 Things get heated as Hellboy takes on the 2019 reboot on this episode of Movie Feuds. I'm joking. This match isn't even close. He's been very vocal about his disdain of the new film. He was working for years to get a third Hellboy made and now it would seem that ship has failed. The only good news is he avoids the pitfalls of a potentially bad third like so many other franchises have. The bad news? He has to bear witness to what's become of his character in this 2019 film. No disrespect to David Harbour, he does a very good job portraying the comic book Devil. Ron Perlman just did it so much more effortlessly. He brought such a comfortable laid-back coolness to Hellboy, whereas Harbour often comes off aloof and bewildered. Each film gives us a ragtag team of heroes. The most notable coming from 2004 with Abe Sapien. Some of Blair plays Red's love interest Liz Sherman. Their chemistry matches up. Far better than Alice Monahan from The New Flick. The weak point in 04s is definitely the generic agent, John Myers. The villains easily make up for that though. Rodin's Resputin is a worthy adversary and his sands of time henchmen steals every scene he pops up in. Lest we forget about the impressive Hellhounds that dominate the first half of the picture. Mila Jovovich is clearly having a good time as the blood queen too. Her CGI minions however are a bit of a mixed bag. We have a couple brooms to pick from as well. One is a bit duster than the other though, but also more fatherly. In my not so humble opinion the 2004 characters easily take the win here. Some children have a much more conventional upbringing than others. Hellboy was pulled in from another dimension by Nazis in the final days of World War II, saved by a military outfit and raised to hunt down the forces of darkness. Sora's stories are pretty interchangeable I'd say. 04 dedicates a good amount of time on his arrival and struggles with his purpose on Earth. We have so much in common. Resputin and his cronies eventually show up to just suck the fun out of the party, forcing HB to team up with some reluctant or just plain underprepared colleagues. The whole origin story angle is covered in 2019 as well. Oddly it doesn't really take place until a good 40 minutes into the picture, but I digress. There are probably four or five origin stories in this movie. Everything from the initial killing of the blood queen to the creation of bebop from the Ninja Turtles. There's a storyline about a giant hunting party. An astialed creature who lives in a bird house and eats teeth. There is far too much going on and none of it's really that exciting. This thing also has some really messed up spawn style CGI. Alice can communicate with the dead and channel them in a sense. She basically vomits them above her head and it looks incredibly uncomfortable. Director Guillermo del Toro is dealing with end-of-the-world stakes yet chooses to handle it in a much smaller fashion. 2019 goes the very generic route yet I still enjoyed the short-lived large-scale destruction. It was like a two-minute Mortal Kombat cutscene complete with decapitations and other grotesque kill styles. And that is absolutely the most praise I can give to this film. This doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it. Del Toro is a master of visual effects. The creature creations he and his team conjure up are in a league of their own. Hellboy blends the practical with full animated renders with great results. It's obvious when we jump from an animatronic character to a sped-up CG fight, but it has charm to it. That is hard to explain. I don't know what it is about it. Maybe it's the jarring fact that you can easily tell when something is like this, you know, puppet and then it goes from wild CG. They did the same thing in Blade II, which I absolutely adore. It's completely ridiculous in all the right ways. The costume and set designs are what really made Hellboy stand out from the comic book crowd, and that remains true all these years later. 2019 brings the obvious visual bumps with it simply because it's 15 years newer. So that's not really fair. Technology is an amazing thing, kids. That doesn't mean the movie looks better than its predecessor. In fact, I'd argue the opposite's true. There's no real style to director Neil Marshall's take on the subject. Some of the set pieces are just a total mess. Drawn out scenes of our hero clearly just moving in front of a green screen with out-of-place rock music half-heartedly chosen. It is an inconsistent bag, for sure, because some of these visuals are really slick and cool to watch. The movie really feels like a hodgepodge of ideas all around, which leads to a messy final product. Del Toro knew exactly what kind of action movie he wanted to make. And it shows. Everyone that worked on the 2019 movie probably had good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions don't win feuds. This was a massacre. The new film only manages to squeak out 8% of the votes, with a staggering 92 sticking with Ron Perlman. Thanks for watching, possibly subscribing and voting, and remember, this is more than just reviews. This is Movie Feuds. Final takeaway? Let's give Ron Perlman and Del Toro their chance to finish out this thing. Watch him stick the damn landing.