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Hellboy (2004)
144 Plays5 years ago
With Ron Perlman in the news lately, this is the perfect time to spotlight the excellent Hellboy. We talk about the incredible performances, the amazing effects, the pulpy feel of the film, and how Hellboy reminds us both of the original Ghostbusters.
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Transcript
Psychic Abilities and Humor
00:00:23
Speaker
Look at them ugly suckers blow. One sheet of glass between them and us. Story of my life. Outside. I could be outside. You mean outside with her? Don't get psychic with me, fella. Nothing psychic about it. You're easy. I'm not even gonna get a girl. I drive around in a garbage truck.
00:00:49
Speaker
Please left us ready. Take the hint. We don't take hints.
Hosts' Personal Updates
00:01:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine.
00:01:15
Speaker
And as always, I am the other half, Derek Ferguson. How you doing today, Derek? Oh, pretty good. Pretty good. Like I said, I was like, I told you before, I'm a little bit tired. I'm doing a lot of running around today and it's hot as hell here in Brooklyn. Now it's like, it got up, it's been like 90 degrees for the last couple of days.
00:01:34
Speaker
Oh God, yesterday it was ridiculously hot. And like I was in the classroom yesterday afternoon and there's an air conditioner right behind where I usually, at the front of the room where I usually stand. And as like the students are working on something like I kind of walk around the room, as I walk further from the air conditioner, like I could just feel the heat increasing. It was so ridiculously hot yesterday. And when I got in my car, I just like cranked up the AC and it was not enough.
00:02:04
Speaker
Oh, yes. See, I know it's hot when Patricia has the air conditioner going. Well, neither one of us are really air conditioner people, but as I tell her, you have to run the air conditioner if for no other reason than for the sake of the electronics.
00:02:24
Speaker
Right, right. You know, they overheat and the TV shorts out. Didn't, you know, we got to get a new TV, which actually did happen to us. Oh shit. Really? Yeah. Yeah. This is a few years back and, uh, we have direct TV, uh, one of the direct TV boxes.
00:02:44
Speaker
shorted out for the same reason because of the heat. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I tell her, well, listen, you know, when the weather gets above a certain temperature, you got to run the air conditioner just for the sake of the electronics. Yeah. So they don't overheat. Yeah. That's a good point. I had never considered that before, but you're absolutely right. Yeah. So, well, over on my part, which something you already know, but I kind of let the cat out of the bag this weekend, I'm going to have a little sidekick in a few months.
00:03:16
Speaker
My girlfriend, well, fiancé actually, is pregnant. She's about like two months along now, I think. So now that things are looking pretty well, the baby's doing well and safe and everything, we've gone ahead and made the announcements to everybody and let everybody know so that they can start giving us gifts and money and whatnot.
00:03:37
Speaker
Absolutely. And like I told you before, because you, of course, had told me, you know, but you had asked me to, you know, keep my mouth shut, which amazingly I did, you know. But once again, allow me publicly to offer my congratulations and God bless you and your fiance and the baby, of course, and I'm looking forward to spoiling the kid long distance. Well, thank you, man. I definitely appreciate that.
Hellboy and Its Themes
00:04:08
Speaker
All right, now, speaking of, this is another kind of like fatherhood-esque movie in a way, just like Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Today we're talking about Hellboy, starring the guy we talked about last week briefly, who is, of course, a national treasure.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, Ron Perlman. And you know something? It's funny. When I was watching this movie, I thought the same thing. I said, you know something? You could have adjusted very well and picked this movie as a Father's Day. Yeah, yeah. I didn't even realize that until I was watching. Like, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because that's the theme, really, of this movie. Hellboy is torn between two men who are kind of like his father figures. Right, right.
00:04:54
Speaker
You know, one is the Professor Broom played by John Hurt. And of course Rasputin as well.
00:05:04
Speaker
Right, Rasputin, yeah, who is the bad guy, who is the Rasputin. Yeah, so it's a movie about him torn between these two father figures who represent the different paths in his life and which path is he gonna take. So yeah, when I was watching, I said, wow, I said, yeah, you could just as well and easily have picked this for your father's day, you know, movie.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I remember when this movie first came out, like I had not, and I think I mentioned this last week as well, but I was not familiar at all with Hellboy from the comic books, but the movie looked a lot of fun. So that's why I went to see it.
Comparisons to Other Universes
00:05:48
Speaker
And I remember coming out, and you mentioned something about this recently,
00:05:52
Speaker
when you were comparing it to Ghostbusters and Men in Black and say that you could see these being in the same universe. And I remember when I was watching it, like especially the first half, like, you know, it feels so much like Ghostbusters. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, the headquarters.
00:06:12
Speaker
of the, what is it, the Bureau of? The BPRD. You're right. Yeah. It looks a lot like the headquarters of the Men in Black. It does. Yeah. It looks like they could be right down the street from each other. Especially with the way he, you know, he walks in, it's this big empty room and then the floor lowers him down. It's exactly like Men in Black. You're absolutely right.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah yeah and I was watching and I got and I really got that Men in Black. That's a oh wow and yeah I could easily see this taking place in the same universe yeah as Men in Black and Ghostbusters because yeah it's got a very strong Ghostbusters vibe yeah as well.
Del Toro's Challenges with Hellboy
00:06:53
Speaker
So I went to see this movie because I had um
00:06:56
Speaker
Because before this, Guillermo del Toro had made Blade II, which was, hands down, the best of the Blade movies. Oh my God, yes. And he had actually been asked to come back for the third one, but he had the chance to do this instead. And this was like his dream project. He had been campaigning and trying to get this movie made for years.
00:07:17
Speaker
But studios didn't trust him with a big budget like that. They didn't want to, you know, superheroes weren't really that big at that point. So he had to wait a long time before he could finally, and he also wanted Ron Perlman. Like that was like his, that was like the one thing he wanted guaranteed in writing. He did not want to, because they had thrown like Vin Diesel at him and a few other people. But he's like, no, it's got to be Ron Perlman.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, and as we have said so many times in the course of doing this podcast, you and I have both said many times that the success of many of these movies depend so heavily on the casting. And once again, we see that here with Hellboy because I went to see the reboot
00:08:11
Speaker
You know, and I actually fell asleep on it. Because you know what? It wasn't Ron Perlman. Right, that's what I heard a lot of people say. I heard a lot of people I had heard from had said that the guy who plays him, I'm blanking on his name, but he's the guy from Stranger Things. Yeah, from Stranger Things. They said he was good in it, but like everything else was just terrible. Yeah, yeah. David Harbour, that's who it is. Yeah, David Harbour. And yeah, I like him.
00:08:40
Speaker
I like him, it's just that he wasn't Ron Perlman. It was like, you know, let me, oh, okay, how can I put this? Ron Perlman is Sean Connery. That's a good way of putting it, yeah. Yeah, and David Harbor is Roger Moore. That's the best way that I can put it. Yeah, that is a good way. Yeah, it's not that he's,
00:09:07
Speaker
he's worse than Ron Perlman is just that, okay, he's got his own interpretation of the character. Right. And he did the best he could. And everything, the people who made that movie had no idea what they were looking at. But then again,
Hellboy's Appeal and Humor
00:09:23
Speaker
you go back and look at this movie. And once again, I have to thank you because one of the pleasures of doing this podcast with you, as I've said many times, and I don't care if people get sick of me saying it, is that I get to revisit movies I haven't watched in a long time. And it's been a while since I've seen Hellboy. And again, it's one of those things where, yeah, I'm sitting there with my notepad because I'm taking notes. But then after about 15, 20 minutes, I get to take notes because I'm into the movie. Yeah.
