"Hellboy" vs. "Kill Bill"
I came out of Hellboy thinking that the first two-thirds of the film were terrific, and the third act just failed miserably. There was too much action without motivation, too many anguished looks without an audience understanding of why exactly it was our hero was doing what he was doing. And no, I don't buy that "it was his destiny" or "it was in his nature" arguments. For an hour Del Toro painted a picture of a sympathetic -- if somewhat rough around the edges -- hero, and at the last minute Hellboy began to aid the villain in initiating the apocalypse. Supposedly he did this to save the life and soul of his true love (a woman whom I found to be pretty drippy, especially for a character played by Selma Blair), but what exactly are he and his girlfriend supposed to do in a world overrun by demons?
I digress. The point is that the script failed at the end, as so many action film scripts do. We have all been let down by too many pictures that just didn't know how to end themselves properly. These movies substitute climax for resolution, and fall back on the cinematic shorthand of walking off into the sunset when what we really want is the closure of a character's story arc. Hellboy was only guilty of these points to a minor degree, but it certainly did not have a proper -- or properly explained -- ending.
Kill Bill Volume 2, fortunately, has a nearly perfect ending, and for me it simply cements Quentin Tarantino's place as one of the great masters of film. Say what you like about his fanboy tendencies and the self-indulgent monologues he gives to his characters (one inhabitant of this second installment delivers a speech about Superman that is textbook Tarantino and still relates to the story), the man can write one helluva script and I have never once felt cheated by a plot development in one of his movies. There have been many pictures that, after I watched them, I said to myself "Jeez, I could have done better than that." But with Tarantino -- and most especially with Kill Bill -- I don't think there are very many people who can do what he does.
But man, does he have to take five years to do it each time?
I digress. The point is that the script failed at the end, as so many action film scripts do. We have all been let down by too many pictures that just didn't know how to end themselves properly. These movies substitute climax for resolution, and fall back on the cinematic shorthand of walking off into the sunset when what we really want is the closure of a character's story arc. Hellboy was only guilty of these points to a minor degree, but it certainly did not have a proper -- or properly explained -- ending.
Kill Bill Volume 2, fortunately, has a nearly perfect ending, and for me it simply cements Quentin Tarantino's place as one of the great masters of film. Say what you like about his fanboy tendencies and the self-indulgent monologues he gives to his characters (one inhabitant of this second installment delivers a speech about Superman that is textbook Tarantino and still relates to the story), the man can write one helluva script and I have never once felt cheated by a plot development in one of his movies. There have been many pictures that, after I watched them, I said to myself "Jeez, I could have done better than that." But with Tarantino -- and most especially with Kill Bill -- I don't think there are very many people who can do what he does.
But man, does he have to take five years to do it each time?
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