Hellboy (2019)

“Some dads give their kids Legos.”

Filmology Rating: 1 out of 4

I have so much respect for Guillermo del Toro now. It's another Hellboy film. The last one was crushed by "The Dark Knight" and this new installment will be crushed by "Avengers: Endgame." It's like poetry, it rhymes.

This new film is like someone had the task of taking the first two Hellboy movies and mashing them into one film while also dumping seven puzzles on the floor and asking the screenwriter to put it all together in under an hour.

To put this lightly, this is one of the most incomprehensible theatrical films I have ever seen. It felt as if the film was beating me with stupidity to the point of submission and defeat to where I sat there for two hours taking a beating.

This is the type of film that could be shown in film school and used as an example of how not to make a movie. So it's time to teach.

Structure: usually in a fantasy film such as this, the audience has no idea what this world is, so you need to make it as simple as possible. "Brevity is the soul of wit" -Shakespeare. It pretty much means not to over complicate the stuff that's already really complicated. A standard three act structure works really well in this genre. But this film has as much structure as Play Doh.

Protagonist: the first Hellboy had a protagonist and he did feel tacked on, but it was a way of viewing this new and magical world. A protagonist is what the audience relates to as they experience magical things like Luke Skywalker and any character in a Spielberg movie. But in this new "Hellboy" we immediately start with Hellboy doing something we have no knowledge of and never are we given a character to view this narrative through. So the audience is just watching Hellboy do "stuff." There is also no establishment of status-quo. In the fantasy genre, you usually need to establish to the audience as to what is normal life for this world. That way when the plot moves along and things start to happen, you notice them as well. It's basic storytelling. Without it, you're audience is lost. I'm not saying every movie needs to do these things, but it's a lot better than screwing it all up with fifty million dollars.

There is also an issue with tone. The director himself stated that this is more of a horror film. That can be shown through its R rating and constant crutch of spraying blood everywhere. But this film also tries to be a fun comedy with Hellboy being a mumbling meathead. You also cannot understand what he's saying half of the time. But this film just doesn't know what it wants to be. So it tries to be everything and it fails at everything.

I often discuss action and how it needs to have a purpose. It needs to either serve as a storytelling device or push the story forward. In this film, there is scene after scene of pointless action just because Hellboy needs to be doing something.

There is an attempt to connect the Hellboy series to the King Arthur legend which one of the most desperate things I have ever seen. The film falls so far into incompetence that it would take multiple viewings to understand what is truly happening. But one time watching it was enough. Everything in this film is wrong. Other than David Harbour who was fine. "Its so dense, every single image has so many things going on" -Rick McCallum (producer of the Star Wars prequels).

Rating: Let It Burn

-Nolan