The Teachings of Hellboy
July 8, 2008 by brian
One of the reasons Hellboy became a hit comic is because of the points it makes about being a monster. By anyone’s visual definition, Ol’ Red is the epitome of a monstrosity. But under his stony red skin Hellboy beats the heart of a big old kid who loves Baby Ruths and pancakes. And beating up demons. But mostly the pancakes.
When sci-fi is great it uses the fantastic plots and crazy characters to teach us a little something about ourselves. Hellboy’s message is that you don’t have to be who others see you as. Rasputin brought our favorite demon hero to Earth to bring about its destruction. Instead he becomes the force that beats back Armageddon again and again. Hellboy can’t even take in the accolades he’s earned because he’s too ugly to go outside. The very sight of him would reveal things to humanity that we’re better off not knowing about.
The first Hellboy film was a very pleasant surprise. My wife would never pick up a comic other than to shove it in the closet with the rest of my junk but Hellboy’s one of her favorites. If you can turn the most comic booky of comic books into a movie my wife likes, you’ve done a great job. Here’s hoping they’ve done it again with the sequel.
Image by Greg The Bunny licensed under Creative Commons.
For those of us like me that never read HellBoy or any other title from Dark Horse, is the 1st movie that cool?
–Godspeed–
Yeah, you don’t need to know anything about the books to get into the film. They do a good job of explaining everything.
it was not that good in my opinion, i fell asleep watching it.