The Sci Fi Catholic Yak Module
Well, Mister Douglas Graham Damasus Davidson, M.A., I think there's reason to hope this one will be much better than the last.
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I love Hellboy. I love the BPRD. I love Guillermo del Toro. That trailer made me just about whiz in my undies from excitement.
Um, um, I mean: Cool trailer.
Mir
Hurray for Ron Perlman! Hurray for Hellboy and Mignola! Hurray for gruff-working-class-type heroes!
Yeah, the first one wasn't too great. But it was still fun.
What I want to know is, when are we going to get a "Screw-On Head" movie? That guy's even better than Hellboy.
My foremost complaint about the first was that it didn't use the universe of the comics. I really didn't care for the secret organization thing. And when you eliminate Hell, Hellboy doesn't make a lot of sense. And what was with all the Lovecraft references? I thought Clark Ashton Smith was the major inspiration for Hellboy. Besides that, they were bad Lovecraft references. Tentacles don't make a monster Lovecraftian. I could go on...
Yes, D.G.D., but -
Cool Catholic references! As someone who has taken as his confirmation name the patron saint of archaelogists who - and you must admit this - is a fairly obscure saint, how can you not love a movie that references St. Dionysius the Areopagite as the one who wards against demons? (As was pointed out, it would have been even cooler had it been St. Joseph, but poor St. Joseph just never gets the credit he deserves).
The Evil Catholic Church not being the villain of the piece for once! (And turning out not to be all that evil to boot!)
Ron Perlman as big red demonspawn with giant stone right hand getting into kick-ass fights!
Just Ron Perlman in general!
Abe Sapien!
Rasputin! (Probably the coolest semi-historically sort of based on real character movie villain ever and I dare you to name one cooler, go on, try it, I dare you)
Big red demonspawn deciding *not* to destroy the earth and all upon it by unleasing transdimensional horrors from beyond because he looked at his rosary beads!
(Did I mention the Cool Catholic References?)
Of course, it was the movie that introduced me to the comics (and not vice-versa, which is the usual way for me) so maybe I had a different expectation going in (i.e. 'oh, man, this is probably going to suck the usual way comic-book adaptations do, guess it's just as well it's not a character I know and care about and yeah, I am talking about you Ang Lee and what you did to the Hulk') so really, I was pleasantly surprised.
Now I have something cool to look forward to for the summer!
Fuinseoig, I acknowledge everything you say with a few reservations: first, the Catholic references in the comic are cooler, and Hellboy, so far as I can tell, has always had a rosary dangling off his belt from the very beginning, though it does seem to be missing in some issues, probably because Mignola didn't want to draw all the beads.
Second, del Toro intentionally drained the Hellboy universe of most of its religious content (hence the disappearance of Hell, which as I said already, makes no sense) and said in the commentary on the film that the rosary wasn't meant to be a religious symbol. Yes, that's an incredibly dumb thing to say and obviously every viewer took it as a religious symbol whether del Toro liked it or not, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.
Third, as for semi-historical villains, Rasputin is up there--if you mean the Rasputin in the comic. The dude in the movie got on my nerves.
Fourth, the reference to St. Dionysius's pinkie bone was clearly meant as a mildly derogatory joke. It is reasonably in keeping with the comic, however, in which relics and medals and such frequently function as deus ex machina (remember the rosary on Hellboy's belt?).
Fifth, in neither version of the Hellboyverse do religious artifacts have any meaning beyond their use for vanquishing or warding off monsters.
Sixth, Hellboy's depiction of Catholicism is reasonably complex, sometimes positive and sometimes negative, especially if you throw in novelizations not by Mignola, such as On Earth as It Is in Hell.
Seventh, del Toro commits the unforgivable sin of throwing out the Hell based on Paradise Lost and of failing to include demon characters like Ashtoroth.
Eighth, I can't remember where I was going with this.
The animated Hellboy (storm of swords, i think) had a pretty useless, even damaging, priest who ends up all werewolfy. But at least there is an actual reference to the Bible and the book of Revelation and the "key to the abyss" (Hellboy's big-ass fist and arm). So, there is an actuall hell if he's got the limb-key, nu?
I totally agree that the concept of Hell can't logically be avoided if this is a c ritter from the doomed place.
But, hey, we did mention cool Ron Perlman didn't we? And cool Abe Sapien? Yes, there we go.
And now...ELVES!!! And an albino, Elric-y elf, to boot. Come on. Coolness.
Mir
No, Stupid me. Not "Storm of Swords", but "Blood and Iron." Oops.