00:09:51
Speaker
I'm paying, yeah, okay, the movie's got me. When we get to that scene where Maya's, you know, he meets Hellboy and he's lifting the weights and everything like that. That is one of my favorite moments in the movie. That's one of the best introductions of all time. You've got a demon.
00:10:07
Speaker
from hell, who's actually the beast, as we find out later on, he's the beast of the apocalypse. And he talks like a character from a 1940s Warner Brothers gangster movie. It's terrific. It is. And also the little touches of humanity, like when Agent Clay tells him, he's like, don't stare. He's like, don't stare at what? He's like, his horns. He files them down so he can fit in.
00:10:30
Speaker
Meanwhile, he's this big, buff, red guy. Yeah. And I love Agent Clay. Agent Clay is one of the unsung heroes of this movie. As a matter of fact, I actually like him better than Myers. I do, too. Yeah.
Character Dynamics in Hellboy
00:10:44
Speaker
But I understand.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah he is but I understand why Myers is there because and he's not apparently not a character from the comics he was just created for this movie but he serves as the point of view character the entry point character for for the audience which works in a movie like this because you know smartly del Toro did not do an origin story.
00:11:05
Speaker
you know, there's just that brief little in thing thing at the beginning in World War Two. But other than that, if all the characters are all established, their relationships are already in place. So having a character like Myers, it works to kind of introduce you to all these different characters and their world and their relationships. Well, yeah, mines is us.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know that, you know, playing this in Mars is us. He's thrown into this world with all these people. And like you said, one of the best things about this movie is that everybody knows everybody already. Yeah. You know, Mars is the only one who doesn't know.
00:11:39
Speaker
everybody. But we can see that these people have... Like we got the scene that's in the garbage truck when Hellboy and Abe Sapien are going to the museum and they're having a little bit of dialogue. And from the dialogue, yeah, these guys that have worked together for... And it's really remarkable that once a demon, once a man amphibian,
00:12:01
Speaker
But they're regular working class guys. They are, yeah. They're talking like, well, this is the job. We're on the job. And by my mind, they're going back and forth. And it's an easy give and take between them. And it's humorous and jarring at the same time to see
00:12:19
Speaker
such outlandish characters speaking in such a down-to-earth manner. And it's also we also got to mention um you know Abe Sapien and the performances that went into him because first you know there was Doug Jones who was in the makeup and he did all the physical performances uh which were you know I mean Doug like the go-to guy in Hollywood if you want someone who's going to be in a lot of makeup and moving around is Doug Jones because he's so good with body language. Yeah and for those of you who are fans of uh
00:12:49
Speaker
What is it, a Star Trek discovery?
00:12:54
Speaker
Doug Jones is on that. If you've never seen Hellboy and you want to see an early performance of Doug Jones, I can think of no better example than this movie. Yeah. Because he's absolutely phenomenal in this. And of course, he was also in Pan's Labyrinth. He was the fawn and the pale man. He was also the amphibian man in the shape of water. So yeah. And of course, the silver surfer.
00:13:20
Speaker
and press the silver surfer. Well, he's been in every one of Doug Torrell's movies pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like his go to guy when he, you know, he's doing a new movie because of Doug Jones. Okay. Well, you got to be in it. Yeah. And like you'll create a role just for Doug Jones to do. Or in the case of, um, um, Pan's lab with two roles.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the guy is fantastic. And I shouldn't mention a real stand-up guy, David Hyde Pierce. I was about to mention it too. Yeah, who did The Voice.
Abe Sapien's Characterization
00:13:56
Speaker
But he refused to be credited, and he didn't do any publicity for the movie. And he just let Doug Jones take all the credit, which says to me a lot about the guy. I said, you know what? That's a man.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that was really classy for him, which was, I was a little
00:14:19
Speaker
taken aback when in the sequel, in Hellboy 2, Doug Jones does Abe Sapien completely himself. David Hyde Pierce doesn't come back to do the voice in Hellboy 2, which was a little surprising for me because I do think, you know, I respect Pierce for his decision to not have his name because he wanted all the credit to go to Jones, but still, like, Pierce does a really great job doing the voice acting in this movie, too.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yes, he does. He gives Abe Sapien a total... I mean, between the body language and the voice, he's got a complete personality. This is a highly intelligent person that we deal with. And he is a person. Yeah, he is. Yeah, okay. He looks like a fish, but...
Hellboy's Unique Approach
00:15:04
Speaker
He's a person, he's highly intelligent as we see that he does the research for Hellboy when they're out in the field, you know, fighting these monsters or whatever. And we see that, you know, Professor Boom, he treats them as an equal.
00:15:19
Speaker
Right. You know, look at him as, you know, like a monster. Well, yeah, there's that there's that scene where Manning, who's, you know, played hilariously by Jeffrey Tambor. And he says, you know, Abe is investigating the crime scene and Manning's like, hey, Fishstick, don't touch that. And, you know, but, you know, Professor Broom's like, you know, he's treating him like an equal. He's like, well, show me what you what you got. Yeah, right. Yeah. And he has like no hesitation around him or anything like that.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, I love that scene where, you know, and like he shows on the vision because he does have some kind of limited psychic powers. Right. He like, he shows him the stuff that happened in the museum where the bad guys came and they killed all of the guards and they cut open a statue and they took out, you know, which is the, what is it, the salt
00:16:12
Speaker
from the tears of a thousand angels, which is a great line. Yeah, and then it brings up the the it resurrects Samuel. Yeah, but I also love that like what you were saying about their their back and forth between Hellboy and Abe. I love that scene where he's about to jump in the in the sewer and Abe's like remind me why I do this again and Hellboy's like rotten eggs in the safety of mankind.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's very, you know, it's very casual. It's very, you know, it's kind of ironic because, you know, they recognize that here they are. They're basically monsters protecting mankind from other monsters. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also that scene when they're in the garbage truck and Hellboy's like, he's like, he's like, I drive around a garbage truck. How am I supposed to meet a girl?
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like I said, the guy talks like somebody from the 1940s, Warner Brothers gangster movie. And I love the fact that, well, he's not a master martial artist. He fights like a WWE wrestler. Well, also, he even says himself, like, you know, I'm not a good shot with these. That's why he needs such a big gun with such big bullets. Yeah, he says, I can't. Yeah, he says, I'm not a great shot. He said, but with a gun this big, he said, I don't need to be. Yeah, yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
But, and then also just like how, well, then he takes out Samuel, right? And then he's like, all right, well, that's it. It's just like, it's like another day at the office for him, right? He's just kind of like really chill about the whole thing. And afterwards, Abe says, no, wait, you want to listen to this spirit of resurrection or something like that. And hopefully he's just like off.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, he says, ah, crap. Which he says a lot in this movie. Usually when shit goes wrong, he just turns around and says, ah, crap. He says, ah, resurrection. But I also like the fact that Hellboy himself has a considerable amount of occult knowledge.
00:18:05
Speaker
as we see when he's describing various things. And he's got various mystical artifacts. Right. Because when Abe goes into the sewer, he gives him one. Right. And this is the finger bone of saying, you know, somebody here. And he wraps it, and Abe wraps it around his wrist. And he also makes those bullets himself, which have like all the different, the works he calls it, which has all these different things in it to ward off a couple forces.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, because before he goes into the museum, two of the agents, they've got this big case and they open it up. And he's got all of his weapons in there and everything like that. So he takes out speed loader. Right. And he shows it to Myers. And he says, yeah, he says, oh, this is loaded with everything. It's got holy water, silver shavings, white oak. And I said, damn. Well, I don't know what all that means.
00:19:02
Speaker
I'll take your word for it that it's going to do the job. Something else I like to, going back to Myers, is the fact that there's not the typical antagonistic relationship between the two of them.
