I personally hated the Hellboy films as Hellboy adaptations. The first one was...decent enough on its own terms, but it ripped the heart out of Hellboy as a person.
He's very direct, yeah, but he's savvy and sensible and kind, and at fifty goddamn years old the BPRD treated him as an adult agent with self-recognizance, thanks, not a thing to be locked in a vault and placated. Brutenholm wouldn't have stood for that shit.
Hellboy is a detective noir superhero who fights gothic monsters. Mostly by punching but also by way of 'huge gun' and sometimes 'mythological and theological expertise.' He's pretty well-read. He's regularly isolated by the fact that his life is insane and people die a lot, but he loves people and makes friends all the time, and they don't even have to be human.
Hellboy plays cards with ghosts and tells them the story of the time he beat a gambling vampire puppet by accidentally getting a straight flush in the middle of combat. Hellboy finds an abandoned house in a mythical Russian hellscape to which he's been banished and deduces there's a domovoi in the stove, talks it out, and then they have a cheery fire and gossip. And not infrequently he notices somebody isn't human but doesn't say anything because it isn't his business, if they aren't hurting anybody. But if it turns out they are he gets so mad. (Mad rarely makes him fight stupid, but it does mess with his judgment about whether it's smart to start a fight in the first place. 'And I was so mad, I thought, why not fight a whole army of skeletons?') He's gruff and informal but rarely actually rude unless you're either his enemy or obviously trying to manipulate him.
Hellboy completely understands that he is the antichrist, and punches the fact in the face as often as possible. Because he will not be coerced and he will not hurt innocent people. Protecting people is why he gets up in the morning, along with the little things like pancakes. He does not have a secret identity.
I mean, lmao, in the first case we ever see him take in the comics, he knocks on a door and is like 'Hello ma'am I'm Agent Hellboy and this is my partner Dr. Abraham Sapien.'
Abe's in a fake beard and big glasses, but Hellboy's just in his coat, no attempt at disguise. Old lady is like, 'Oh, come in Mr. Boy.' (She is in fact in league with the thing that recently killed Hellboy's dad by way of frogs, and also dies of frogs, because her sons have been turned into frog monsters. This is a very Lovecraftian universe.)
The second movie was gorgeous, Mignola's art style would make terrible films, but the plot was a hot mess and this time it was Abe getting a poorly-thought-out romance apparently on the grounds that you can't have a female character be significant without her being wrapped up in an embarrassing romantic subplot. I think del Toro made the wrong decisions about where to be artsy and where to Hollywood it up for this franchise.
I love del Toro's work in general, and I adore his visuals, and whoever he had doing fight choreography for The Golden Army was wow, but the writing and character development choices for those movies were painful, and I'm cautiously excited that a reboot means they'll do my boy justice this time. Or they may fall flat on their faces. Who knows?
)... (or in Jojovich's case, the Fifth Element, which is an awesome film 
).
