The character of “Hellboy” as a superhero may not be as popular as Superman, Batman, Iron Man, or Thor, and it has a relatively short history compared to these characters. It first appeared in the first half of the 1990s, but it proved itself in the world of comic books, and then with two films. Set in the 2000s, directed by award-winning Mexican Guillermo del Toro.
After the end of Del Toro's contribution, the character suffered a severe cinematic decline. He remained 11 years without appearing until 2019 when the movie “HellBoy” was released, which was met with criticism in addition to commercial failure. The character returns to the screen again this year with the movie “HellBoy”. Hellboy: The Crooked Man is now showing worldwide in theaters and digitally in the United States.
Horror not terrifying
“Hellboy: The Twisted Man” is directed by Brian Taylor, and stars Jack Kesey as Hellboy. The work goes beyond presenting the character's past and origins, but rather jumps directly to the fifties of the last century. Hellboy works for a government organization and supervises the transportation of a giant killer spider with… His Asian colleague, Bobbi.
The film makers assume that all viewers know Hellboy's past by following the comic books or watching previous films, and they neglected to clarify his half-human, half-devilish nature, and his first appearance during World War II, which are details that a viewer who meets the character for the first time in this film may not have known about. .
Hellboy's enemies, whether in comic books or movies, are divided between the Nazis and their followers on the one hand, and supernatural beings on the other, while the story each time revolves around the evil side's attempt to attract the demonic half of Hellboy with the aim of cooperating with them to end life on Earth and harm humans. The character is under pressure to choose between his human and demonic sides.
The movie “Hellboy: The Twisted Man” does not differ much in this regard from its predecessors, as it begins with the mission of transporting the spider, then after the latter escapes, it moves to another mission completely randomly, which is the search for an evil witch called Evie who lives in the forests, and for the evil being that controls On the residents of the area, threatening their safe lives, he is called “the crooked man.”
The movie “Hellboy: The Twisted Man” combines the two genres of superheroes and horror, and focuses on the latter clearly. The real conflict is between the human Tom Ferrell and the twisted man who tries to possess his soul, while Hellboy helps him ward off the evil of the latter, and in the midst of this journey they meet phenomena… Different horrors, such as the flying witch Evie, who turns Tom's father into a horse, the witch Cora, who emerges from her body into an animal form and then returns to it, and the dead emerging from the graves, while the cleric tries to protect Hellboy and his friends from their evil in a severe chaos that indicates the attempts of the makers. The film combines all the features of horror films in a work that does not exceed an hour and a half.
While Hellboy did not choose this battle, but was literally involved in it as a result of his colleague Boy's curiosity about the world of witches and witches, the conflict with the twisted man leads him to information about his mysterious past, and his mother, whom he has never met, who is one of the villain's victims, so that he must, as usual, choose the side that he takes. Is he on the side of the humans or the villains that at least half of him belongs to?
Poverty in creativity
The movie “Hellboy, the Twisted Man” has a small budget, especially among superhero films. It cost only $20 million, and this certainly has negative effects on the work, especially in terms of the visual effects, which appeared very modest. However, the budget is not the only justification for this experiment. Failed cinematography, because many horror films were able to create within the limits of their small budget, including “A Quiet Place” and “Speak No Evil.”
The film's characters move without logical motives, abandoning their primary mission for no real understandable reason, and engaging in a war with the Crooked Man based on a story from Tom, a man they met by chance.
Hellboy's character was damaged when he lost his most important characteristics, which is the combination of strength of character, sensitivity, childishness, and wit. Hellboy here is a helpless person. Initially, Bobby throws him into the adventure against his will, then the twisted man manipulates him like a small chess piece, while His sense of satire was irretrievably absent, and the importance of this sense is that it is the tool with which he confronts his feeling of alienation from his surroundings, whether due to his red appearance, giant body and horns, or his mysterious past.
While the logical motives of Bowie's character are absent, the rest of the film's characters are nothing but shadows, each with only one characteristic centered around it, between Tom, who is trying to protect his soul from the devil, Cora, his friend who surrendered to evil, and the cleric, who abandons all temptations for the sake of the final confrontation between them. And between evil, and the twisted man himself, who is nothing but a metaphysical being seeking to possess Hellboy's soul, as usual.
The movie “Hellboy: The Twisted Man” proves that not every good comic book writer can turn his stories into scenarios. Writer Mike Mingola, who created the character of Hellboy from the beginning, participated in writing the film's script, but he did not protect his character from being lost in light of a scenario that made it lose its distinctive features. , and a lackluster film that ranges all the time between horror and superheroes.