Ron Perlman's Performance
00:19:13
Speaker
You'd usually see in a movie like this. They don't hate each other. Myers is genuinely trying to help him out. And Hellboy is just, he gets a little hot under the collar sometimes. But you can see there are moments when it shows he does have some respect for the guy.
00:19:30
Speaker
Well, he doesn't know him. Right, yeah. You know, he doesn't know. That's all it is. He doesn't know him. Because there are moments when he helps them out, like when they're chasing a monster, and Mize gets caught in the street, and the car is about to hit him. And Hellboy just brings down that honking used stone hand. And he takes a minute before he goes chasing after Samhain to make sure that Mize is all right. He said, you OK? Yeah. He said, you all right?
00:20:00
Speaker
I agree with you 100%. It's not that it's antagonistic, it's just that he doesn't know him. Right, yeah. And you can see their relationships start evolving over the course of the week, like when he's writing the love letter to Liz, and he's asking for Meyer's opinion, and he's like, what's a good word, a solid word for need? And he's like, well, need's a good solid word. He's like, nah, it's too needy. Yeah, nah, it's too needy.
00:20:24
Speaker
I mean, Ron Pearlman, part of the reason why this movie is so enjoyable is because we see Ron Pearlman is having a good time. Yeah. And I mean, it couldn't have been easy because this is one of the most astonishing makeup jobs I have ever seen in any movie. Oh my God, yeah. I mean, we have scenes where, you know, he has no shirt on, and we can see the extent of the prosthetics that he's wearing.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah. And it's just amazing that, and Ron Perlman is such a good actor, that he gives a wonderful performance that enhances this makeup. Yeah. He works with it. He doesn't work, you know,
00:21:06
Speaker
I don't know. If I was going to be an actor that had to work with prosthetics and makeup and stuff like that, I would watch this and I would watch Tim Curry in Legends to see how to work with a whole bunch of prosthetics. Because, yeah, it's an amazing performance. Well, Perlman has a lot of experience. Because he did, like, what? Beauty and the Beast was on the air for, like, what, three years or something like that? And you know what? As much as I've heard about this show, I've never seen an episode of this, Beauty and the Beast.
00:21:34
Speaker
I watched it as a kid, but I've, like I said, but that was a long time ago. So my, I do, I have very vague memories. Like I did not recognize Ron Perlman at first. And then I found out later that he was also in Beauty and the Beast. Like, oh yeah, I remember him now.
00:21:47
Speaker
But that was the show where Ron Perlman, where everybody says, OK, well, that's when Ron Perlman became Ron Perlman. Right, exactly. Because everybody, I mean, especially women. Because apparently, this was a show that women stayed home on Friday nights to watch, Beauty and the Beast. Yeah.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, I remember watching that as a kid and it's still like really, really popular because when, I think it was like the CW remade it a few years ago, people got really angry. Yeah. And Linda Hamilton was in that one too, right? Yeah, she played the cop in the movie. Yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker
I actually wonder, I guess I'm curious about watching this now and going back and seeing it, because I haven't seen it since it was on TV, back in the 80s. Because see, I knew Ron Perlman from movies. I knew him from, what was it, Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose.
00:22:54
Speaker
Oh, he was in the name of the Rose. Yeah. Well, he still worked with prosthetics and stuff like that and extensive makeup and stuff like that. So, you know, that's mainly where I knew him from. I didn't know him from, you know, TV series and stuff like that. It was funny. When I finally saw him in Sons of Anarchy, that was the first time I'd seen him without any prosthetics or anything. So I didn't even recognize him at first until he started speaking. That was a magnificent TV. I love that show. Yeah. Well, you know what?
00:23:24
Speaker
It got really over the top. It was like Shakespeare on motorcycles, basically. Well, that's what it was. Basically, even the creator of the series said it was Macbeth on motorcycles. Yeah. But yeah, you're right. He was amazing in that show.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he's one of my favorite actors and he's one of my favorite people period because the guy has got zero bullshit with his game. He's got zero bullshit and also he's a really stand-up guy. Like that makeup, that Hellboy makeup took like four hours to apply and when some kid had said
00:24:04
Speaker
There was this kid with leukemia a few years ago and he wanted to meet Hellboy. So Ron Perlman went through the four hour makeup job again just to go and hang out with this kid for a few hours.
00:24:16
Speaker
Well, you know what? Ron Perlman is a guy that in interviews, I've never been fortunate enough to meet him. And I hope I do one day. But in all the interviews that I've seen him with, he's a guy that has struck me as that. He realizes that he's lucky to be doing the shit he's doing. This is not some divine calling or anything like that. He gets paid an awful lot of money to basically play dress up. Right.
00:24:47
Speaker
and he lives his life, you know, no, he reminds me a lot of Keanu Reeves, because Keanu Reeves strikes me as being the same way. Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, I mean, listen, you know, Keanu Reeves strikes me, listen, I get to go play dress up, I mean, you know, and I get paid an awful lot of money for it. Yeah. And again, and both of them, you know, that works, that comes through in their performances too.
00:25:16
Speaker
Cause you can tell both of them really enjoy what they're doing. Like even when Keanu Reeves was like at the top of his, the height of his fame and everything like that, you still never felt that he had, um, that he had gotten too big for himself. Like his, his, his, he hadn't gotten like too arrogant or anything like that. Well, I've never seen him on, but I know people who claim that they have seen him riding, you know, the subway.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, they've been on the New York subway and they and it was Keanu Reeves. He was on the subway with nobody guards, no entourage, none of that crap, everything like that. It was just him riding the subway. Well, apparently he and he's he's someone who's like, despite all his money, like he doesn't live like an extravagant lifestyle. He lives like a pretty simple lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
And apparently like he gave like a ton of his money to, I think it was his sister, this charity or something that his sister was running or, or was connected to working for or something like that. I had read something a few years back about this. But, but yeah, I mean, and you know, also I got to talk about John Hurt as well, because I remember I had read the comics afterwards and it is amazing how much he looks just like he stepped out of the page of the comic book.
Supporting Cast and Villains
00:26:31
Speaker
Well, yeah, the thing about this movie and what I love about it, and you and I know you hear all the time about people saying, oh, this looks exactly like a comic book movie. Hellboy actually does. There's a lot of shots in here that do look like panels from a graphic novel. Yeah.
00:26:50
Speaker
you know, and yeah, I was one of those, I was like, you, I didn't know anything about Hellboy prior to seeing this. And afterwards I went and read it and I looked at John Hurt and I said, yeah, well, obviously somebody,
00:27:04
Speaker
Probably Del Toro, because when it comes to detail and the visual look of his movies, because this guy, when it comes to visuals, he is a madman. Yeah, that's all I can say. It's incredible. But I'd be willing to bet that he pointed at the comic book and said, listen, John Hurt, he's got to look like this.
00:27:30
Speaker
And you know, John, I mean, it's always awesome. Plus, it is kind of funny when we compare this, because here he's this, you know, this kindly old scientist in this movie. And then you compare it to B for Vendetta, which came out around the same time. And he plays like a straight up, you know, super villain in that movie. Yeah. And it's just great to see like, he's got such, he was such an amazing talent. Oh, yeah. John Hurt, I mean, this was a guy that
00:27:58
Speaker
He was one of them people that, if he was in it, even if the movie is crap, you know he was gonna be good. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it didn't matter, you know. The only thing that cracked me up about John Hurt is that I've seen movies of him back in the 70s, and apparently he always looked like a middle-aged man. He did, I mean, I remember him from... When he was young. Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
Like that was back in, back in Alien. Like he didn't, he looks almost very, looks like he hasn't aged that much since that time. Oh my God. Even when the guy was in, I mean like he was in the twenties and he looked like a middle, he looked like a middle aged man.
