’s involvement, so when Neil Marshall signed up as director, it
was decided that the new film would be a reboot. In May 2017, Mignola
announced that the reboot, then titled Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen,
would be directed by Neil Marshall and star Stranger Thing’s David
Harbour as the eponymous character. Mignola also stated that the film would
have an R rating. Writer Andrew Cosby had stated that the film will be a
"darker, more gruesome version of Hellboy." Harbour further
elaborated on the film's R-rating, stating, "This movie is gory, I mean
it's like a horror movie. There's a lot of blood in it. It's brutal."
Mignola had stated that he would have minimal involvement with the reboot,
acting more as a co-executive producer and without involvement in the
pre-production or design, stating, "When the decision was made to do another
movie, I got involved, basically saying, 'If you're going to do that story,
don't do this, or that, change this, and that.' I helped to steer it.” In
August 2017, the film dropped the subtitle Rise of the Blood
Queen and was re-titled simply as Hellboy. Unbelievable. That said, I
quite like Neil Marshall and while no one else could ever play Hellboy other
than Ron Pearlman, the casting of David Harbour felt pretty inspired. I
genuinely gave it a chance, mainly due to Harbour, but I found it a let down.
It incorporated some of my Hellboy favourites including Darkness
Calls, The Wild Hunt, The Storm and the Fury and Hellboy in
Mexico but it missed out so many of the good bits. It was like listening to
music with my mate in his car. He always has his music on random, which is
good, and he likes the same music that I do, which is also good, but he never
listens to the full song. He gets bored and skips to the next before each song
has ended and that is what this reboot felt like. It looked good visually but
there was also something lacking, something del Toro had tapped into early on,
that right mix of film and comic book imagery. I actually loved David Harbour’s
performance and I really liked Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan. I also
enjoyed Milla Jovovich’s performance as the Blood Queen but I’m
afraid Ian McShane’s Trevor Bruttenholm was nowhere near as lovable as
John Hurt’s. I respect that they brought back the original blood and gore
of the comics, and Neil Marshall was certainly the right director in this
regard, but it was far too much to stomach. Hellboy is a lot of things but I
don’t think the comic should have ever become a horror film. Since the film’s
release and after the negative feedback, Harbour has responded by saying
"We did our best, but there's so many voices that go into these things and
they're not always going to work out. I did what I could do and I feel proud of
what I did, but ultimately I'm not in control of a lot of those things."
Harbour also felt the film was unfairly compared to Marvel films,
stating: "So everybody goes chocolate is delicious and these guys make the
best chocolate. So as you judge the movies, it's like, 'Well it's not as
chocolatey as this, this does not taste like chocolate at all.’ And I sort of
want a world where there's more flavors than just comparisons to chocolate. So
in that way when Hellboy is viewed on the chocolate spectrum, it does very
poorly." I completely agree, although I don’t like the chocolate allegory.
The fact that is isn’t like the Marvel films is one of its strengths but unlike
the first film, it hasn’t been overlooked for what it is. We’re comparing it to
the original film, made fifteen years previous, that kicks its backside right
out of the stratosphere. It hinted that we’d see Abe in the sequel but I can’t see
a sequel happening. Maybe they should have had Abe in the film, although I
wonder whether he would have fit. When Abe doesn’t fit in a Hellboy film you’re
in trouble.
