It’s really good reincarnation. Ten years ago, we were amazed by the grand layout and shocking special effects of the Marvel Universe. Five years ago, we were stunned by the direction of the DC Universe and chased after it. The cross-IP cooperation between the three realms, Guan Gongzhan and Qin Qiong, after ploughing the universe back and forth 180 times, the audience who have eaten this stylized visual feast will inevitably be a little tired. At this time, the bloody and violent production of Hellboy, which advertises the cult style, has a small fresh taste of dessert after dinner. The audience's aesthetics of movies, like the trend of the fashion industry, reincarnate in a ten-year cycle. We all know Marvel and DC, but few people know that Dark Horse Comics is the third largest comics company in the United States . In fact, it's no wonder that, when you count the IPs under the name of Dark Horse, in addition to Star Wars, which is a mainstream hit, others such as Alien, Predator, Sin City, and even Hellboy all have non-mainstream dark cult settings and visual styles. Companies and works with heavy tastes are all niche and heavy in the West, not to mention in the heaven where the flowers are blooming and the heart is sunny. The "Hellboy: The Rise of the Blood Queen", released in 2019, continues the first two films, and is also a cross-border stew of cult and fantasy culture. First of all, the theme of the story comes from the witch trials movement in medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages, Europe was caught between natural and man-made disasters, famine caused by poor agricultural harvests, the epidemic of the Black Death, and the prolonged Hundred Years War between Britain and France. The collapse of the social order leads to the collapse of human nature, selfishness, desire for survival, and suspicion and mistrust between people. Christianity blames these natural disasters on witches, an unwarranted group, thereby shifting social conflicts and maintaining the stability of religious dominance. Witch hunts and witch trials today seem to have dual meanings of sexism and racial discrimination. This is exactly in line with Hellboy's half-human half-demon's social status and the pressure of public opinion (most superhero movies run through this theme). The screenwriter thus established the empathy between the protagonist (Hellboy) and the big Boss (Blood Witch).
The vampires appearing in the play are also enduring cult themes in Western culture. Vampire culture is also a reflection of the historical and social development of a particular period in the West. Due to the limited level of scientific medical treatment at that time, people's life and death were often judged by whether there was a heartbeat and breathing. Therefore, many patients with suspended animation who were still saved by today's medical level were sentenced to death by doctors at that time. These "dead people" who were buried alive knocked on the coffin board to survive after waking up, so people felt that there was a change in the cemetery, and there was a supernatural force at work. The undead represented by vampires reflected the supernatural and irrational interpretation of this natural phenomenon by people at that time. Of course, these are not the key. The most fundamental reason why vampires eat animals and even human blood is that they cannot bask in the sun, so their bodies are extremely deficient in vitamin D, and human blood can provide vitamin D. This work involves the origin of Hellboy and is associated with the classic King Arthur legend in Celtic legends. Hellboy is born after Queen Arthur and the devil sheep XX, he belongs to half human and half devil, and he is a human race/England prince. With such a cult setting, I can't say much more than praising the screenwriter of the original comic. The story has always been entangled in making Hellboy pull out the sword of the king. The screenwriter undoubtedly wanted to use this highly symbolic and ritual scene as a contemporary insinuation of the legendary King Arthur pulling out the sword in the stone - the difference is that this time he wears it With the effect amplifier, Hellboy pulling out the sword of the king may mean concentrating the essence of the two worlds of human and demon and destroying the world. So the storyline is really very old-fashioned, nothing more than: 1. Save or destroy the world? 2. The boss advocates that the destruction of the world is to establish a new order (military ideology); 3. When the protagonist becomes an adult, the war between heaven and man is earth-shattering. But the screenwriter may have made a mistake: the Sword in the Stone and the Sword of the King are two different swords . The former, as the name suggests, was pulled from the stone by King Arthur. The Sword of the King (Excalibur), also known as the Sword of the Lake, is said to be given to King Arthur by the Lady of the Lake. In the film, both Merlin and the Blood Witch are obsessed with letting Hellboy pull out the king's sword from the stone, which may be some kind of misunderstanding and misplacement.
In the past, when we talked about cult films, we tended to think of low-cost, shoddy, and bloody, violent B-level film themes. With the development of the times, in fact, a blockbuster like Hellboy that is close to mainstream commercial production cannot be said to be rough in terms of cost and kimono transformation, but the heavy-duty special effects makeup, fist-to-meat fights, and ubiquitous blood rush , slime, puncture, and solution are still everywhere - of course, in the socialist empire, these are all click-to-stop or even non-existent - some scenes will obviously feel broken when watching, and the editing is very blunt. Since it's a Cult film, let's not talk about plot ideas. Hellboy 3 not only has an old-fashioned storyline, but also has a lot of foreshadowing in the final Boss battle, but it is like an otaku who sees Milla Jovovich's deity, and it's an instant xie. The funny thing is that the blood queen still has a head and keeps shouting, "Wait for the old lady to come back!" But the film's dark visual effects, fantasy scenes, and creatures are still in place. If Marvel DC is pop music, Hellboy is heavy metal rock. Although the story is quite boring, it is a cool movie, just watch it as a cool movie. Final personal rating: ★★★
Suitable for: fans of the series, fans of pseudo-cult films Not suitable for: fans of fresh tastes, logical textualists, drama fans, fans of real cult films, fans of Guillermo del Toro
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