Hellboy: 10 Flaws That Prove Hellboy 3 Would've Been Better

In case it's not clear from the past few entries, many of the reboot's problems are fairly common across reboots in general. When a film decides to retread tired ground that audiences don't need anymore, it feels like a slog. If a Batman film casts Thomas and Martha Wayne, or a Spider-Man movie casts Uncle Ben, most fans already know not to get too attached. Likewise, to fans of the Hellboy comics or the del Toro movies, the inevitable death of Ian McShane's Professor Bruttenholm was one of the reboot's most predictable plot points.

McShane did a fine job portraying the character, but Bruttenholm's death couldn't have come sooner. Hellboy's daddy issues are far more emphasized in the reboot than the del Toro films, and they grow tiresome less than halfway through the picture.

Unfortunately, this movie decides to team Hellboy up with a spirit medium, ensuring that even Bruttenholm's death won't put an end to Hellboy's penchant for repeating the same argument time and again with his father. Even once Bruttenholm is buried, we're treated to another scene of Hellboy moaning next to his gravestone. Perhaps it's a bit cynical to say, but one of the better prospects of Hellboy 3 would have been that Bruttenholm was already dead.

David Harbour and Ian McShane could have had an amazing chemistry as Hellboy and his adopted father, but the script apparently didn't know it had been written for actors with actual talent.