In the 2000s, celebrated director Guillermo del Toro released two Hellboy movies, both of which were critically acclaimed and huge hits amongst fans of the character. And while a third film in the series could have gone in one of so many different directions, against fans' wishes, Lionsgate decided to reboot the franchise.
The result was the critically-scathed 2019 Hellboy, which had sloppy editing and a narrative built like a house of cards. But there are still some fascinating and original elements in it, and in some areas, the reboot even sures del Toro's superhero classics.
The Giant Fight Sequence
The action scenes in the Hellboy reboot are patchy at best, and one of the things the film was heavily criticized for was its choppy editing in the fight sequences. But one fight scene stands out as being hugely entertaining even despite the rough way it was cut together.
When Hellboy runs into three giants sitting around a pile of dead humans, he's left to his own devices to take them down. It leads to so many great little moments, such as Hellboy literally punching through a giant's eyeball with the Right Hand of Doom and slicing another giant in half with a 20-foot-long sword. It's as close as it gets to a Mortal Kombat fatality.
David Harbour's Performance
There's no denying how great of a job Rob Perlman did in Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies, and to many fans, he is irreplaceable. However, the casting director made the best choice possible for the reboot, as David Harbour makes audiences almost forget how believable Perlman was.
The David Harbour deserves another shot as Hellboy, but given the fact that the 2009 movie was a box office bomb and barely made back its budget, the chances of a sequel getting green-lit are slim to none.
The Elevator Scene
Another error Hellboy made was trying too much to be a comedy. Most of the jokes land flat and are completely out of place. However, there is one scene that is hilarious because of how it brilliantly showcases the titular character's anger at even the smallest things.
Hellboy is obviously an angry character and it doesn't take much to antagonize him, but in the funniest scene in the movie, it's an elevator that triggers his ferocity. The lift goes down instead of up, and Hellboy repeatedly hits the elevator's buttons while screaming "up!" But the polite, automated, female voice of the elevator repeatedly screams "down!" back at him.
The Changeling
The lore of the Hellboy comic books perfectly mixes new ideas and existing folklore, and one of the best examples of that is the inclusion of changelings. Changelings come from European folklore and are ugly offsprings of fairies and elves. They abduct human babies and gift them to the devil, and after that, they take the form of that baby and its role in the family.
In Hellboy, the titular character discovers a changeling, Gruagach, and when it devolves into its original form, it's one of the most shocking, weird, and thrilling moments of the movie. Between the scuffle that the changeling and Hellboy get into, the almost negotiation-like talk they have, and the parent's bewildered response, the amusing sequence never gets old.
The B.P.R.D. Tease
Though Hellboy is the big appeal, he's actually a part of a superhero team named The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence, or B.P.R.D. for short. The original 2000s movies saw the character working with his fellow superheroes in the B.P.R.D., which is why 2004's Hellboy is underrated.
The 2019 movie only hints at it, and the tease showed the potential that the superhero team could have in this newly built world. In the movie's final scene, Hellboy, Damio, and Alice raid the Oannes Society and brutally murder anyone on sight. And, impressively, it's all one shot, as the camera whizzes between the characters using their unique abilities to rip the Oannes apart.
The Character Designs
The giants and the changeling scenes are two of the most standout moments in the movie, not just because they're entertaining, but because the character designs are so detailed. There are so many other amazing character designs crammed into the movie too. The vampire Esteban Ruiz is a standout, as he grows more and more imposing, standing in the middle of a boxing ring with his gangly wings spanning the whole circumference of it.
There's also Baba Yaga's house, which is a giant sentient home that stands on chicken legs, and its surreal nature is so welcoming. There are tons of great monsters in 2004's Hellboy, but the reboot gives the original a run for its money. And even Baby Hellboy looks equally adorable and terrifying.
Hellboy Weilding Excaliber
In the final act in Hellboy, when he goes head-to-head with Nimue, he finally pulls Excaliber out of the stone, and what follows is the most epic moment in the Hellboy franchise. Demons emerge from hell whilst Hellboy's horns grow back and a fiery crown appears above his head.
Excaliber is set alight and the character genuinely looks like he has been sent from hell to do the devil's work. While the CGI does slightly hold the transformation back from being a truly classic moment, there's no doubt that audiences want to see more of Hellboy's devilish transformation.
The Hard R Rating
The 2000s Hellboy movies were rated PG-13, meaning that though they were faithful to the comic books and a joy to watch, they couldn't totally tap into the brutality of Hellboy. However, the 2019 reboot becomes a full-on gore-fest at certain points.
There are times when Hellboy uses his signature gun, the oversized four-round revolver The Samaritan, to shoot enemies in the head, and the results are literally explosive. Though fans were pressuring the studio to make Hellboy 3, it would never have been as violent, gruesome, or as vulgar as the 2019 film.
The Metal Aesthetic
2019's Hellboy doesn't hold back. It's full of fire, violence, foul language, and it's backed by a rock and metal soundtrack. It's exactly that kind of music that audiences would imagine hearing when entering the fiery gates of hell.
When Hellboy transforms at the end, with his fiery crown and grown-out horns, it's the most metal thing imaginable. So when rock music is playing in the background, it's so on-the-nose but also unashamedly doubles down on the aesthetic. It's almost as if Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny was parodying this movie when Dave Grohl appeared as the devil, only it was released 13 years earlier.