00:28:38
Speaker
And then we got Carl Rodin as Rasputin, who I never heard of this guy's name before, but he's apparently been in a ton of stuff looking at his IMDb page. And he was apparently in Blade 2 as well. Really? Yeah, he played Conan. I can't remember who that was. But yeah, he was great. He was a good villain in this one. Excuse me. And this is a movie.
00:29:09
Speaker
that I always, excuse me, I always recommend to people because
00:29:20
Speaker
with his use of Rasputin and World War II and the occult influence that Hitler had in World War II. This is one of the most pulpy movies. Well, also, usually the Lovecraftian stuff, too. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, they've got all this stuff. It's science fiction. It's Lovecraft. It's World War II. It's Nazis. It's got a ton of stuff that's in this movie that makes it
00:29:49
Speaker
more pulp than a lot of stuff that claims is pulp. Oh yeah absolutely like that's one of the things I was I noticed as I was watching it is that and something I you realize if you look through like big known magnolias
00:30:02
Speaker
I'm not sure if I pronounced his name right, but you know what I'm saying. But his Hellboy run too, like in the comic books, he introduces a ton of different characters. And if you read through the characters and you look through their images and stuff like that, they've got much more in common with the old pulp heroes than they do with modern day superheroes.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah. As a matter of fact, one of the characters, Lobster Johnson, has been in his own series of novels and comic books and graphic novels or whatever. And he's most definitely in the mold of the pulp heroes from the 1930s. Right.
Pulp Genre and Hellboy's Style
00:30:40
Speaker
That's my understanding. But yeah, I'm watching this. And yeah, OK.
00:30:47
Speaker
Hellboy is a superhero movie, but it actually has more in common with the Pope than it does with what we would consider nowadays to be a superhero movie. And I'm talking about, you know, the DC movies and, you know, the MCU, you know, those movies. Yeah, that's solidly superheroes. This to me has more in common with, I would
00:31:09
Speaker
put this like movies like, okay, like the Rocketeer. Absolutely, yeah. And the Phantom and the Shadow and stuff like that. Yeah, it's more in that realm of pulp influenced stuff. Right. And which kind of makes you surprised that we haven't seen more pulp movies after the success of this. Because this show that, you know, you can make these movies for a modern day audience.
00:31:37
Speaker
Well, you know what? OK. Here's where we get it. OK. See, it's hard to explain to people what Pope is. I always like to tell people when they ask me, OK, well, Dervin, what's Pope? I said, well, I'm like that judge. I can't think of his name right now, but he's a pretty famous judge that ruled on famous case involving pornography. Right, yeah, yeah. He's reputed to have said, listen,
00:32:06
Speaker
I don't know what pornography is, but when I see it, I know what it is. Well, I'm the same way with Paul. I can't tell you what it is, but if I see it, I can tell you, okay, yeah, that's Paul. And see, when you try to describe it to people, they say, oh, well, that's action adventure. It was Potter Stewart, that was his name.
00:32:26
Speaker
Okay. And you say, well, yeah, it's action-adventure, but it's also this, and it's also that. And they say, oh, well, you're describing mysteries. Well, yeah, it's mis... So, yeah, you get into that thing where you can't really describe to people what... Like, I can point to examples. Like, I can tell them, okay,
00:32:47
Speaker
You've seen the Wild Wild West, the TV show, not the movie. And they say, yeah. I say, OK, well, that's theme punk. That was theme punk before they knew what theme punk was. Right. And it's also a pulp. Well, what makes a pulp? And then I go and describe the various elements that make it pulp. And as I'm doing so, you know what happens? I can see their eyes glazing over. So that's the problem.
00:33:10
Speaker
that you have in describing what is Pope the people, because then they always say, and then you have so many other genres that have taken the various things that make Pope Pope, and okay, like, oh boy, okay, Superman, Fortress of Solitude,
00:33:31
Speaker
Well, he took that from Doc Savage. Right. Now, if you do a Doc Savage movie now and you have the fortune of solitude, what are people going to say? Oh, well, he stole that from Superman. Right. Not knowing that it's the exact opposite way around. But now you've got to go through a whole thing where you explain that to people. And people don't want you to explain that to them. They don't want to watch the movie. It was the same thing with, what was that movie? John Carter.
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Remember, everyone was saying that John Carter, oh, they're ripping off Star Wars, they're ripping off Avatar, they're ripping off all this other stuff. It's like, well, no, John Carter started those things. Star Wars ripped it off from them. I actually, when I saw John Carter in theaters, I was standing in the lobby waiting for Patricia. She went to the bathroom and I'm standing and I'm listening to people coming out. And yet I actually heard these,
00:34:24
Speaker
nerds or geeks or whatever, and they were standing there listening to all the things. Well, it was rip off of there, saying it ripped off that and it ripped off that. And I wanted to go over there and bang their heads together and say, listen, if you know anything about what you're talking about, you would know everything you named
00:34:40
Speaker
took everything from John Carter. Right. That's where it started. He's the great grandfather of everything that you just named that you claimed he ripped off. Exactly. So yeah. See, that's the thing about Pope. There's so much that was taken from these characters and used in other genres and diluted that now it seems like they're the imitations and not the originators. Right.
00:35:09
Speaker
So that was my little dissertation on Pope for... Another dissertation, okay. But it's a good dissertation. That's why we come here to listen to you. Yeah, but that's what it is. When you try to describe Pope to people, it's kind of difficult to describe it because then they say, okay, well, what you're describing is this. Right.
00:35:35
Speaker
or it's action adventure or it's this or that. And yeah, well, Pope is all of those things. It can be all of those things, you know, like weird Westerns. Well, what are weird Westerns? Weird Westerns, yeah, they're Pope because they incorporate stuff from science fiction or fantasy or horror into a traditional Western setting. But, you know, yeah, like I said, when you try to describe to people and you can see their eyes are starting to glaze over, they don't want to hear all of that nonsense.
00:36:06
Speaker
And going back to talking about the World War II stuff, I did like the little history lesson he gives Myers at the beginning, because some of that is rooted in actual history. Hitler was a member of the full society. They were like this German occult organization, although mostly it was just like a bunch of bored rich people.
00:36:25
Speaker
like a lot of secret societies really were back in those days. But in the Thule Society, that's something that has come up again and again in a lot of pulp stuff. I use it in one of my books myself. I use it in my, I think it was the fourth Myth Hunter novel I use in the Thule Society. But then I love when he says like, the occult wars come to an end in 1958 with the death of Adolf Hitler. He's like, you mean 1945? Hitler died in 1945. He's like, oh, did he?
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. He's like, well, okay, well, you know what? If you say so. Yeah, Professor Brew just kind of like looks at him and he's like, yeah, okay, well, if you say so. He's got a little smirk on his face. Yeah, but I think that that's why World War II is a fascinating war because as far as I know, we've never had any other war that had so much to do with
00:37:21
Speaker
all of these fantastical elements, such as Ultima Thule and real energy and the spirit destiny and all of this occult stuff that Hitler brought into there. There's never been any other war
00:37:39
Speaker
we've been in that had those elements, which I think is why it's still so fascinating, or so many elements. Because you can always delve into, I mean, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It went into the thinking of Hitler was looking for the Ark of the Covenant. So you've got all these fantastical elements that you can exploit when it comes to doing this kind of fiction. Right.
