Even though the easiest and most successful avenue with which to continue the property was staring everyone square in the face for a decade, Hellboy: The Crooked Man exists as a reboot nobody asked for, of a reboot nobody asked for.
Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman spent years trying to convince the studio bigwigs that rounding out their trilogy was the best course of action, and you’d struggle to find anyone who’d disagree. The 2004 opener and sequel The Golden Army may not have performed to the same levels as other superhero blockbusters at the box office, but they each won rave reviews from critics and sold like hotcakes on home video to make it a profitable venture nonetheless.
David Harbour has since actively apologized for how badly his stab at Hellboy turned out, but that didn’t do a thing to prevent The Crooked Man from coming to existence, with Jack Kesy the latest to inhabit the title role. To be fair, it only has to be ever so slightly above awful to emerge as superior to its immediate predecessor, and we’ll be finding out sooner rather than later after co-creator Mike Mignola confirmed that shooting has wrapped.
Do we need a second Hellboy reboot in the space of a few years? Absolutely not, especially when you can guarantee it’s going to suffer the exact same fate as the last one by relentlessly being compared to what del Toro and Perlman brought to the party. For all we know it could turn out to be a worthy successor, but that jury will remain out until The Crooked Man comes to theaters.
Published: May 15, 2023 01:11 am