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I saw it this afternoon and it is GOOD!  Be prepared to laugh your ass off. Plenty of action, one liners, a little romance, and just the right amount of character development.

del Toro is to be admired for giving comics the proper respect as a story telling art form.

And by the way, Ron Perlman RULES!

Just amazing.  The lighting is dead on.  Ron Perlman is awesome.  It has pancakes, the Corpse, and lines like "That's all for you." About as close as humanly possible to capturing the look and character of the comic.

Sounds like a good one. My daughter is going to see it tonight. She'll let me know.

Brother R. and I were supposed to go see this one but I got dragged along by a few local friends and I must say, damn! this film kicked ass!

I kept wishing I had read the comics beforehand but nevertheless, it was a fun time.

Go see it!

I have no complaints about it. I thought it was a very good representation of the comic, without being the comic.  Ron pearlmen was great in it, he made you forget all the makeup.  Abe Sapien looked top notch too.

Saw it twice this weekend, going again on Tuesday night, probably gonna see it some more after that.   Let's hope the vision of the Ogdru Jahad-ruled future is a little glimpse of what we'll see in the "Mountains of Madness" film Del Toro is planning now that Hellboy crushed the box office with the Right Hand of Doom.


Brother R

Brother Ragnarok wrote:

> Let's hope the
> vision of the Ogdru Jahad-ruled future is a little glimpse of
> what we'll see in the "Mountains of Madness" film Del Toro is
> planning now that Hellboy crushed the box office with the Right
> Hand of Doom.

No kidding.  That was the closest to perfect vision of a Lovecraftian apocalypse that has ever been committed to film!  Toro Toro!

I absolutely loved the flick.  Went with my wife and some friends over the weekend, and had a complete blast!

Ron Perlman was the perfect person to play Hellboy.  And, the costume for Hellboy was spot on.  Thankfully there actually was a little bit of character development throughout, but not too much.  

Only problem I had with it was the CGI.  I know that Del Toro is a big fan of CGI, but sometimes it seems overused.  You can also really tell that it was directed by Del Toro due to the fact that quite a bit of it looks very similar to Blade II.

I will say though, that one of the bad guys was completely awesome.  A bad guy who never says anything and *spoilers* has no eye lids or lips!?  And is a zombie!? *end spoilers*

On the downside though, the film did feel a little long eventhough it never really stopped with the action.  I also had a little problem with Abe Sapien.  Although the CGI of the character was nearly flawless, the voice kept bothering me.  Every time he spoke, I could only see Niles Crane from Fraiser being as David Hyde Pierce is both characters.  He did give Sapien a nice sophisticated demeanor though.

Overall it is a fantastic film, that is sure to be a classic among comic book and action fans.

Actually Del Toro isn't that big a CGI fan.  He likes to use it only as a last resort, as an accent to practical effects.  They only (well, it's only for a movie like this) had $60 mil. and not a great deal of time to get this movie made, so they had to use more CGI, but it could have been a lot worse.  I give them heavy props for actually making Sammael primarily a suit effect.

Brother R

Actually Brother R., Hellboy was almost 6 years in the making!

Here's a quote from that article:

"In the end, it took almost six years to make this film. Through careful attention to detail in scripting, casting, and visual coordination, del Toro was able to guide "Hellboy" onto the screen, blending his vision with Mignola's creation."

Go here to read the entire article on Howstuffworks.com:  

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hellboy.htm



Post Edited (04-06-04 19:46)

Being a big Hellboy fan i was extremely let down. I thought the lighting was all off, and the one-liners fell flat. It just moved from one CGI monster brawl to another, I just dont think the material translated well. Ron Pearlman, though, looked exactly like the comic book, so that is a plus. I thought there was one really amazing shot in the entire movie, that was when Hellboy was in the grave reviving the corpse. The detail was stunning if only the rest of the movie had been as enjoyable as those few frames.

I really get tired of  this damned harping about  CG effects.  Nine tenths of CG effects are undetectable.  This doesn't  bother me as much as  knowing it's just a guy in a suit.  They did a very good job of  blending the two in this movie.

Effects don't bother me as much as having a crappy story, which Hellboy did not.  If I can't care about the characters,  I wouldn't care if they summoned up a real demon and had him play  one  the characters.  CG is here to stay so get used to it!

it's funny because if people weren't complaining about CGI then they'd complain about "the horrible rubber suit"

Funny, those "horrible" rubber suits were some of the best I've ever seen.  And ASH, it took a long time to get the movie to the screen because it took them forever to find a studio that would give them the control they desired.  It spent six years in development, but the actual shooting and post-prod effects time wasn't anywhere near six years.

Brother R

They also took a big hit in the  budget because he want Perlman in lead.

It isn't the use of CGI I'm complaining about. My complaint is that is seems a decent genre flick can't be made without taking the method to the extreme. I think there are ways to subtly incorperate special F/X so people will say "How'd they do that?" rather than "That's computer effects and that's make up effects."

wuggles451 wrote:

> It isn't the use of CGI I'm complaining about. My complaint is
> that is seems a decent genre flick can't be made without taking
> the method to the extreme.

An excellent example of superlative use of CGI can be seen in another Guillermo del Toro film, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, that barely makes use of it at all, and when it does it is absolutely perfect IMO.

As far as action films goes I have to pretty much agree with you about taking it to the extreme.  HELLBOY didn't bother me a bit though in that respect.

Taking CGI to the extreme would be the "Licker" monster at the end of the "Resident Evil" movie.

I like that film but that monster was done terribly.