00:38:07
Speaker
And well, not only that, but you've also got, you know, the Nazis make the perfect villains, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. But then you can also have other stuff, because there's so many like secret societies and stuff mixed up, like you had like the Thule Society in Germany, you had like the Black Dragon Society in Japan. So all these different elements come together. And it's this era where there's some technology, but it's not too modern. So yeah, it is like the perfect era for a lot of this stuff.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, Nazis are like the all purpose villains. Yeah. Yeah. You said, oh, well, OK, we need villains. OK, Nazis. Yeah. I remember, what was it? Back in the 70s, it was really like a whole subgenre of thriller movies about
00:38:56
Speaker
you know, like these old Nazis that were coming out of hiding that were gonna start up the Third Reich again. Right, well, it was like, also like the, because I think that was the time when there was a lot of prosecution of Nazis who had escaped. Yeah. So like, you know, Israel was going after a lot, was tracking down a lot of these war criminals who had led to like South America and that kind of stuff. Yeah, so you had movies like The Boy from Brazil, you know, Marathon Man, you know, which was like,
00:39:26
Speaker
I mean, you know, like I said, it was like almost a sub genre for a while there of movies about, you know, Nazis and hiding and people, you know, looking for Nazis and hiding and they were someplace in Argentina planning the Third Reich. Right. Well, so I think I wonder if some of that also has something to do with the fact that the Cold War in the 70s was kind of like on a, it kind of cooled down a little bit. Like it wasn't as big of a focus in everybody's minds.
00:39:53
Speaker
And you know something less, you know, the Cold War wasn't as romantic. It really wasn't. The Cold War was like,
00:40:02
Speaker
What's the... Okay, the best movie I can recommend about the Cold War is, of course, with Richard Burton, spy who came in from the cold. That's basically what the Cold War was. It was a bunch of miserable bastards doing, you know, jobs they didn't wanna do. They didn't really... And actually, they didn't really believe in what they were doing. You know, they were just doing it mainly because...
00:40:27
Speaker
These were their jobs. They didn't necessarily feel patriotic about what they were doing. It was a game that they were playing that had been going on.
00:40:39
Speaker
The Nazis, whether we want to admit or not, it's got a certain mysticism, a certain glamor about it. You say, OK, Nazis. And it conjures up all kinds of images in your head. And then when you delve into the history, like you said, with the occult angle, it takes on a whole new different thing where you can say, OK, well, maybe they were trying to open portals to other dimensions. And they were trying to contact Lovecraftian elder gods and stuff like that.
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, all that stuff. What else I want to mention about this movie?
Character Highlights and Humor
00:41:15
Speaker
Oh, you know what? I love Cronin, the silent assassin type. Like, that, that, Ladislav Baran played him. And he, that, he's just, that, like, talking about body language, like, that is, that guy's amazing in his body language performance, because he never says a single word in that whole movie.
00:41:33
Speaker
I love him because he's like something that they, like a Nazi that they brought in from a Kung Fu movie. Yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
Actually, because he's got the blades and he's got the martial arts and everything like that. You say, oh my god, this guy's Donnie Yen. This isn't a Nazi. It's Donnie Yen. He's dicing and slicing guys with the blades and everything like that. Oh my god. And he never says a single word, but we understand everything he's doing in the movie and why he's doing it. Like when he pretends he's dead. OK, you know why he's doing it. Right.
00:42:15
Speaker
And, um, but yeah, he, he's, he was great in it. And then, um, just going back to Ron Roman's performance, like the little, the little, I love the little touches they gave to show that he's, he's got this, he's, he's, he's got this humanity about him, but he's also still kind of, uh, he's also still kind of announced like the whole, like how much he eats.
00:42:35
Speaker
They're bringing in these bowls full of chili for him, and they got all these pancakes, these buckets full of bacon. And Myers even says at one point, he's like, oh, you got nachos coming soon. Yeah, yeah. Well, I always figured that that's a clue that his metabolism
00:42:54
Speaker
burns up so much energy, that he simply has to consume a whole lot, much like the Flash, because DC established years ago that the Flash has to consume a tremendous amount of carbohydrates, simply because he's burning up a whole lot of stuff by running. Right, yeah. I liked how they addressed that in the TV show as well, where they had to create these high protein bars or something for him to eat so that he doesn't have to always
00:43:23
Speaker
he doesn't have to go broke feeding himself. You're right, exactly. So I guess the Hellboy is the same weight simply because his metabolism is burning up a lot of energy. He has to eat a lot for no other reason than just to maintain his energy levels. And I also love the fact that he's got all these cats. And the cats naturally gravitate to him.
00:43:49
Speaker
Now okay in the comic book didn't they change that because in the combo didn't eat cats um I don't know okay I seem to remember something about him eating cats and but yeah but here they just put that caches for some reason caches like him.
00:44:09
Speaker
I'm looking it up now. Someone asked this question on Cora. I think you're thinking about someone else with the eating. Yeah, I'm probably thinking about something. I'm probably thinking about Alf.
00:44:21
Speaker
So he has an affinity for cats in both the movies and the comics. Because what happened was, apparently there was a story in the comic when Hellboy was a young kid. And most other people didn't like him, they stayed away from him. But this one cat showed him affection and didn't shy away from him or anything like that. So after that, he had developed an affinity for cats, apparently. Because they have that great fight that's in the subway.
00:44:51
Speaker
And there's a box of cats that he rescues and he protects during, you know, while he's fighting off, you know, the monster. And it's a nice touching little moment when he gives the box of cats back to the woman. Yeah, yeah. And he like strokes it with his rock hat. Yeah, yeah.
00:45:10
Speaker
Like you said, nice little moments that humanize, you know, the character and say, yeah, well, you know what, in my life's cats, you know, right. He's got to be okay. Yeah. And, well, there is also the mystic connection there too, because cats, you know, long been considered to have connections with the occult and everything like that there.
00:45:30
Speaker
back in ancient Egypt they were worshiped as like deities so so yeah there's a lot of like yeah stuff that ties into cats as well yeah i picked up on that too that yeah cats are supposed to have like this connection to the occult so it says something that they like them and they want to be around right yeah yeah and um but i just love like how how petty he gets too like when he's um when he's following them and uh the little kid comes up to him
00:45:57
Speaker
And he's saying like, no, I'm on a mission. And he's like throwing stuff at Myers from far away. And the kid is giving him advice on how to be a mature adult. It's a nice little thing to remind us because there is an exchange.
00:46:16
Speaker
where Professor Broom is saying, yeah, okay, even though he's been around since World War II, and he's like almost 60 years old, actually he's an adolescent. Right. You know, they have that kind of thing that, you know,
00:46:33
Speaker
He doesn't age the same, well, of course, because he's a demon. He doesn't age the same way that we do. And even though he's been around all of these years, he's not that old in terms of being a demon. He's at a, which, when you hear the explanation, it explains why he does some of the things that he does. Yeah. Well, there's that line when Clay tells John, think of it as like reverse dog years.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So when he gets into that little jealous fit. And also, like you said, that's a good scene with that kid. Because he relates to the kid more than he does with the adults in this movie.
00:47:12
Speaker
He has more of a rapport with this kid. And him and the kid are talking, like you said, the kid is giving him advice and he's taking it. Whereas the adults give him advice and he acts like a kid. He's always like petulant about it and that kind of stuff. Right, yeah. So it's a good point to make about the character. Like I said, it explains a lot about why he acts the way he does.
00:47:42
Speaker
And Jeffrey Tambor, and this is the first thing I actually saw Jeffrey Tambor in, I saw this before Arrested Development. But he's, I love that his first appearance was on the talk show, and he says something that I've always wondered my whole life too, when they're showing him the picture of, the blurry picture of Hellboy, he's like, how come in all these pictures of these supernatural things and these occult things and UFOs and Bigfoot and all that, how come they're always so blurry? How come none of these guys know how to focus a camera?
00:48:13
Speaker
Thank you. And have you noticed that in the era of cell phones now, now that we have cell phones that take perfectly clear pictures?
