I guess I don't watch enough shitty movies because the trailer looked fine to me. Hellboy not having yellow eyes or more prosthetics on the face is a little weird. But aside from that, he looks better than the last guy.
Wow, the franchise has definitely fallen a long way since The Golden Army.
I walked out of The Golden Army thinking "Outside of getting to see what Elric of Melnibone' might look like on film (Mignola confirmed that del Toro "borrowed" Elric's look) that movie sucked!" The Golden Army had a better budget than the following two movies, and was *slightly* more tolerable than the last movie with the guy from Stranger Things.
I'll just chalk that up as another film to never bother watching.
I know it goes without say, but it's still a damn shame we'll never get that third del Toro film. But at least we can still enjoy the two we got, even if it leaves us thematically hanging.
As someone who was a Hellboy fan from his first appearance in Byrne's "Next Men" I've never been impressed with either of del Toro's Hellboy movies. The first one at least has some character designs that are almost right out of the comic, but character wise, Hellboy didn't feel like the guy I'd been reading. Like "sorta close, but not". Ditto for Abe and Liz. The villains seemed pretty close. But the issue I have with all of the movies we've had so far is that none of the directors understood that spectacle is secondary in a Hellboy tale. Atmosphere is king. The comics ooze atmoshphere. Yeah, there's some amusing quips and some big fights, but that's after all the setup and atmosphere.
The best Hellboy movie I've seen isn't a Hellboy movie, it's "The Nun". It feels like a Hellboy story before Hellboy get's called in. It has atmosphere in spades, it's spooky (yeah it does the jump scare stuff which it doesn't need) but it feels truer to Hellboy than Hellboy's own films in the atmosphere department.
I've never read the Crooked Man as I have no interest in Hellboy being drawn by other artists, but I know one of the main characters in the comics story was a homage to John The Balladeer, the main character of some of my favorite stories, so hopefully that guy will in the film. As someone said, this is more in the vein of Dredd and that movie was fucking bad ass (as opposed to the absolute shit of the Stallone film). Here's hoping this film follows that path. At any rate, unlike the last film, I'll probably check this out in the theater.