I have to admit that a bit of shine is off my golden boys.
I freak'n LOVE the work of Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola and since they are both credited as writing the screenplay for this film I can't let mike off the hook totally here it would seem. But I was a touch let down by Hellboy II... Maybe my expectations were to high.
It was fun, it was visually stunning as you would expect, but the story just cut too many corners (My friend Leslie pointed out the abrupt and poorly explored change of attitude in one character as something that bothered her and thats a perfect example.) and the film overall treated the source material too lightly for my taste. I suspect they gave in to pressure to make a commercially viable film and sacrificed even more of the tone of the oftentimes heartbreaking work of Mike Mignola than even the first film did.
I know all the arguments about making graphic novels and comics into films and how you have to change them to suit the audience... but you know what? Maybe its time we took back film from the "audience" which is actually just a metaphor for "box office" which is in turn a metaphor for greed.
Make smaller films, make them cheaper, have less people go see them and keep them running for longer periods of time, convert more theaters to digital to accommodate quickly adjusting to a smaller film gaining popularity quickly by word of mouth. In short make films that are not such a compromise because you feel you need to sell "X" number of tickets. I would like to see the death of the "blockbuster" and I would certainly like to see great martial like Hellboy avoid the "blockbuster treatment" in the future... and yet still get made into films. Yeah, I know, I am insane. : )
I am pretty sure about this "compromise to be able to make the big film at all" theory I have. I could be wrong, but if I go read Conqueror Worm and then watch Devils backbone again, I somehow don't think I will come away convinced that those 2 guys REALY wanted to cast Seth MacFarlane as the soulful and deeply troubled Johann Kraus. I was so thrown off by his voice that I turned to my friend during the credits and said "I guess I can't be annoyed about the changes to the Klaus character if Mike Mignola was credited on the screen writing." it was shortly after that that my wife pointed out that it WAS Seth MacFarlane, and after that I could'nt seem to call him Kraus... it kept coming out "Klaus" I think because after making the connection, he was then just a goldfish with a somewhat fake german accent that had been turned into ectoplasm just like Johann was and somehow ended up in this movie.
I have read they cast him because he could do the wheezing and mechanical sound (huh, mechanical sound?)... Sorry, I'm not buying that, we perfected that technology in the 70's with James Earl Jones. I think it would have been much more important to find a "good actor" if thats what they were really going for and worry about letting foley artist and sound engineers do their job after getting the performance... they, (or the studio) where hoping for funny I think... and honestly I don't think they got it. Oh well.
Honestly, There was still lots about it to love and I will watch it again. It just won't end up being in my top 100... which is so strange for me because I love the work of these 2 men so much and it seemed like a sure thing.
5 comments:
even though i was confused by the sudden change in klauss' attitude, i still loved it. i can't resist hellboy in whatever form he's served to me.
oops, i said klauss, too
Little irritations aside, I think the story they told was a decent one in that it was about as complex as it needed to be to get Hellboy to punch stuff. My problem with the movie was that someone read Mignola's rich, detailed world filled with complex and believable characters (even the otherworldly ones), decided that they would dump truckloads of money on a movie treatment, and then eventually abandon everything that made Hellboy different than , say MiB. I have to wonder if Mignola pulled an Alan Moore and just abandoned his baby to Hollywood...
Yeah, I think we have a very similar take on it Rich, I like the way you summed it up very concisely (said the overly verbose guy).
These movies are fun and "big" with lots of pay off... but they are missing the charm and complexity I was longing for... its sad to me too because I think Ron Pearlman could do a "deep" Hellboy if directed that way.
I should just be happy with what I get... but thats hard for me, because I can imagine very clearly what it could be like.
This is, by the way, the exact reason why I hate the move First Knight so intensely. Someone took the time to take the entertaining and compelling Arthurian tales and throw out almost everything that made them unique and recognizable. Would I have enjoyed the movie if they told the same story but hadn't used the names Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot? Possibly, but as it was, I couldn't get past the decision to take these stories "in a different direction".
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