00:48:23
Speaker
How is it nobody has ever taken a picture of a UFO now? Yeah. Yeah. You don't see that anymore. You don't see pictures of Bigfoot. You don't see pictures of the Loch Ness Monster. Right. You would think that somebody would have got a picture by now of, you know, the Chupacabara or, you know, whatever. Because you've got phones now that take perfectly clear picture. You don't see none of that. Yeah. You don't see. Jeffrey Tambor is great in this. He is. I like how their relationship
00:48:53
Speaker
develops, especially after Professor Boong is killed. And Manning actually has to go out on a mission with Hellboy. And they kind of reach a kind of understanding through the course of that mission. Yeah. Whereas, you know, it's not friendship, exactly, but they've learned to respect each other. Right, right. There's that great scene when Hellboy's lighting a cigar, and Manning's like, what are you doing? You don't light a cigar like that. You use a wood match.
00:49:23
Speaker
Yeah, which is actually something that I've heard from people who smoke cigars. They actually don't like their cigars with a lighter. They light it with a wooden match. I've heard that from people. I ended up looking that up afterwards. And yeah, it turns out to be true. And I'm like, oh, that's never thought about that.
00:49:41
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. I have a friend who lives on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, and he actually has a cigar room where he goes and he smokes cigars. Oh, nice. And he's got like a humidor and stuff like that. And there's like a whole ritual this cat has got. I went there one time, mainly because he's got good booze. And he's explaining to me the whole psychology of smoking cigars. Smoking cigars.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, apparently that is an actual, you know, thing. But yeah, during the course of that mission, they come to an understanding, you know what, which I appreciated that they didn't instantly become friends, but they came to an understanding about their positions in the organization.
00:50:30
Speaker
Right. Well, there's also that, I think it was in the second movie where you see them, there's still some antagonism even in the second movie. So they don't completely come to terms. Yeah. Well, there's always going to be antagonism between them, but at least they understand each other's position in the organization. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:53
Speaker
There was that, I think it was in the sequel where he's complaining about Hellboy getting caught on video and he says on YouTube and he's like, I hate YouTube. As a matter of fact, now that I've seen this one and I say, you know what, now I gotta go watch. And I could have sworn, I was tearing up my house a little because I could have sworn I had a DVD here someplace that had both Hellboy and the sequel on the same DVD and I couldn't find a thing to save my life.
00:51:22
Speaker
I don't know what happened. Fortunately, it was on demand. So I was able to, you know, just download it from Direct TV. Okay. And watch Hellboy in there. So I'm pretty sure they got like the Golden Army. Okay. I want to see that because it's been a long time since I've seen that too. Well, the cool thing about the Golden Army is that after this movie came out, Mignola gave Del Toro his full permission to go ahead and do his own original story for Hellboy 2.
00:51:50
Speaker
so that's why Hellboy 2 feels like even more of a del toro movie because they use a lot more of like fantasy and that kind of oh yeah yeah yeah i mean the main bad guy in there i looked at him and i said oh my god elric yeah
Del Toro's Artistic Vision
00:52:03
Speaker
yeah you know michael morkoff you know from now i say oh my god you know so again there's a lot more fantasy elements
00:52:10
Speaker
which I kind of, which I understand why he did that. Cause I know that's del Toro's warehouse and it was great. Like don't get me wrong. I love that movie, but I also was a little disappointed cause I do love the very pulpy feel of this first movie. Then I felt like a little, some of that was a little bit watered down in the second. Yeah. The second one is more like, uh, yeah.
00:52:32
Speaker
Uh, especially with, you know, like I said, the main bad guy looking like, uh, you know, Michael Moorcock's character. That's what the whole thing of the Golden Army, that's what it felt like to me. It felt like a Michael Moorcock short sorcery story.
00:52:50
Speaker
set on earth with some steampunk mixed in as well right with steampunk right rather than a full flat out 100% pulp story which is what this one is yeah it is way more pulp than you know the second one which is more fantasy yeah to me i agree yeah and and you know nothing like not knocking that movie in any way it is still a really good movie but oh no i love that yeah yeah i love the gold army but i prefer this one for the like that pulpier feel feel it's got
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if you gave me a choice to say, well, there's only one Hellboy movie you could watch for the rest of your life, it would be this one. Yeah, definitely. Even though I do like the second one, don't get me wrong, I like the second one, but I think I love this one. Yeah, although I will say that, and I did like some of Larry's haircut in the second one a lot more than in this one.
00:53:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah, she's got terrible hair in this one. And this is the movie, I must say, where I fell in love with Selma Blair. I had never seen her before in anything. This was the first thing I saw in. And I said, yes, I must have that woman. I'm trying to remember what else I'd seen. Because I had seen her around in a bunch of stuff before that. But I'm like blanking on stuff. The only reason I watched, because she was on anger management.
00:54:14
Speaker
Oh, oh wait, that's right, yeah, she was. Yeah, the Charlie Sheen TV series. Oh, I thought you were talking about something else. No, no, no, I'm talking about the TV series, Charlie Sheen. That was the TV series he did after he recovered from his meltdown. And Selma Blair was in that one, along with Shawnee Smith, who will start in the remake of the thing.
00:54:38
Speaker
Oh, okay. Those two women were the only reason why I watched that show. I was not watching it for Charlie Sheen, trust me. Oh, you know what? I think I'd only really known her from, she was in Cruel Intentions. She was one of the main characters in Cruel Intentions. And I think that's the only thing I've seen her in before, which is surprising because I'm looking at her credits now and there's some, and I have not seen her in a lot of stuff, but I feel like I've seen her in a lot of things. And she's been in a lot of stuff. She has, yeah. Yeah.
00:55:10
Speaker
So, I don't know, weird. Yeah, but this is like the first thing I saw her in. And when I saw her, I said, yeah, okay, she's got a career. And yeah, she's really good in this. I love like how she does have this kind of this, you know, scene at all attitude towards everything. Yeah, she's very low key. Nothing surprises her. Sorry, go ahead.
00:55:35
Speaker
No, no, no. You got a good point, I think. I was going to say that scene when Myers brings her back for the first time and Broom's like, oh, well, we've made some changes around here. And then Hellboy comes crashing through the wall. And Liz just kind of rolls her eyes. She's like, nope, nothing's changed. Yeah, she's just like, yeah, OK. Yeah, it's like nothing fazes her, really. She's seen it all.
00:56:00
Speaker
You know, she's been through a lot, as she explains, when she's describing her background. And we see there's one point where Myers, he's going through the files. And he looks at the files when she was younger, and she's describing her, because she's got like this, you know, this pyropenetic. Right. Yeah. And, you know, she's describing it. And this kind of a weary resignation to her fate
00:56:28
Speaker
You know, she says, OK, well, this is it. This is who I am. This is what I'm always going to be. Nothing's ever going to change. And ironically enough, it's Hellboy who is offering her change. He's saying, yeah, OK, this is what you're going to be. But that's not all you have to be. You know, that's not the thing that defines you.
00:56:55
Speaker
and he's trying to tell her, listen, I'm a demon, you know, but I'm trying to be something else too. And I, and incredibly enough, which is why even, even though I don't like the Myers character all that much, Professor Boom apparently was a wise old man because Myers is the one that provides the bridge between those two characters. Right. Yeah.
00:57:19
Speaker
and shows them that, yeah, you can be more than what you are. He does that for both.
00:57:26
Speaker
the Liz and Hill boy. Yeah, yeah. Something else too is, now this is a little funny bit of trivia, but his line, his great line when he's, when he's confessing to her and he says, look, he's like, I'll promise you two things. And he says, one, I'll always look this good. That was actually something Gilliamaro del Toro said to his future wife, because she was complaining about how he dresses very casually. And he says, look, I'll always look this good.
