Unless they use any exact language from the issue JB did I doubt they would or should credit him in the movie since he 'just wrote the script' as he used to say.
So unless they borrow some lines from his script I see no problem.
Tho' it is clear they are using some of Mignolas images from the book.
In fact the ONE piece of Hellboy art I used to own seems to be takem for the movie:
(a splash page from the 4th issue)--
I seemed to recall almost this exact scean from some of the screen shots!
I have high hopes for this flick.
Too bad I sold the art
Dwayne Ferguson http://www.whatashock.com "There is no wisdom or virtue in seeking unnecessary martydom or deliberately courting persecution..."
C.S. Lewis
This message has been edited by Dwayne_Ferguson on Mar 19, 2004 11:00 PM
And if I remember correctly, JB himself didn't really believe Mignola needed someone else to script it. It was done more as a favor to get Mignola "over the hump" on the first big Hellboy story. JB's instinct (if indeed I'm remembering correctly) was proven true as Mignola scripted the subsequent Hellboy stories himself with great success.
I wouldn't mind seeing a nod to The Torch of Liberty, however.
I love Mignola and Hellboy but I think the over all feel to the book hasn't been as great as the first series and I think that has a lot to do witht he mood of JB's script.
Still the best actualy story as a Mignola solo about the baby that was "kidnapped" good stuff.
I have to admit there hasn't been a Hellboy story so far that I haven't enjoyed-
the closest would have been the "origin" story.
Dwayne Ferguson http://www.whatashock.com "There is no wisdom or virtue in seeking unnecessary martydom or deliberately courting persecution..."
C.S. Lewis
It might be noted that in The Art of Hellboy Mignola writes, "Special thanks to John Byrne without whom Hellboy would have never gotten off the ground." It'd be nice to see THAT on the screen!
Spoilers in this post if you haven't seen the movie yet
April 10 2004, 2:12 PM
I saw the movie yesterday, and I'm sorry to report that JB is not given any credit, or special thanks, or any hidden nods in the film (that I could detect), and they even changed the location of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense from Fairfield, CT, to Newark, NJ. Spoilers ahead:
SPOLIER SPACE************************************
I found it to be a fairly faithful adaptation, but I may not define that the way some others would. Changes: Besides the change of location for the BPRD, It forces a love story onto Hellboy and Liz. It intros a new character, FBI agent John Meyers. It gives Abe Sapien new powers. And lots of changes were made in the story, which was loosely based on Seed of Destruction, the first Hellboy story, which JB scripted. I only spotted one line of dialogue, which was taken directly from the story, but there may have been more. Hellboy says, "I'm gonna be sore in the morning."
This message has been edited by Dave_Pruitt on Apr 10, 2004 2:14 PM
Another thing. It makes Hellboy out to be an urban legend, like Bigfoot, and most of the time he's kept locked up at the BPRD, like some kind of prisoner. He's hidden from the public, and that's nothing like the comics, IIRC. I mean, yes he's a gov't agent, but he is free and appears in public all the time in the comics.
Not to forget he was also a "honary citizen" and made so by the UN in the comic- right?
I heard a couple of other Seeds of Destruction lines-
the Army guy at the begning said the line about never hearing of the word "paranormal" before.
Great flick if you ask me.
I felt the FBI agent was a good addition, but I didn't like the fact the love story aspect was between Hellboy and Liz instead of Liz and the FBI agent.
Next time I am off work I want to see it again.
Yes, Dave, you nailed it - when I saw it, I noted some changes, but nothing too bad - except for two that you guys mentioned:
1) the Urban Legend thing - which... I guess you could say was added for a non-comic reading movie going audience? I don't know if it's good or bad, but it didn't get in the way of me enjoying the film. (Which, by the way, I VERY MUCH did. LOVED THE FILM!)
2) The romance. Now, this one is a little stickier... because, as I've read the various and sundry HellBoy stories over the years, I felt there was some hints at romance with Liz... but always with different people!! Sometimes with HB, sometimes with Abe, sometimes with the various and sundry Red Shirt BPRD agents, etc. And I always wondered if I was reading too much into it - if there was no romance - was I just being a letch? Did Mignola have problems properly scripting male/female interaction? Etc. And now, considering how much input and interaction Mignola had with the film, perhaps he always did want to follow that path, but it was too subtle in the comics, and here was a better place to bring it out, etc?
