Hellboy (2004) is a movie about, as it explicitly states, choices, but it never really explores this premise, and thus never quite achieves greatness – but, like many movies (The Thin Man (1934) comes to mind), it achieves a certain smiling good cheer through a self-awareness of certain ridiculous aspects of its scenario.
And that would be? Late in World War II, the Nazis are trying to reverse their situation by opening a portal to the ancient Gods of Chaos, an attempt foiled by a group of American soldiers, but before the portal is closed, something comes through. It’s a baby demon, young and untrained – and they coax it with candy bars and name it Hellboy.
Most of the cast.
Sixty years later, he’s a leading member of the team that, when something goes bump in the dark, they bump back, a paranormal squad out to extinguish evil in the world. But Hellboy, who now only looks maybe 30, is even less mature, hardly out of his teens emotionally speaking, and the team has problems resulting from his impulsive nature – and when a 6′ 5″ demon with special powers is impulsive, this can cause problems.
Eventually, the team must travel to Russia and confront the legendary Rasputin, and discover what he represents – and present Hellboy with the choice of fulfilling his destiny, or not.
If this was really a movie about choices, then it might have been effectively structured like Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies!), a very long novel which, at its core, was about temptation1, exploring all the possible responses to the temptation of using ultimate power, code for ignoring the rules, to do good – and what happens when you break the rules by accepting the temptation, and compares those results to refusing the temptation, even in the face of disaster. Virtually every character faces this decision, and the results of the decision are spelled out in detail. And while Hellboy’s plot could be viewed through this lens, it’s more of a maturation story, as one of Hellboy’s impulsive decisions ends in disaster for his colleagues, and from there he begins to grow up. As such, there’s nothing new at its core. There are a couple of swipes at the choices theme, but they are not setup properly; especially jarring is the sudden appearance, in the climax of the movie, of a Christian symbol that reminds Hellboy that he does have a choice, when the antagonists try to force him to unlock the door to the Gods of Chaos. Until then, only the viewer who noticed he carried prayer beads might have deduced that he was a Christian, and probably a Catholic, as we know that to be true of his adoptive father. The choices theme would have gained legitimacy had the religious facet been emphasized earlier.
BUT the movie does bring a certain sense of self-deprecating humor to the entire story, and that, while perhaps not entirely new, is refreshing and, even as we titter at a baleful monster confused by rush hour traffic, leads us to think about how the ancient Gods that haunt our history may not actually compare with our own powers – and mistakes.
The characters are well-drawn, and the major characters do seem to have lives of their own, gifted with a self-awareness of the oddity of their situation; their asides and frustrations are both well-timed. Better yet, the dialog is delivered at a pace really appropriate to the movie, rather than spat our rapid fire, as so often happens.
Cinematography is more than adequate, as is the audio. The special effects, however, range from excellent to squirm-worthy. The job of special effects is to make the spectacular look quite natural, and there’s two or three effects where they fail that test.
But, if I may engage in an outré observation, the character Hellboy may be easily interpreted as an intelligent tool. As the antagonist tells it, Hellboy is the key to a door, a key created to that purpose – and, as it turns out, a tool that rebels against its proper destiny. And I cannot help but notice a certain correspondence from this concept, and how certain of the services of the Internet seem to have the same result. Not that they’re exactly intelligent, but in that such things as e-mail and web services may be subverted to ends other than that of their creators. Could this be taken as an implicit warning to those who develop Artificial Intelligence? There is no shortage of movies meditating on the creations of Man gone awry, I suppose, but this one is a little out of the ordinary in that the subversion results in the salvation of Mankind – not its destruction.
And the significance of that? Beats me. If you have an idea, let me know.
While Hellboy is not for everyone – some may find it irritatingly juvenile – I’ll admit I’ve watched it a number of times over the years, and actually own a copy of it. If nothing else, it makes me laugh.
1A former boss of mine insisted that Lord of the Rings was just about nine guys getting together and killing everything in their path.
