Today on the 5: I had somewhat forgotten that a new Hellboy movie was on the way until a new trailer debuted this week. While nothing in this latest entry seems aimed at recreating the magnficence that Guillermo del Toro achieved, I'm not as down on this as others seem to be.
Ozone Nightmare
Maybe Less Will Be More
Welcome to your daily five for Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024. I remember that there was an announcement that there was going to be a new Hellboy film coming based on the crooked man story and honestly, I remembered, I remember hearing about it and then I kind of forgot about it. I wasn't really thinking about it and I didn't even know anything about it who was involved anything like that. I knew it was going to be a basically a new team because the Neil Marshall film, I believe that's the filmmaker's name was considered a failure and that I didn't even realize it was going to be a lower budget film all of it makes complete sense. And so I saw that there was a trailer for it with some still images. I looked at the still images and read a little bit about it and I thought, okay, the still images didn't do a lot for me. The lower budget thing doesn't put me off the way I think some people are immediately put off by that. You know, I've reviewed a lot of lower budget films and I've found a lot to liken them. I don't care if I can see the seams on a movie if it feels like it's done with intention and sincere effort and that they tell a good story. So the budget really doesn't matter to me. You'll see some comments where people are saying, oh, I see this is going to be a story where Hellboy just walks around the woods. Well, I got news for you as somebody who's read a lot of Hellboy stories. There are stories where Hellboy just wanders around in the woods. Yes, there are stories with giant castles and monkey men with, you know, Hitler brains and all that stuff. There's all the wild grandiose epic stuff, but there are also smaller stories and they tend to be the shorter ones. So hopefully this is like a 90 minute movie. I'm hoping they're not trying to stretch this thing out. But there are smaller stories that are more or less Hellboy wandering around the woods. That does not immediately mean you can't tell a good Hellboy story. If you do it the right way, you don't need a lot to make a Hellboy story good. You just need a good person playing Hellboy and an interesting or really scary story. And not all the Hellboy stories are even scary. Some of them are funny. Some of they're just kind of intriguing, you know, made up lore. So there's a lot of ways Hellboy can move within a film to make it work. So nothing about what I read or the fact that it's a new actor really put me off. But I thought, let me watch the trailer because the still images looked fine but didn't really show much promise. But that's still images. That's not a movie. When I talk about a photography project, we're talking about a film or whatever they've shot it on. So I watched the trailer and at the end of it, I thought, okay, you know, I'm I'm pretty neutral on this. This could be good. Do I think it's going to be anywhere near as good as the del Toro films? No, that's the biggest problem movie like this has. It's very similar to the things I was saying about Furiosa is if you go in and you're comparing it to the landmark film or films that came before, of course, it's going to be lesser. Del Toro is one of those filmmakers who just has a very distinct vision. It's as if you were trying to make a sequel to a racer head. Even if it's the best sequel to a racer head you ever made, if David Lynch isn't directing it, it's not ever going to live up to what that previous film was, even if the movie itself is good. Now, that's probably a bad example because a racer head is such a personal thing for Lynch. But still, my point stands is I don't think it's fair to judge a movie if it's made with sincere effort. I have no reason to believe anybody involved in this isn't trying to make the best Hellboy film they can with what they have. If that's what they're doing, then there's no reason I can enjoy it. Again, I'm just putting the del Toro films aside because I don't know that we're ever going to get a Hellboy film that's anywhere near as good as those first two. That's one of those examples where you took the exact right filmmaker and matched it to the right material and you got something truly magnificent and special and unique. That doesn't mean you can't tell any more stories in there. It just means that, yeah, it's going to be hard to ever match that, but it doesn't mean it can't be done. It may just be a very different Hellboy film. And so I'm not going to write this off. And again, the trailer looked fine. Did it look really, really amazing? No, but if they're on a lower budget and they have to work with what they have, then I'm going to allow that as a reason to go, okay, yeah, we're not going to get giant over the top set pieces. Maybe we don't need them. And so all I'm saying, I'm not saying it's going to be any good. It may come out and it may stink. It might be terrible. Might be everything a lot of the people in the comments are saying it is, but it also might not be. And I think it's really, you know, one of the things that I wish people would do more of is to realign their expectations based on what is trying to be done as opposed to what came before or what we've sort of been conditioned to expect movies to be. They don't all have to be $300 million over the top, you know, blockbuster things that are going to be making a billion dollars at the box office. Sometimes movies can be small and they can be intimate and they can be great. I saw the TV glow as a great example. That's not going to be a, you're not making $2 billion off that movie. And yet it's powerful. It feels like it's spoken with a very distinct voice that had something to say. And there's no reason that Hellboy couldn't be the same. If the people involved in this dearly loved the material and are going to do their best to realize that material, this story, then it may be very, very entertaining even if it is not going to be, you know, the golden army. That's okay. We can have movies like this. So I'm staying neutral on this and I'm hoping it's going to be really good later.