History & Overview of HELLBOY

**Source:** (https://www.cbr.com/hellboy-comics-vs-movies/)

WARNING: The Hellboy franchise tackles some GRIM and MACABRE stuff. read at your own risk!

Before I talk about the movies, I’m going to do an overview of Hellboy’s origins for those who don’t know:
Based on the comics by Mike Mignola, Hellboy is a human-demon hybrid whose father is the incredibly powerful demon Azzael, and his mum a human witch named Sarah Hughes. Hellboy’s demon name is Anung Un Rama and he’s a descendant of King Arthur. Upon his birth, Azzael severed his son’s right arm and replaced it with the (Right) Hand of Doom, making Hellboy the Bringer of the Apocalypse. During World War 2, the Nazis with the aid of evil sorcerer Grigori Rasputin (based on the real life Grigori Rasputin who was a holy man and close confidant of the Russian Royal Family in the last years of the Russian Empire), opened up a portal to Hell and Hellboy ended up on Earth and was taken in by the kind Trevor Bruttenholm/Professor Broom who adopted him as his son and trained and sheltered by a top secret agency, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), to save the world from supernatural threats. Aside from his adopted dad, Hellboy is aided by love interest Liz Sherman who has the power to control fire, amphibious man Abe Sapien, Johann Kraus a ghost in a containment suit and Ben Daimio who transforms into a were-jaguar.

GUILLMERO DEL TORO DUOLOGY

The first two live action Hellboy movies that were released in 2004 and 2008 were directed by Guillermo del Toro, (who also directed the second Blade movie of Wesley Snipes‘ Blade trilogy based on the MARVEL Comics character and directed the 2013 sci-fi action movie PACIFIC RIM), and starred Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien. A Hellboy movie trilogy was planned for the live action movies, but never came to fruition.

HELLBOY (2004)

Hellboy and co. must stop Grigori Rasputin and his allies Ilsa Haupstein and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen from unleashing the Apocalypse by forcing Hellboy to use his Right Hand of Doom to free Ogdru Jahad from their cosmic prison, after they abduct his love interest Liz Sherman.

HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2008)

Hellboy and co. must stop rogue elf prince Nuada from wiping out humanity with an unstoppable army of automatons known as The Golden Army. The Golden Army isn’t based on any prior comic material and was conceived by Mike Mignola and Del Toro.

In an interview with IGN, Mignola had this to say about HB2: The Golden Army:

“It’s an original story that Guillermo and I came up with about two years ago. It actually reflects the direction the comic is going in. It’s not in any way the same story, but it deals with similar things. The focus is more on the folklore and fairy tale aspect of Hellboy. It’s not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world.

I kind of equate it to the whole American Indian situation. The Indians were shoved onto reservations. You had your old, wise Indians who said, “You know, this is the way it is. We can’t fight anymore. We just have to accept our fate.” You then have your Geronimo character saying, “Or we could just kill the White Man.” That’s kind of the situation we have in the film. We have our elf characters resigning to the way things are and then there’s one saying, “Or we could take the world back.” The main difference is – what if the Indians had a nuclear warhead? The elves have their equivalent of the weapon that is too terrible to use. What if this guy decided to use it?” Source: (https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/02/15/interview-hellboys-mike-mignola)

The characters that were created for this movie haven’t been seen or mentioned in the Hellboy comics since the movie was released way back in 2008. The Del Toro movies are still considered the best of the Hellboy movies by fans.

ANIMATED MOVIES

The animated movies were given the greenlight by Del Toro and Mignola. Just like the live action Del Toro movies, a trilogy was planned for the animated movies but never came to pass.

HELLBOY: SWORD OF STORMS (2006)

Hellboy goes to Japan to stop a pair of ancient demons, Thunder and Lightning, from causing chaos across Japan after they are released from an ancient samurai sword, that sealed them away centuries prior.