I don't like the movie version of Abe Sapien, to be honest. I don't like him as a wimpy psychic. I want the tough Abe Sapien back, and I've never liked psychic powers.
I acknowledge everything you say, but come on, D.G.D., relics - when was the last (or ever?) time you saw relics mentioned, let alone used, in a movie?
And I'll take the portrayal of Catholicism in "Hellboy" as against that of "The Da Vinci Code" any day of the week.
Rasputin - no arguments there. And definitely they should have had Baba Yaga. No Baba Yaga? Boo!
But I realise they couldn't crush everything from the comics into one movie, and that mean there was all this cool stuff I didn't know about until I read the books waiting for me, so not completely disappointed there 
And no, that movie called "The Relic" does NOT count
I certainly agree they couldn't have packed the comics into a movie, nor should they. Although the comics are, surficially, about a big guy punching stuff, their backdrops can be quite convoluted and probably wouldn't translate well to screen.
A streamlined story of Rasputin, Nazis, some hocus-pocus, and the possible end of the world would have been fine, but to make it good, they should have kept Hell, kept the frog monsters, and not given us Predator knock-offs for the creatures.
And calling that beastie "Samael" was lame. Anyone who knows Samael is a prince of demons was rolling his eyes at that. And making him split into two every time he died was a bad idea, too; at the end, when Liz used her pyrokinetic powers and fried all the Samael eggs, I was scratching my head and saying, "So...now there will be twice as many of them and the heroes are screwed, right?" Del Toro really wrote himself into a corner on that one.
And here's another thing: I'm totally down with Ron Perlman as Hellboy having an unrequited love interest (after all, this guy played Vincent!), but not with Liz! Liz is supposed to have some kind of ambiguous relationship with Abe: you know, she's fire and he's water; the whole opposites attract thing. If Hellboy is to have an unrequited love interest, it should be with Kate Corrigan, who they should have thrown in there in place of that lame "John" character.
Oh, and calling Hellboy "Red" is totally lame. He should be H.B. to his pals.
Oh, and one more thing that worries me about this new movie: they resolved the tense relationship between Hellboy and Liz in the last film. I liked it then, but I really don't want to see scenes of Hellboy and Liz getting all lovey-dovey in the new movie. It was cool at first, but with all those prosthetics on Perlman's face, it will just be awkward and weird if they keep it going, especially since he can't pucker his lips.
On the plus side, I see from the preview that they've finally given Liz her crucifix choker!
And they're going to have Johann! Which will probably just about save me from spontaneously combusting about Prince Nuada, but please excuse me for one tiny moment:
Nuada is not the son of Balor! Balor is not one-armed! That's Nuada who is Silver Hand not Silver Lance! Balor is the Evil Eye! So we're not getting the Ildanach? And where the heck did a Robot Goblin Army pop up in the Book of Invasions? And yeah, certainly I see the logic of why, since Nuada and Balor are being based on CELTIC (and specifically Irish) legends, Guillermo, you don't want CELTIC design elements in your movie... nevermind, best not to think about it, just don't wince everytime the eeevil prince is referred to as 'Nuada' and besides I don't even want to imagine how that's going to end up pronounced (should be along lines of 'new-ah-dah' but with my luck will probably end up as 'noo-Ada as in the girl's name').
Ah, that's better. Thanks for your indulgence
(1) Thank God I don't have to read subtitles this time;
(2) The first film *was* kind of boring;
(3) Gotta start smoking cigars again;
(4) "Coming Soon"?! Don't tease me!
I vaguely recall posting a post... er, writing a post? and then posting it? about the way Lovecraft's evil gods (and sorry, I don't know much about Clark Ashton Smith, even though I really, really should) have been occasionally incorporated into more traditional demonologies. Gene Wolfe does it in the Book of the New Sun - just in the mythic background, to be sure, but I found it very evocative. Wonderfully creepy, even. The massive, evil gods lurking at Urth's poles and under the ocean become the Satanic forces who will be destroyed by the (second) coming of the New Sun. And in the comics Mignola plays with the idea at least once - the seven-headed beast from Revelation is actually a big tentacley thing from another dimension, etc.
It sounds like Wolfe will be doing more with Lovecraftian mega-monsters in his new book, An Evil Guest. Check out "The Tree is My Hat" for a creepy and related take on the concept. You get a missionary priest putting a Christian theological spin on "the old gods" who are waiting to make a horrific comeback.
It certainly is interesting the way people keep reinterpreting and reusing Lovecraft's elaborate Nietzchean allegory. Sounds like some good reads you've mentioned there. For myself, I like to point to Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground, which features Jack Kerouac battling Cthulhu.
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