Hellboy

I saw Hellboy as part of my job today (I know, I know, it's a rough life). I thought it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as Jon did. It did capture the spirit of the comic very well (Ron Perlman is Hellboy), but as a movie, it really fell apart in the third act. I'm not a huge fan of del Toro, the director; I thought Blade II had so many awful CGI effects in it, it seemed like he wasn't even trying. The CGI wasn't awful here, but it was certainly distracting in parts. Why, in the day and age of Gollum and Weta, can we not even get simple flame effects to look natural? Flame effects are built in to every 3D graphics card made, so it can't be that hard.

I digress.

The effects didn't distract me that much. The ending, however, seemed very sudden. The movie built a very comfortable pace, heading towards an obvious climax, and then completely rushed the ending. Hellboy (the character) had to make a very important choice, and I feel like the potential conflict in the character was never explored, in much the same way that Peter Parker's choice was denied him in Spider-Man. It seems like he just kind of goes, oh yeah, OK, and then kills the bad guy in what amounts to one shot. And then kills the other bad guy in the same way. It felt very unsatisfying as a film; as a comic book adaptation, I thought it was supurb.