Starring David Harbour of Stranger Things fame
Seen in theater, where I thought I lost my wallet (I found it)
Non-spoiler thoughts
This is a reboot of the underperforming but well received Guillermo Del Toro movies from a whole 15 years ago and I’m not exactly sure what the point was. (Money, obviously, but otherwise). Most reboots are dumb, but I at least sorta understand it if they’re either updating special effects (Planet of the Apes) or if they’re going for a different tone (Batman Begins). This Hellboy reboot somehow does neither. It has worse effects than the 2004 original and the tone is all over the place and unappealing. The only decent things about the film were ripped straight out of the source material or the originals (I’ve never read the comics, so I can’t say for sure), in which case, what’s the point of re-doing it? Especially since the Del Toro films weren’t exactly raking in the bucks, so it wasn’t an easy cash grab.
Maybe I’m being too hard on the studio. I had sort of high hopes for this, as I think Hellboy is a great property. The idea of this demon-man working for the paranormal police while grappling with his humanity is perfect for a movie. It’s why I’m so fond of the Del Toro ones, even though I don’t think they quite figured it out either. But the tone of this movie is super confusing. It wants to be mature and edgy, but is also campy and full of dad-jokes. Its randomly gorey but consistently dull. Somehow. Hellboy himself is pretty cool in this, and Harbour does his best, but it is barely a change from the superior Perlman take on the character. And Harbour couldn’t do anything to improve the mediocre, if not outright bad, supporting characters surrounding him. The main villain is fine I guess, but her weird minions are uninspired and aggravating to watch on screen. The sidekick characters are very meh and the dad does nothing to improve the story.
Now to be fair (note: this will still not sound fair), there aren’t actually any bad moments in the movie. No cringe-inducing scenes or actively stupid plot points. There just aren’t any good moments either. Just a long series of unmemorable set pieces interspersed with lifeless exposition. Again, not bad. Just not good. So if you have a low enough bar and the premise tickles your interest, you’re in great shape with this one.
Spoiler thoughts
The King Arthur stuff was just stupid. I know I said above there were no stupid plot points, and that’s true, as there were no particular moments dealing with Arthurian legend that I thought were egregious, but in general, the inclusion of Arthur into Hellboy’s backstory is a lot less clever and a lot more cliche than I imagine they expected it to be. And I say this as someone who loves King Arthur so much that he named two cats after Arthur characters. (RIP Merlin). Studios need to stop thinking Arthur references will make their story better. It’s not like King Arthur movies even do well on their own.
I really couldn’t stand the Ben character (the one who randomly turns into a leopard for some reason) and I was rooting for him to die. Alas.
Overall, this movie came across as a mish mash rip-off of other popular movies. The music in general was pretty bad, but there were several needle-drop songs that were clearly inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy but lacked Gunn’s awareness of when to use them. Two or three haphazard lines of meta dialogue were trying to appeal to the Deadpool crowd (because that’s what we need, more mediocre Deadpool movies). And despite being a reboot, certain aesthetic choices were Del Toro castoffs. Again, what was the point of this?
One good thing: I like the idea of modern Knights Templar who primarily hunt giants.
One bad thing: Those pig demon…things. Come on.
Should you care? If you’re the sort of person who likes movies like this, I doubt you care about a snob like me anyway. (So no).
57/100
If you liked this, you probably already like Men in Black, and I think this is in line with the very poorly aged Blade films.
Greg Watched That 
