Tag Archives: Movies

Movie Night: Hellboy (2019)

I actually purchased this movie on iTunes a long time ago (I think because it was on sale for under $5), but never really got around to watching it until just the other night (for Halloween, actually!). I was initially attracted to the premise because of the success of the earlier Hellboy movies starring Ron Perlman, and the promise of gore and violence to excess. I didn’t really know who David Harbour was (still don’t, if I’m being honest), and I knew it wasn’t well-received, but I thought perhaps it would be one of those entertainingly bad movies, at least.

It turned out to be the first movie in a very, very long time that I actually stopped watching halfway through, and have absolutely no desire to finish. Violence and gore is about all it has going for it – and even then, it’s tainted by poor CGI and prop/sets that appear to outright defy the laws of physics.

Essentially – from what I gathered in the first thirty minutes or so – Hellboy is on earth, part of some society of folks that go around dealing with monsters and demons and preventing them from wreaking havoc in the world. We’re treated to a dreadful opening flashback in which Milla Jovovich is gorily skewered and decapitated because she’s some kind of evil blood queen (this doesn’t appear to kill her, interestingly enough), before returning to present-day in which Hellboy fights an old friend-turned-vampire in a Mexican boxing ring, before being despatched to England to deal with some giants. (Yes – this is the opening of the film.)

From here, he is swiftly betrayed by the giant hunters in England, though we don’t learn why as they are themselves swiftly decimated by the giants themselves. Hellboy wakes up some time later only to take on the giants and destroy them with what seems like reckless ease, only to then pass out (I guess from the exertion of destroying giants?) and wakes up in some girl’s flat and that’s when I was just like nope – this is making zero sense whatsoever. (All the while, Jovovich’s character is being reassembled from her severed body parts found across the land by her demon-slaves, or something.) Again, this is the first thirty minutes of a two-hour movie.

This movie is literally a disaster. From the pacing to the dialogue to the shoddy CGI and ham-fisted plot, there is just … just no redeeming this abomination of cinema. At one point Hellboy swings a sword four times his own height into a giant’s skull, parting it almost completely and showering the viewer in CGI blood that looks like nothing more than melted plastic, or the blood effects of a 2005-era video game. In the same sequence, he skewers another giant with a tree. A literal tree. And yet tasers seem to incapacitate him fairly easily.

I don’t know. I think it’s a shame, really, because there was potential here; the opening boxing ring sequence wasn’t bad, and it wastes great talent such as Ian McShane (Winston from John Wick, or Blackbeard from Pirates of the Caribbean) on ancillary roles with absolutely no meaningful dialogue. It’s boring, predictable, and worst of all, has zero structure that sets up conflict. It’s rushed, too; along with everything else described, we also learn (in the same first thirty minutes) that Hellboy was raised from hell as a child demon, and taken in by Ian McShane’s character to raise as a son … because that also just makes so much sense.

Anyway, there’s really not much else to say about this film, other than save yourself the rental fee – or at least the time out of your life – and watch something better. Almost any other movie on earth is more worth your time than this disaster.

★☆☆☆☆

Controversial Artists: Loving Works by People You Hate

Within the past week, several serious allegations of abuse have come out surrounding the ever-so-popular artist your mom loves to hate, Marilyn Manson. Initially starting with Evan Rachel Wood, who came out stating that the shock-rock artist groomed her as a teenager and mentally abused her for years, more and more women who’ve had relationships with Brian Warner have piled on the allegations of sexual misconduct, abuse and misogyny. Within days, Marilyn Manson was dropped from his record label, his manager, and legions of fans, it seems, have overnight turned on him.

I’m not here to debate whether the allegations against the musician are true or not; it seems to be unlikely that so many people would care enough about ‘taking him down’ to falsify claims of misconduct and abuse. Like with Harvey Weinstein, it’s far more likely that one person with the courage to speak up emboldened other women – women who had felt pressure to remain silent for years – to finally tell their own truth. Perhaps Manson has been a terrible person for decades, and people willfully turned a blind eye; perhaps the power that comes with being a household name corrupted him to the point where he felt he could get away with whatever he wanted. Either way, it’s important that the victims of abuse – whether at the hands of powerful people or not – are able to come forward and voice their truths.

What’s fascinating to me about this most recent sensation is not that Marilyn Manson is capable of abusing women or power – I have no doubt he is – but how quickly the masses turned against him. In all the media frenzy I’ve seen regarding the situation, the closest to a counterargument I’ve seen was from Dita Von Teese, who simply said it didn’t align with her experience with Marilyn Manson, although she did eventually leave him because of his behavior and infidelity. Rather, everyone who had supported him throughout his career turned their backs on him in a heartbeat – faster, even, than if they had been completely ignorant of his abusive behavior. This, to me, is perhaps more telling than even the allegations themselves.

