On the 12th of next month, "Hellboy: The Rise of the Blood Queen" will be released, 11 years after the last movie "Hellboy 2: The Golden Legion". After that, the originally planned trilogy project ran aground due to funding problems, and then it fell apart. It was also that year that Marvel kicked off the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" with the hit of "Iron Man". To this day, superhero movies are still the world's most profitable commercial genre movies. Compared with the booming Marvel and DC nowadays, the dark horse comics company to which "Hellboy" belongs may not be very well-known. But if you tell you that this company holds the comic copyrights of works such as "Alien", "Terminator", "Predator", and "Robocop", you will probably also admire them.
Compared with other well-known superheroes, this red-skinned devil was born later. It appeared at the San Diego Comic Strip Festival in 1993 and was published in Dark Horse Comics the following year. Although its author Michael Minola has also served in Marvel and DC, the real masterpiece is "Hellboy." This series of adventure stories about supernatural phenomena and a strong personal style are well received by readers and become one of the signatures of dark horse comics. In particular, the protagonist Hellboy, who has the blood of the devil, has converted to kindness, is a character who is both righteous and evil, with anti-hero characteristics.
A superhero with dark attributes, a director immersed in magical realism, this combination is simply a match made in heaven. As we all know, Gilmour del Toro is an out-and-out otaku, obsessed with comics, figures, monsters, mechas, and special effects, and he is even more enthusiastic about how to move all of the above to the big screen. In fact, Gilmour started his comic film experience as early as 2002. His "Blade Warrior 2" has won a box office record of 80 million U.S. dollars for the new line company in North America, which not only laid the foundation for him to continue directing this kind of The confidence of the movie also allowed Hollywood to see his ability to combine noir subjects with comic heroes.
It is said that he originally wanted to make a monster movie, but has been struggling to find the investment, so being able to take over the filming of "Hellboy" can be regarded as fulfilling his dream for many years. To this end, he also persuaded the producer to give the protagonist to his queen love general Ron Pullman. Gilmour is good at creating worlds that don't exist. He believes that the essence of movie screens is to create things that don't exist in the world, such as new creatures or time and space, so it is very appetizing for him to modify movies.
From the current perspective, the special effects of "Hellboy" may seem relatively rough, but the style of the picture that is not based on CGI special effects is one of the biggest characteristics of this work. Gilmour first made his debut as a special effects makeup artist. Therefore, under his skillful hands, this film has achieved the effects of computer special effects in many pictures through sophisticated makeup and scene design. The image of Hellboy is the best example. In addition to using the creatures in the original book, he also personally designed many other weird things in the film, which enriched the expressive power of the different world.
It can be said that this work has a very distinctive Gilmore mark, a slower pace, and a collection of funny, scary, sad, and wild atmosphere, which is very different from the current superhero movies. Under normal circumstances, the audience will only empathize with the good and evil possessed by human characters, but if the characters become angels, demons, machines, or monsters, their characteristics will often appear one-sided or vague. Therefore, Gilmour put the focus of the film on the interweaving of good and evil in the role of Hellboy. The audience can see his strength, his unyielding love, his love with Liz, the human father Professor Bloom, the struggle between the good and evil, and the many times in the film Let's ask-what makes a man a real man?
Although the box office situation of this film is not ideal, it still has positive significance in the establishment of style and accumulation of experience. Therefore, only four years later, "Hellboy 2: The Golden Legion" has further improved the story and special effects. Improved, but also gained a good reputation and box office. A few years ago, there was news that Gilmour was expected to be the director of DC's "Dark Justice League". He did participate in the screenwriting, but until now there is no deadline for this project, and the director candidate is still pending. I have to say that in terms of style and experience, the geek Gilmour should be a more suitable director for this movie. As a fan of his movie, I look forward to a day of turning around in the future.
♑
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