All Out Action YouTube Channel

HELLBOY: BLOOD & IRON (2007)

After the release of Sword of Storms, Mignola said in an IGN interview, that he wanted to do something different with Blood & Iron and drew inspiration from the ‘Wake the Devil’ story:

“That was an interesting one because we wanted to do something radically different from Sword of Storms. We were casting around for a subject matter. Of course, I love vampires, and Tad is very familiar with the comics, and somehow we settled on looking at the second Hellboy mini-series, Wake the Devil, and story elements in there – the goddess Hecate, vampires and things like that. We ended up, not adapting, but pulling pieces of Sword of Storms out and dressing them with the different plot. It’s not an adaptation so much as it is a re-imagining of the story. I hate that word, but it’s what people seem to use these days.” – Hellboy creator Mike Mignola in IGN Interview. Source: (https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/02/15/interview-hellboys-mike-mignola)

Countess Erzsebet Ondrushko makes a deal with the witch queen and goddess Hecate, to become a vampire and remain eternally youthful by killing young women, but is defeated by Professor Broom. Skip to the present day, Countess Erzsebet Ondrushko is resurrected by her followers and Hellboy along with Broom, Abe and Liz must stop both Erzsebet and Hecate. Broom defeats Erezsebt for a second and final time after Broom tampered with her blood bath with Holy Water and delivered the final blow with a leg from a wooden chair. Enraged that her high priestess is dead, Hecate fights Hellboy after failing to turn him evil, but is defeated by him.

All Out Action Channel

I saw the animated movies when I was younger, but didn’t really know what was happening and thought they were kind of weird; but I watched them again after I decided to get invested into the Hellboy mythos back in 2019 and I liked the animated movies as much as the Del Toro Duology. While familiarising myself with the Hellboy franchise, I was totally shocked that when I researched the Blood & Iron movie and learnt that the villain Countess Erzsebet Ondrushko, was based on real life Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who was convicted of allegedly killing and torturing hundreds of girls and women (death total usually estimated at 600 but sometimes higher) and bathed in their blood with the belief she would remain youthful, during the 16th and 17th centuries. Although there have been many conflicting reports as to whether how much of or any of it is true.

Sources:

https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Hellboy_Animated:_Sword_of_Storms

https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Hellboy_Animated:_Blood_%26_Iron

https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Hecate

https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Erzsebet_Ondrushko

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Bathory

https://www.historyhit.com/the-blood-countess-facts-about-elizabeth-bathory/

HELLBOY (2019)

**Source:** (https://za.ign.com/hellboy-reboot/125669/news/hellboy-poster-art-details-first-look-at-new-character-versions)

The 2019 movie served as reboot of the Hellboy movies after no progress was made on making a trilogy with the Del Toro directed movies. In the reboot movie, Hellboy and his adopted dad Professor Broom team up with clairvoyant/medium Alice Monaghan and BPRD Agent Ben Daimio who turns into a were-jaguar, team up to prevent the destruction of England and the world from the Blood Queen Vivienne Nimue (Resident Evil’s Milla Jovovich) from starting the apocalypse and wanting Hellboy to rule by her side. Nimue was defeated centuries ago when King Arthur hacked her to pieces and had her body parts scattered across England so that no one would ever find them and put Nimue back together again.

I was hyped when I saw the trailer for this movie and saw it in cinema when it came out. I enjoyed the special effects, action scenes and performances, but there were times when the movie felt a bit over stuffed and could have done without and would have been better if the movie either had a longer run time or turned into a two-part movie. In the trailers, we see Hellboy riding on the back of a demonic dragon flying across a Hell-esque London landscape with a crown of fire above his head – as seen in videos below, but in the movie it only serves a vision that Hellboy has when he touches the mythical Excalibur Sword much to the dismay of people like me who went to see it in cinema as I thought it was going to be a crucial part of the movie.

Lionsgate Movies Channel

Due to the 2019 movie being a commercial failure and not being so well received by fans, Hellboy is going to get rebooted for a second time with a different cast and will be titled ‘The Crooked Man‘ based on the comic story of the same name and is scheduled for a 2024 release date.

In comics ‘The Crooked Man’ is about Jeremiah Witkins who lived back in the early days prior to America’s founding and preyed on people down on their luck and became incredibly rich. He even caused chaos among his fellow settlers and Native Americans. During the American Revolution and American Civil War, he supplied weapons and alcohol to both sides. Jeremiah was sentenced to death for his crimes and his fortune was dispersed and both his name and memory were a curse among the people. Satan was impressed with Jeremiah’s deeds and sent him back to Earth to cause more mayhem as a demonic soul collector. Upon returning to Earth, Jeremiah would collect peoples’ souls in glass jars and once inside the jars took on the form of gold coins. Jeremiah even possessed a monstrous form courtesy of Satan; but his crooked ways were finally foiled by Hellboy, a blind priest, a dead woman’s ghost and a man that’s been tormented by Jeremiah since he was a boy.