you killed my father. prepare to die

'My boy'

'There are things that go bump in the night...Make no mistake about that. And we are the one's who bump back'

The only thing I like about Hellboy is the father and son relationship between Professor Broom and Hellboy. Just because I knew that the old dude's death was coming doesn't mean I have to like it. And I wish more emphasis was put on the prof's relationship with everyone in the BPRD since he's such a fatherly figure to all of them. From the start of the film, he was the one who believed the most. There were glimpses of that, when Abe showed concern about how sick he was, or when Liz found out that he died but it really wasn't enough for me. Especially with him and Hellboy. I was enamored with their relationship since that moment when Hellboy saw his father at the library and hid his cigar. This big hulking guy who talks tough and smokes, sees his father and suddenly he's brought down and placed into context. It's a moment of humanization, when we can see him not as a monster, but a child. It's such an off-hand moment but the audience understands the parent as a figure of a authority, and it's sweet because no matter how easily he might be able to fight or how different he looks, he's really still just a boy. And he thinks of himself as a lone hero, as a freak, as a monster, but even to the end the professor thought of him as his son. Even when the FBI guy mistrusted Hellboy and called him a freak, he also understood. That moment at the crime scene when Hellboy falls to his knees and cradles the professor's body, even though Manning called him an 'it', he still lowers his head because there's nothing there at that scene except a father and a brokenhearted son. Except love. It's respect and sympathy for a tragedy. After seeing that, how can you still call him a monster? It doesn't matter what you call Hellboy, it won't change that the man who rescued him and raised him just died, and he's barely an adult who just lost his father. The relationship between a parent and a child is so universal that it literally doesn't matter what you call him. Everyone understands the weight of his loss. You can't sympathize with a monster, but you can sympathize with losing someone like that. And once you can sympathize, you think 'we are the same' and then it doesn't matter what you call him or what he looks like. It's a love that everyone understands.
It's those tiny little moments that I appreciate the most: the professor correcting Myers when he calls Abe an 'it', Hellboy hiding his cigar, or even just calling him Father, Liz hugging the professor when she comes back, Manning lowering his head and the FBI clearing a path when Hellboy comes to his father. Like seriously fuck the supernatural monsters, fuck the whatever love triangle (no seriously ugh fuck the love triangle), there's nothing that gets to me as much as those little moments of family.