I have really mixed feelings about this! But what's important is that I think it really works, and works well - I thought that romance was KILLER! It was perfectly tortured, and it's not even for sure by the end - perfect for the HB character, perfect for the audience (think demographics) and so on. And it made the movie flow really nice.
So, those are my thoughts - the other bit of JB dialog that made it into the film was the "aw...Crap!"
The biggest change was in the character of Hellboy. In the comics he's a hard-bitten, experienced and perhaps even a bit world weary blue collar laborer in the field of the paranormal. His character arc is coming to grips with his demonic origins and destiny, using his free will to battle away what he's promised is a role in the inevitable end of the world when all he really wants to do is his job. He's Mike Hammer trying not to be the Beast of the Apocalpse.
In the movie he's still pretty literally a boy, trying to get out into the world, to figure out how to relate to girls and his father, to get past chilli and nachos and "pamcakes," TV and video games: the old Hollywood cliche of Coming of Age. (The parallel "exposing the urban legend" idea supports this theme of a new person moving out into the world.) I'm sure the director thought he was fleshing out the characters, making them more three-dimensional, etc. I think it's arguable this is a more reasonable way to approach making a two-hour flick and Hellboy retains his blue-collar, barroom-brawler nature, so it's not the worst adaptation of a literary character to the screen.
The other big change -- the addition of Myers -- works for me as a character the viewer can relate to, a window into the world of the BPRD.
And I caught a couple other lines from JB's script carried pretty much straight from comic to film, mostly right near the beginning.
So, it's inexplicable that there's no nod at all to JB. I mean, they even changed the location of BPRD headquarters. I assume that was done because much of the film is supposedly set in NYC, and it makes somewhat more sense to have the BPRD HQ right next to NYC, but it's not REALLY necessary is it? I mean, would having a "special thanks to John Byrne" at the end been too much trouble? There was a special thanks to a few other people, so adding one more name to that short list wouldn't have been a problem. I couldn't tell when I watched it, but they showed the cover of a mock Hellboy comicbook twice, close-up. Credits on the cover, By Mike Mignola and John Byrne, would have been just fine.
Oh, well. No point belaboring it I suppose, but I was disappointed.
Dave, I thought the same thought - almost got mad over it too, but then I stopped to think about it from another angle - and tell me if this is too far off -
We're seeing this through JB filtered glasses - let's look at it from another point of view - JB just scripted the first story, and those two short stories (that were, what, 2 pages each?) - putting aside the fact that JB used JBNM to launch the character, putting his Torch of Liberty in the first issue and JB's early cross-promotion of the character in Babe2 and DU, (then again, so did Mike Allred in Madman) - JB just scripted it - Mignola did all the creation of the character, JB just did, as he refered to when doing his second run on X-Men, the "typing". So, if we look at that important, yet not-part-of-the-creation thing called "scripting", then we might see why JB didn't get credit - maybe whomever dolled out the credits for such things saw giving the scripter credit much akin to giving the letterer or colorist credit, you know?
Hm. Having typed all that, I still would rather have seen the movie called "Mike Mignola's HELLBOY, which owes everything to John Byrne", but, then again, I'm a John Byrne fan.
I wasn't expecting a co-creator thing, or anything akin to that, just a nod, especially since they were using quotations from JB's script. Yeah, it was Mike's baby, but a thank you, or some semi-hidden tip o' the hat should have been included. I mean, even leaving the BPRD in Fairfield, CT, would have been something, but they even changed that.
I just saw the movie this weekend, and I loved it and thought it was a terrific job all around. But I've never read any Hellboy stories--not becuase of lack of interest, it's just that my "to be read" pile keeps growing all the time, and I'm falling way behind.
It might behoove Ang Lee to take a look at this movie before he makes any more attempts in the genre. Sure, the Hulk is a far different character, but this movie really sustained its entertainment value up till the very end.
I had a blast with Hellboy this afternoon. Though there were some dangling plot threads such as the tentacle in Abe's shoulder and the idea those things are reborn twice for every death. Also I thought the ending was a bit anticlimatic given everything that lead up to it. Very similar in structure to Blade and looked incredible for the budget. So much so that it made the Spider-man 2 trailer pale in my eyes ($200 million plus and they still can't figure out how to comp S-M into a plate and not make it look fake and pasted on?).
There was a vast improvement in the use of digital doubles over the use in Blade 2 as I think De Toro has figured out that long static shots fall apart very quickly. Here the fast cuts made it work very well though there were still some spastic doll movements that gave it away.
