Hellboy (2019): Talented cast betrayed by a weak script
The most recent Hellboy film suffers from a week script that betrays the talents of a talented cast and competent director. It attempts to explore the plight of the outsider, both as an individual and a group. Yet it fails to follow through the emotional arcs to a logical and satisfying conclusion. The result is that David Harbour’s nuanced portrayal of Hellboy is not supported by the events portrayed. The clumsy use of exposition—conjuring up dead characters to explain plot holes—also conveys a sense of lazy writing.
An example of a failed emotional arc is Hellboy’s relationship to his nemesis, the witch Numia. She comes to him in a vision, and calls for him to join her as her consort, and free all the magic folk from their oppression at the hands of humans. Given that earlier in the film, an allied anti-paranormal group had ambushed him and attempted to brutally assassinate him, we can can see how he later storms out of his father’s office, accusing Ian McShane’s character of “turning me into a weapon...to slaughter my brother’s and sisters!” After asking repeatedly of his adoptive father, “,then what” McShane’s Prof Bruttenholme tells him he will kill the next enemy after that. Yet in the next scene with Numia, all feelings of romance and solidarity with other magic folk vanishes, and he coldly shoots her in the head, graphically portrayed. David Harbours Hellboy as working-class philosopher is reduced by weak plotting to a sociopath, at best just following orders.
The themes of a conflicted hero, trying to suppress his origins and live in a world hostile to his kind were also explored in the previous attempts to bring Hellboy to the screen. Hellboy as a working-class poet resisting a restrictive system gave room for a certain magic. Visually, Benicio Del Toro’s monsters were beautiful, if terrifying. The notion that they lived, partially hidden, around non-magical human’s left us with the possibility of a modus vivendi, one which humans had betrayed. In Neil Marshall’s Hellboy (2019), the action is competent, but the moral and emotional stakes are washed away and forgotten in almost comical seas of gore.
The political background to this story, conflict with a perceived other, attempts to address the rise of contemporary nationalism and racist tropes. But it ultimately fails to do just to this ambition. This is because it’s villains are not merely flawed, but simply evil. They exist only to avenge those that had thwarted their evil. Thus Numia is not an ambitious leader eager to free her people, as with the Elvin prince in Hellboy: The Golden Army (Benitio Del Toro, 2008). Rather, her throngs are cannonfodder for her own narcissism. She declares that she will “kill everyone he loves” to force Hellboy to join her. Later, she kills her most loyal henchman when his annunciated objectives run counter to hers.
Ultimately, the most recent attempt to bring Hellboy to cinema lacks the charm and humour of the previous two films. A crude attempt at a darker portrayal, and the lack of emotional depth in the plot leaves this version unsatisfying. This despite a talented and charming cast of David Harbour, Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim. If a sequel were attempted, and that was clearly in the minds of the writers, Andrew Cosby and Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola, this cast deserves a better and more tighter, more consistent script to work with.