00:57:55
Speaker
And apparently when del Toro and Mignola were discussing the who to cast, like they were sitting down in a meeting and they said, okay, let's reveal at the same time who we would think is the perfect choice for Hellboy. And they both said Ron Perlman. Yeah.
00:58:16
Speaker
I mean, you look, I mean, I was watching this movie and really I was saying to myself, I was, you know, cause I'd usually try to come up with, well, who could play this role now? Well, they tried it with David Harbor and that didn't work. And I think that that's why there has not ever been, or even though I've heard that Ron Perlman said that he wouldn't mind coming back. Well, Ron Perlman, he was asked to come back actually, but he refused because Del Toro wasn't involved.
00:58:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I think, yeah. If Del Toro wasn't involved. And you know what? There really is no point in making a Hellboy movie if you don't have those two guys together. Right. Especially because they're still around. They still want to do it. So there's no reason not to do it. Well, you know what? It's the studios. Because. Yeah. And also, you got to remember something else. Del Toro, while we love him to death,
00:59:12
Speaker
This is a guy that really doesn't have a track record of making blockbuster box office hits. And in Hollywood, that's really what counts. Now, me, I loved his last... What was the last thing? Crimson Peak? Yeah, I loved that movie. That was like...
00:59:31
Speaker
the best Hammer horror movie not made by Hammer. He makes these fantastically detailed movies that are so incredibly visual, but he doesn't make box office hits. That's why they wouldn't give him a budget to do. He wanted to do his dream project, Lovecraft's at the Mountain of Madness.
00:59:50
Speaker
You know, I thought this movie was a lot more successful than it was, but you're right. It had a budget of $66 million. It made just under $100 million. Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. A lot of people think that this was this big box office hit. No, it wasn't. Hellboy was not a big box office hit.
01:00:09
Speaker
The second one though, they gave him a higher budget for the second one. They gave him 85 million. And the second one actually made almost 170 million at the box office. But still, it's not like Avengers money.
01:00:23
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, his movies make enough money that they could say, okay, well, here, we're gonna give you money to make another... But they're not gonna give him Infinity War money to make a movie. They're not gonna do that. Well, of course, there was also Pacific Rim. That made a ton of money. Oh, well, yeah.
01:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, but what happened to the sequel? They took that away from... I still have no idea what happened with that movie. I hear so many conflicting stories. At that point, why are you even calling it Pacific Rim? Because none of the characters are from the original one. You didn't have Del Toro back again. So you should have just made an original Kaiju robot movie instead. Which, for all intents and purposes, it really is.
01:01:19
Speaker
It really is his own thing. It's not a sequel to, you know, the first one. But yeah, I mean, you know, Del Toro, he has a loyal following. And I actually think that he should go the route of some of his fellow filmmakers, such as Spike Lee, and especially Martin Scorsese, and go to Netflix. Because Netflix has shown that they'll give a filmmaker, listen, here's a blank check. Go make what you want to make.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to see him do something like that. Yeah, and just, and I mean, you know, do that because, you know, studios, I did hear that there was a studio would, you know, that they were going to give him the budget he wanted.
01:02:05
Speaker
for At the Mountains of Madness, but it had to be a PG-13 movie. And he said, no, this has got to be R. And they said, nah, nah, nah, we're not going to give you all this money to make an R movie that may not make its money back. Right.
01:02:21
Speaker
It's got to be PG-13. And he walked away from the deal. But I bet you, if you went to Netflix, and Netflix would probably back up, said, listen, how big is your front yard? Why? Because we're going to back up dump trucks and just dump money on your lawn until you say stop. Really, yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, that is a good point. He should do something for Netflix. And you know, it's too bad Mignola doesn't have the movie rights to Hellboy anymore because I bet if Del Toro and Mignola went to Netflix and said, hey, we want to do Hellboy 3 with Ron Perlman and everyone else back again, I'm sure Netflix would say yes in a heartbeat.
01:03:05
Speaker
Matter of fact, I am positive given the track. I remember reading the article with Martin Scorsese, where he was talking about the Irishman. Martin Scorsese said he's been in the business for 40 years. He said every time he went to a studio and he was negotiating for a movie in the budget or whatever,
01:03:27
Speaker
They always try to talk him down. Well, can't you do this cheaper? Can't you do this cheaper? He said Netflix was the first time in 40 years that he went to the studio, gave him the budget. They didn't argue about it. They just said, here's the check, go make your movie. And apparently,
01:03:45
Speaker
Looking back through this, like the studios did, they wanted to have like, they had a lot of demands about, they like wanted to change a lot of stuff about Hellboy for this, for before they started filming. Like they, one idea was to make him be a human who transforms into Hellboy when he gets angry, kind of like a Hulk thing. Another one was that he came from Hell, but he was actually, he actually looked like a normal human. And Del Toro just said, no, fuck you, we're doing it this way.
01:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, see what I mean? And, you know, good on him for having the balls to stand up to the studio heads about that, because it's not like he was, he wasn't del, Guillermo del Toro as we think of him today, back then. But he still had the, he still stood his ground on all that stuff. Well, he made this after Blade 2, right? Yeah, but still, like, that was like his biggest thing. He still wasn't like, you know, he wasn't as big as he is now. Like, he didn't have, like, shape of water and Pacific Rim and all that under his belt.
01:04:40
Speaker
But, but, however, he did, he did have that clock from Blade 2, which he used for this movie. Right. Because in Hollywood, you're only as, as successful as your last movie. And apparently he had also been offered Alien vs Predator, but it, and, but he turned it down so that he could do Hellboy instead.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, if you have a blockbuster movie, you pretty much, you know, go in and say, okay, well, I want this that another in the studio to tell you, yeah, okay, fine, no problem. You can do, you know, so he, you know, so he parlayed that financial success.
01:05:16
Speaker
from Blade II into Hellboy, which I am so glad he did, because that's why we got the movie that we're talking about now that is so good. As I said, I was watching it, and I was struck by how fresh this movie seemed. This movie could have been made this year. That's how fresh it felt. It is, yeah. I mean, it's not dated at all. No, it's not. No, not at all.
01:05:46
Speaker
And everything, like the jokes in it work, the references, they all still work, even, you know, we're talking almost 20 years later and everything still works. Yeah, I mean, the special effects still hold up, you know.
01:06:02
Speaker
What else? The set design? You know, every aspect of this movie still holds up very well. You know, like I said, I was really struck at how fresh this scene to me. And it's just some incredibly beautiful imagery. I think of the scene where Hellboy, he jumps into the grave because he's going to bring this dead Russia back to life. And it's snowing and everything like that. Yvonne, I love Yvonne. Oh, it's a gorgeous scene where, you know, Hellboy is in the grave. And I said, wow.
01:06:31
Speaker
Del Toro, his visual style is just simply astounding. That's all I have to say. Speaking of that, there's also that image at Broome's funeral when Hellboy's standing above and he's looking down. And it's raining.
01:06:47
Speaker
It's raining, it's that low angle shot. And he's holding the rosary and the crucifix in his hand. And it's like that contrasting him. It's so good. It's so well crafted. Oh, yeah. I mean, Del Toro, when it comes to visuals, the man takes a backseat to nobody. No, nobody at all. No. But see, unlike some other filmmakers, he's not all about the visual. He's got this sense of story structure, this sense of pacing. He can do it all, basically.
01:07:15
Speaker
Well, he's a storyteller. He is, yeah. I mean, like, I was surprised because I would not have expected that Shape of Water would be as touching a love story as it was. But it's, you know, it's to Del Toro's credit that he's able to mix genres in this way and do it so effortlessly.
