Monday Movie Mania - Hellboy (2019)

With the low box office and bad reviews, I took DH to see Hellboy (2019) before it gets washed away in next week's tsunami of Avengers: Endgame. I want to say the critics were wrong about this movie. I really, REALLY do.

*sigh*


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SPOILERS


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PROS
1) Kudos to Ed Skrein for bowing out as Ben Daimio once he learned the character was of Asian decent.

2) I totally agree with Mila Jovovich that a better cast could not have been assembled. Nor do I blame the cast for the movie's missteps. They did the best they could with what they were given. Not to mention, I've seen the entire cast, except for Sasha Lane, in other things and I know these people can act!


CONS
1) The producers should never have put Ed Skrein in the position where he felt he had to quit. Read the fucking source material and quit white-washing, people!

2) The writing, directing, and editing were abysmal. The story made no sense unless you are a hardcore Hellboy fan, and you read the original comics. Even then, they crammed at least six different storylines together and made a complete hash of all of them

3) The lack of humor. It wasn't for lack of trying, especially on David Harbour's part.

4) I can't believe I'm about to write this, but there was too much gratuitous swearing and gore. When it is essential to the story, I can totally get behind it, like in Deadpool. This was a teen boy just saying "Fuck" to get a rise out of his dad. Or the five-minute scene of demons ripping apart humans. We got it with the first one, guys.

5) Relying too much on CGI in place of story. This is getting old fast. Don't get me wrong. CGI allows us to tell stories we can't with conventional SPFX, but the key words there are "tell stories". Flashy pictures mean very little in this medium when it's not telling a coherent tale.


Overall, I have to say dig out copies of the Guillermo del Toro/Ron Perlman run on Hellboy. They don't make you scream, "What the fuck!" at the screen. Hellboy (2019) barely earned 2 out of 10 stars. And one of those points is for a shirtless Daniel Dae Kim.