The original "Hellboy" (2004) was a very dark yet very entertaining film interpretation written and directed by Guillermo del Toro of a graphic novel by Mike Mignola about a good-natured, red-skinned demon with chopped off horns on his forehead, a right hand made of stone and long tail. There was a sequel "Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)," also written and directed by del Toro. But for this third reboot, neither del Toro nor actor Ron Perlman are participating. I guess we'll have to brace ourselves for a big change.
This new film starts with an introductory sequence about the powerful, evil Blood Queen Nimue who was contained by King Arthur when he chopped her up with into many pieces and buried each part in separate boxes in different parts of the country. Of course, you know that she will not remain in pieces forever. Nimue will eventually make a big comeback to resurrect herself, and our hero Hellboy will come forth against all odds to fight her.
The computer-generated imagery of this movie were very cartoonish, so the whole movie felt very cartoonish, true to its comic book roots. There was still fun, but of a different sort -- more immature, shallower, geekier. There were so many things going on, with action scenes going haywire here and there, flashing forward and backward in time and dimensions, with Hellboy fighting different sorts of bad guys, from a winged vampire masked wrestler, a bloodthirsty wild boar monster, knights with electric gadgets, man-eating giants, and various other denizens of hell. If you were not familiar with Hellboy comic lore, things can get a bit complicated and confusing.
The Hellboy as portrayed by "Stranger Things" star David Harbour was younger and rasher than Perlman's, adding to the juvenile vibe of the film. Ian McShane played Hellboy's adopted father Trevor Bruttenholm, founder of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense). Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim played Hellboy's partners in action, Alice Monaghan and Ben Daimio, each with their own special abilities. Milla Jovovich played the destructive queen of the underworld Nimue who desired human apocalypse. America's Got Talent contortionist Troy James got to play the slinky and scary Russian witch Baba Yaga at her disgusting dinner party.
This film is Rated R so it was no-holds-barred in terms of profanity of language and the wanton bloodiness of the carnage. The way blood had been splattering left and right from the start, you actually get numbed about the violence by a certain point. By the time when that scene where flying monsters were tearing human bodies apart in the most grisly ways, the shock value, we were not shocked anymore. In fact those scenes even felt so over-the-top funny. 6/10.
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