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean that was a movie that touched people that normally wouldn't go anywhere near that type of subject material. Oh, there were people selling Fishman dildos online after that. You had women fantasizing about being with the Fishman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:08:00
Speaker
I mean, I, I mean, I would really surprise when, okay. Well, we went to see it in the theater. Patricia said, Oh, well I want to see this movie. Everybody's talking about shit. Cause usually Patricia doesn't want to see anything until she hears everybody else talking about it. Then she wants to go see it. Right. Right. So she said, she wanted to go see the shape of water. I said, really? You want to go see that? Yeah. Wow. What's wrong? I said, no, no, it's just, I know the filmmaker and I know what type of movie he makes. Yeah.
01:08:29
Speaker
Oh, you think you know everything. Okay, let's go see the movie. All right, fine, we'll go see the movie. Go see the movie. Amazingly enough, she loved it, which I did not think that Patricia would enjoy a Guillermo del Toro movie. Really, but yeah. And know something? About 60% of the audience that we went to see was women.
01:08:51
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. A lot of women was in there. Apparently, a lot of women had seen it already and come back and seen it and brought their girlfriends to see it. Oh, OK. Yeah. OK. What else do I want to say? There was something else I wanted to say about Hellboy, and I just completely lost my train of thought. But anyway, anything else you have to say about this film?
01:09:20
Speaker
Only that if you have not seen Hellboy in a while, like me.
01:09:26
Speaker
do yourself a favor, especially now it's the summer. We don't have a lot of movies to go to theaters to see. So you know what? Take this opportunity to revisit some old favorites you haven't seen in a while. Right. And Hellboy is a perfect summer movie. I had a hell of a good time watching this thing. Unintended. Yeah. Unintended. I had a hell of a good time watching this thing, you know, and
01:09:55
Speaker
The best thing about it is that I hadn't seen it in so long. So they would, I didn't remember everything exactly. So it was like seeing a brand new movie in a whole lot of ways. So yeah, so I mean, for the summer, like I said, we don't have a lot of movies. We're not going to the theaters to see it. Take this opportunity to revisit some old favorites and put Hellboy on your list of movies to revisit. If you haven't seen it in a while or if you've never seen it,
01:10:22
Speaker
I envy you the opportunity to see it for the first time. Well, I remember what I was going to say now, and it goes back to something you were saying about how how well this movie holds up. And it also ties back to what we were talking
Hellboy's Timelessness
01:10:34
Speaker
about in the beginning. And it's kind of like similar feel tonally to Ghostbusters. I think just like Ghostbusters, this is going to be one of those timeless movies that people come back to again and again.
01:10:45
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, when you say Ron Perlman, what do most people say? Oh, Hellboy. Right. Yeah. You know, most people say that even nowadays. They'll either say Hellboy or they'll say Sons of Anarchy. Right. I found most people say that. But most people who are, you know, geeks and nerds like me and you, we will say, oh, Hellboy. Right. Exactly. This is one of those movies, like you said, I put this in the same class with like Ghostbusters.
01:11:14
Speaker
Streets of Fire, Big Trouble in Little China, Buckaroo Banzai, The Last Dragon. This is like one of those types of movies. If you enjoy any of those movies, yeah, you're gonna love Hellboy. Absolutely, yeah, well said. Okay, so that does it for our discussion on Hellboy. That was my pick for this week, so next pick is yours. So you got something ready?
01:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that we would go back to animation because, and we would go back to Batman because of the recent news that Michael Keaton might be coming back to play Batman. Don't even talk to me about that because I do not want to get my hopes up until it's actually confirmed.
01:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I was thinking we could either do either, because we already did the first Batman. We could either go back to animation and do Batman Year One, which is a movie I've been wanting to get to for a long time. Or since we are talking about Michael Keaton, we could do Batman Returns. OK. Want to do Batman Returns? Which one are you feeling more in favor of?
01:12:37
Speaker
Well, since we got the news about Michael Keaton, let's do Batman Returns. OK, that sounds good. All right, so. Let's do Batman Returns. But I only brought a Batman year one because I've been wanting to do that for a while. I've recently been on this animation cake.
01:12:52
Speaker
Right, right. But I'm willing to save that for another time and let's do Batman Returns. Okay, that sounds like a good one. Alright, so yeah, next week we'll be doing Batman Returns, which I mentioned this in the Facebook group, but for me, it's, I love that movie. It's a great Tim Burton movie, but as a Batman movie, it kind of falls flat. You know what I love about that movie? What's that? It's basically a black and white movie in color. It is, it is, yeah.
01:13:18
Speaker
Like that was a cinematography. I love the cinematography. Oh, it's a great movie. But like as a Batman adaptation, I think it kind of falls flat. But we'll talk about that more next week. Yeah, we'll get into that later on.
01:13:31
Speaker
All right, so that does it for us this week. Head on over to the Facebook group, Superhero Cine Files. Just type it in the search bar, it'll pop right up. Join in, join in some of the discussion. Also, because of Juneteenth last weekend and because HBO released Watchmen, they made it free for the weekend, I had gone through and re-edited our three-part Watchmen series when we covered all nine episodes.
01:13:58
Speaker
And I re-edited it into one like six hour long supercut and posted that up on the feed. So if you didn't listen to our Watchmen coverage, you can go to the feed, you can listen to the supercut episode or just, you know, listen to it again and re-experience what we had to say about it. And I've already gotten some feedback from people who didn't listen to it the first time around, listened to it and they
01:14:21
Speaker
They have given me some very positive feedback on it. Thank you, guys. Oh, really? Thanks. For, yeah, you know. I mean, you know, friends of mine who usually don't pay attention to anything I do anyway. But, you know, yeah, but because of the whole Juneteenth thing and stuff like that, you know, they listen to it and they say, oh, wow, you know. In fact, it got more downloads than our cup, than our Dr.
Podcast Reflections and Engagement
01:14:43
Speaker
Mordred episode, which came out right after it.
01:14:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. OK. Well, I can know what I can see that I am, you know, I'm not going to take it the wrong way. Well, it was timely. It is. Yeah. I mean, you know, people people are still talking about Watchmen, especially now with everything that's going on. It's still talking about Watchmen. Well, it was funny because I've relistened because after I finished editing and I put it on the feed, I relistened the episode myself and I'm just like,
01:15:15
Speaker
I can't believe we had only done that like, what, like two months, two or three months ago? Yeah. I feel like we did that like 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah. You know, I have a hard time really wrapping my brain around the fact that we've been doing this for so long. It seemed like we just started doing this and then I go back and look at it. I said, wait a minute. We started doing this back in September of last year. Yeah, yeah. Wow.
01:15:45
Speaker
Oh, my God, we're going to have to start talking about what we're going to do for an anniversary show. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. I mean, that's coming up a lot faster than we realize, actually. Yeah. And of course, for those of you who are listening, if you have any ideas or thoughts about what Perry and I should do for our anniversary show in September, please let us know. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing. So OK. But yeah, you can go over to the Facebook group, join in, and start talking.
01:16:12
Speaker
you know, start sharing suggestions about that. Or you can just always just contact us through the website. A lot of different ways to get in touch with us if you want to. Yeah, we're not hard to find. Yeah. So that does it for us this week. As always, you know, stay safe out there. We still got a pandemic. Cases are going up now. So please be careful out there.
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Be careful. Be safe. Take care of yourself. Take care of your families. We want you around to continue to listen to us. Right. And until next time, watch some good movies, including Hellboy. And if you've got Batman Returns, watch it in advance, us talking about it next time we get together. Absolutely. All right, that does it for us. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.
01:17:02
Speaker
Okay, good night and God bless. Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroesinophiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroesinophiles.com.
01:17:31
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantudios.com.