Hellboy Question

Hellboy Question

A few weeks ago, I saw Hellboy, and mentioned that the movie's biggest problem was probably editing, which a couple of times causes you to have to bridge the gap between character actions yourself...at one point it's logical, but there's another scene (near the movie's climax) where it was a little irritating.

In his past weekend's Question and Answer column, Roger Ebert dug up an answer on this:

The Question from one of the readers: In your "Hellboy" review, you wondered how the heroes went from defeating the monsters in one cave, to being imprisoned in another. Well, for one, Liz explained that she blacks out when she uses her powers. I guess that we can just assume that John was knocked unconscious by the force of the blast. And given that Hellboy didn't appear to be moving or awake when Liz fried the monsters, the bad guys only had to pick them up and transport them.

Neil Shyminsky, Toronto, Ontario

The thumb says:

Ingenious, but there's another explanation. Matthew Bradford of Los Angeles points me to a message by director Guillermo del Toro on the message board of the official "Hellboy" Web site.

Edited for length, del Toro writes: "We got some complaints of HB copies that were screening without 45 seconds at the end of reel 5. You see, AFTER Liz explodes there is a FADE OUT to absolute black, and some projectionists are taking it as a cue for the reel being over. It is not! All copies are printed correctly but may be screened with that 45 seconds missing by omission in the 'assembly' of the platter. The print you view needs to have the following scenes:

A) HB is attacked (spoilers from now on). Liz explodes. A rock hits the lens!

B) DARKNESS. Voices. The water has evaporated, and burnt Sammael carcasses are seen. Myers wakes up, dizzy. He sees Rasputin/Ilsa. She approaches him and thanks him for the grenade belts. CUT TO:

C) Another space in the complex. She's slamming the belts and everybody has been manacled.

The copies are being projected without "B" in some theaters."

My theater was one without that bridge segment. So that explains a lot. That theater's run by idiots, anyway. So it's not surprising that they'd screw up splicing reels together.

Last summer, a buddy and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, and after many complaints, the projectionist could not get the projection right on the screen. A mass exodus from that screen to the next screen over, which was showing the movie thirty minutes later, began. Complete with employees telling us to stop, and that the problem was being worked on. This was right around the time the Black Pearl attacks the town and kidnaps Keira Knightley. So we'd had just about enough.

Also, this theater has a snotty little guy who works the ticket counter during the week. He powertrips HARD over asking people for their ID's for R-Rated movies.

Dude. I'm 6'4", I've got a week's worth of beard, and I'm starting to go bald. I just want to see Club Dread (or Terminator 3, or Ladykillers, or any other R-Rated movie I've been to there). Why you powertripping over my driver's license? You want I should pull you through the cash hole to have a good look at me, to make sure I'm not trying to sneak into a Coen brothers movie?