It reminds me of what happened with a slightly lesser-known band, Iced Earth, in the wake of the United States Capitol riots earlier this year. Photos of their guitarist, Jon Schaffer, actively involved in the violence surfaced only days after the riots took place, and within days, their label dropped them, the representation was lost, and Schaffer himself is, by all accounts, now arrested and awaiting trial. Although this is not related to sexual abuse as with Marilyn Manson – and there is less evidence that Schaffer was prone to violence prior to the riots themselves – the dropping of the artist like a hot potato is a theme that is starting to become a repeating pattern.

The question this poses for me is this: when an artist, band, producer, or celebrity of any kind ‘goes down’, and unsavory truths come to light about these people, where does that leave their legacy and their body of work? Can their music, their books, or their films still be enjoyed, despite what we now know about them as people? And while the answer might at first seem to be a simple ‘yes’, it doesn’t change the fact that new information can change our perception of old art.

For example, every time I watch The Lord of the Rings – often praised on this blog as one of the best series of films ever made – I’m reminded in the credits that Harvey Weinstein was their executive producer, and enormously influential in getting the films made. To an extent, I owe an abusive, manipulative sexual predator a debt of gratitude for helping bringing to life my favorite movies of all time. Does that somehow taint the enjoyment I get from simply watching the movies, removed from the fact that at the time, Weinstein’s behavior was either unknown, or at least a well-kept secret?

Moving forward, I really enjoy Marilyn Manson’s music. His album Mechanical Animals is a huge part of my youth, and his songs and lyrics spoke to me deeply as a troubled teen. When I listen to his music now, I can’t help but think that it was made by a sexually abusive creep. How can I still listen to his work, knowing now what I do about the man as a person?

Or what about Iced Earth – another band whose music I enjoy? Do I still listen to their releases, despite knowing that their main songwriter is in jail for inciting violence against the literal government of the United States? That he’s a right-wing nut job who would probably just as soon shoot me as look at me?

The paradox here is that art is created by humans – flawed, imperfect, and sometimes downright despicable – but the art itself, removed from the context of the artist, can often be enjoyed regardless of the creator’s original intentions, meanings, or personal beliefs and behaviors. After all, even Mozart has been thought to be a sexual predator and womanizer, but it doesn’t change the fact that, 200 years later, we still enjoy his music as some of the best to have ever been written.

Beyond that, what of financial support? With streaming platforms, every time I listen to one of Marilyn Manson’s songs, he gets money. Not much, but added up over all the fans he has around the world, and it still means that I’m providing a living to someone who I now know to be a fiend. It feels wrong to continue to support someone like that, but at the same time, it doesn’t change the fact that his music means something to me, both from a lyrical and nostalgic perspective. Do I simply cut off an entire part of my life, simply because I don’t agree with an artist’s behavior?

I don’t know if there’s an easy answer to be found here; from Marilyn Manson to Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton to Bill Cosby, there countless examples of celebrities who have done unspeakable, immoral, or even illegal things. I think that, in most cases, most of these people were not inherently bad people to begin with, but I recognize that power corrupts; and while this isn’t an excuse to their behavior, it at least brings into consideration that what these people created and did for the greater good should still be taken into consideration, despite their aberrant, destructive and manipulative behavior.

Marilyn Manson may never create another record after this. If he did, I don’t know if I would want to listen to it. How could I in good faith listen to the words and music of someone who can do such horrible things to other people? But at the same time, I don’t want to stop listening to his existing body of work, because before I knew about his abhorrent behavior, it meant something important to me, and I know it meant something important to millions of others, as well.

I’d be curious to know what you think about this. When unsavory information comes to light about someone you once revered, does it change your perspective on what they already did? Are you still able to enjoy their body of work? Does the new information taint how you perceive not just the artist, but their creations? What are your thoughts?

Elements of a Great Time Travel Story

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a great time travel story. Whether it’s Star Trek, H.G. Wells or The Terminator, there’s something about the confusion, impossibility and theoretical consequences of traveling backwards and forward through time that engages and excites the imagination. However, not all time travel stories are created equal, and there are many different theories (fictional and real) on exactly how time travel might work, if it were possible. I’m not going to debate whether time travel is actually possible or not – Stephen Hawking’s party for time travelers may have unfortunately proved this – but rather examine the elements that make for an exciting and mind-bending time travel story, within which universe time travel – according to the rules set forth in the story – is entirely possible.

Paradox

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: one of the most intriguing aspects of time travel stories is the concept of temporal paradoxes – the notion that by going (specifically) back in time, you can cause an event that would, in one way or another, prevent you from going back in time. The most famous of these is the grandfather paradox: if you go back in time and murder your grandfather before your father was born, you would never have existed, and therefore couldn’t have gone back in time to commit the murder.

