Weird genius director Guillermo del Toro came up with the commercial adaptation of the comic book "Hellboy" in 2006 .
The strong author style makes the audience feast their eyes, lamenting that they have never seen such a delicate and disgusting "manga-modified movie". After filming "Pacific Rim", "Blade Warrior", "Pan's Labyrinth", and relying on "The Shape of Water", Toro has a lot of eccentricities.
He is obsessed with Warcraft and Phantom , and is also good at integrating horror, science fiction, magic and other types of elements in his movies, building a fantasy movie world for the audience that travels between real time and space and legends of gods and monsters.
Guillermo del Toro's films have more or less reminiscences of old-fashioned horror. He combines the best elements of traditional monster movies with modern Hollywood stories. The magical and coquettish tones in the film, even though the darkness is boundless and the evil spirit spreads, there is also a considerable poetic throughout .
Long before "Hellboy", his fascination with mutants and high technology had already begun to emerge, and the concept of "mutant DNA" was closely related to the proposition of David Cronenberg's work; The Warrior movie is a perfect fusion of Hollywood technology and his wild imagination.
Toro even passed up the chance to direct Blade 3 for Hellboy. Under the management of Toro, the first two films have gained a good reputation, but the box office can only make ends meet.
The image of Hellboy was unacceptable for the fans at the time. Neither handsome nor brutal, plus the filmmakers forcibly plugged funny sections for the box office, making the execution of the whole film not uniform enough, although the dark temperament is outstanding, it violated the aesthetic expectations of the fans at the time, and it could not be a big success at the box office after all. . This led Toro, who was planning to shoot the trilogy, to shelve the project after finishing the second. In 2017, the series' producer, Lawrence Gordon, began working on a reboot with Lionsgate. They hired Neil Marshall, who directed the American TV series Game of Thrones, to direct "Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen ."
Neil Marshall is also a director with a more prominent personal style. In 2005, the horror adventure film "Dark Invasion" directed by him made him a smash hit, and the film still ranks among the top ten lists of many horror films. In 2008, he entered Hollywood and directed the thriller film "Doomsday Invasion"; in 2010, he directed the action war film "Centurion".
In terms of genre preferences, Neil Marshall should be able to take Toro's class. Because of the high requirements for makeup, the producers also invited Joel Harlow, who won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Styling, as a special effects makeup artist. In terms of actors, actor David Harbour, who became popular because of "Stranger Things", succeeded Ron Perlman as Hellboy.
The heroine, the Blood Queen, is played by Milla Jovovich of the Resident Evil series .
No matter from the perspective of director, production staff, or actors, the third reboot of "Hellboy: The Rise of the Blood Queen" is not weak. But it's been all sorts of nightmarish experiences since the filming began. First, the second male lead, Ed Skrein, was under pressure from public opinion and announced his withdrawal. Because the character he is about to play has Japanese ancestry in the comics and is an Asian character. The practice of making white people play roles of other races has been criticized as "racism".
There was a huge disagreement between the director's team and the producer. In the end, the cameraman had to be fired because the cameraman only listened to the director, which angered the producer. Not only the photography, but also the script has many problems. During filming, the script was repeatedly rewritten and rewritten, and even starring David Harbour and Ian McShane stepped in to rewrite the script.
All kinds of discords have led to tension between director Neil Marshall and the actor David Harbour. David Harbour has repeatedly left the studio because of differences of opinion between the director and the producer, refusing director Marshall to let him Remake requests for more bars.
The fragmented team led to the late completion of the film, and the finished film after it came out was really surprising. The story is extremely "childish" . It was originally the revenge of the thousand-year-old demon blood queen, but the betrayal of the British organization was suddenly inserted in the middle.
In the end, the "failure" of the Blood Queen, as well as the temptation in the middle and the rebellion against Hellboy also appeared to be contradictory.
Hellboy's struggle between justice and evil, light and darkness is like child's play, unable to find a coherent and persuasive source of motivation.
Disjointed from before and after, illogical, patchwork, chaos , is the biggest impression of the film to fans. The film is charming and even commented: "Hellboy: The Rise of the Blood Queen" is simply a headache. It's a dizzying, overly informative film that exhausts audiences.
Neil Marshall definitely doesn't want to take the old road of Toro, and hopes to shoot his own style. He insists on taking the R-level road, which can not only meet the commercial requirements, but also highlight the style. It is indeed a safer road. "Hellboy: The Rise of the Blood Queen" obviously wants to be an R-rated villain epic movie , highlighting the debauchery and free nature of the regional baron, but unfortunately it is just a bunch of official articles copied from the original, weird but not enough enthusiasm, lack of imagination, only Monsters that can poke their eyes with broken hands, as well as various hints of apocalyptic atmosphere, add bloody and bad taste to fill.
So noisy scenes one after another, seemingly lively, but lack of coherence. Violence and vulgarity replace the sophistication and poetry of the first two Toro-directed films. Of course, "Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen" , which is barely rated, can still be used to kill time .
For example, the mythical chicken feet hut appeared in the film, and its owner Baba Yaga, also translated as Granny Yaga, is a witch in Slavic folklore. She lives in a hut with chicken feet, eats children, is mysterious and evil.
In order to obtain key information, Hellboy rescued Baba Yaga in a rather bizarre style of Toro. The film collects a large number of Western mythological prototypes , basically based on the Bible, such as hell and Satan; it also incorporates Celtic mythology, such as King Arthur and the sword in the stone, and the mystery of the baron's life experience; and the baron's opponent, the boar spirit It comes from Scottish mythology. In the story of Hellboy, in addition to the above, there are also Irish legends of werewolves, Danish legends of trolls and witch doctors, and even Japanese folklore. It is simply a collection of folklore all over the world.
If you can forget about the critically acclaimed predecessor and watch it with an open mind, this new Hellboy movie has a lot to offer moviegoers. At least the film packs as many wonderful characters, stories and scenes into one movie.
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