There are a number of stories that deal with this – and other – paradoxes in wonderfully inventive ways. One of my favorites is Futurama’s feature-length episode, Bender’s Big Score. In it, a ‘time code’ is discovered (on main character Fry’s butt cheek, of all places) that allows for one-way backwards time travel (the traveler can go back in time to any point in history, but cannot return without waiting it out). A group of scammers get hold of the time code and use it to pull off heists in the past – all by using the robot, Bender, who can commit the crime, then simply wait out the centuries in the basement until bringing the pilfered goods at just the right moment.

The paradox presented in this episode is that of time duplicates: the more you use the code, the more copies of you end up in history, leading to the possibility of encountering yourself, and even killing yourself (or, in one somewhat disturbing scene, making out with yourself). This is corrected, humorously enough, by introducing a concept called the ‘doom-field’; the time code corrects all paradoxes by ‘dooming’ any time duplicates to death or destruction. This leads to some rather emotional moments, as Fry ends up going back in time to relive life in the 20th century, only to discover that his arch-nemesis, Lars, is not who he seems to be.

There are, of course, countless other paradoxes presented by the concept of time travel, and each story deals with it in interesting ways; some embrace the paradox, using it as a reason for everything to have happened in the first place, while others try to find a way around the paradox, but it’s one of the key aspects of any decent time travel story.

Fish-Out-Of-Water

Another major component of time travel stories, whether used for serious plot devices or simply for humor, is the idea that by traveling to another point in time – whether the past or the future – the traveler will find themselves woefully unprepared to deal with life in that other time. In cases where the traveler finds themselves in the past, we usually see a technologically advanced character in a position of superiority to the inferior technology of the past; when the reverse is the case, we usually see the character marvel incomprehensibly at the newness of imagined future technology.

One of the earliest examples of a going-to-the-past time travel story is Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, where the protagonist is hit over the head and awakens in 6th-century England, around the time of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Whilst the story itself is something of a satire, the concept of an advanced character in a primitive setting is inventive (for the time). It helps that the main character, Hank, is an engineer, and therefore able to recreate the technology of the 19th century without additional aid, but a famous moment comes partway through the story when he is challenged to joust a fellow knight; rather than go through with the contest and potentially get killed himself, he fashions a rudimentary gun and simply shoots his opponent.

Of course, traveling to the past is entertaining in that we get to feel superior to our ancestors; traveling to the future, however, is an opportunity to engage both the author and the reader’s imagination and see how we would feel if presented with significantly more advanced technology than currently exists. To some extent, sci-fi shows such as Star Trek, set entirely in the future, are an example of this, but the fish-out-of-water concept specifically comes in when a character from the past is introduced. Star Trek has actually done this several times, but one of my favorites is the episode Relics, where Scotty, the engineer from the original series, finds himself aboard the Enterprise-D after almost a century of suspended animation.

This episode specifically plays on the notion that technology advances rapidly, and that we as humans are inevitably going to feel left behind, whether due to age or other advancements. Scotty, once-revered as a wizard of engineering, suddenly finds himself unable to do even the ‘simplest’ things (such as changing the dilithium crystals required for warp drive), because advancements in the century he was absent rendered most of his knowledge completely obsolete. It’s an interesting take that doesn’t really deal with time travel specifically, but more so deals with the the idea that human technology will one day advance beyond us all, and that what is incomprehensible today will one day be commonplace knowledge.

Causality

Perhaps connected to the idea of paradox, causality is also an important aspect of time travel stories, inasmuch as traveling back in time to cause an event is just as important a notion as going back in time to prevent one. Coming out of the blue as it did in 1984, seemingly billed as a simple action vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the best examples of this is the movie (and subsequent franchise) The Terminator. In it, the infamous titular villain is sent back in time from a future in which machines have taken over the world, on a mission to enact a grandfather paradox: killing the mother of the leader of the human resistance, meaning that John Connor would never be born, thus ensuring the victory of the machines.

However, The Terminator takes this a step further by introducing a second character sent back in time, Kyle Reese: a human, knowing the machines’ plot, is sent to stop the terminator before it can kill Sarah Connor. IN doing so, Kyle falls unexpectedly in love with Sarah Connor, and without knowing it, fathers her son: John Connor. In other words, the human savior would not have been born at all if the machines’ plot to kill his mother had not been hatched – which it wouldn’t have been, had it not already happened. It’s actually really quite confusing.

In this instance, we see an example of causality: in going back in time, Kyle caused an event to happen (the conception of John Connor) that ensured he would eventually have to go back in time to cause it to happen. In real life, causality usually only goes one way: we do a thing, which in turn causes another to happen. When the ability to travel into the past is introduced, things get funky: we can cause things that have already happened, leading into the time where we go back to cause it to happen again (an almost never-ending loop).

There are quite a few other aspects of time travel that I haven’t gone into, such as multiple timelines (see Back to the Future), but these are some of the aspects that intrigue me the most, and are most likely to get me hooked when reading/watching a time travel story. What are your favorite time travel movies, shows and books? Are there aspects discussed in them that I haven’t mentioned? What makes them so appealing to you? Let me know in the comments!