Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Out today. (*******7/10)
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Guillermo del Toro is one of my favourite directors in the world. He is the man behind the best of the Blade movies, Blade II, the incredible recent film Pan’s Labyrinth, and of course the first Hellboy film, which I really liked. The thing that made Hellboy great was that it didn’t look like other superhero or comic book movies. It looked like something totally new. Dark, spectacular and imaginative, the world occupied by the characters was vivid and appealing. And Ron Perlman as Hellboy was perfect. A completely new type of comic book hero. The spawn of hell, a creature who existed to protect the world from the supernatural creatures that threaten to destroy it, who at the same time has the emotional maturity of a 19-year-old. He smokes cigars and drinks beer and basically lives the life of a young adult, only he lives it in isolation, separated from the world by the government which uses him to do their dirty work.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is very similar. The set designs are once again vivid and wonderful, the creatures and monsters Hellboy has to face are once again interesting and really cool looking, and Ron Perlman is as good as ever. (Perlman, I should add, has worked with Del Toro twice before - once in the original Hellboy, obviously, and once as the coolest bad guy in Blade II.) However, the creatures are not quite as cool as they were the first time around. Partly because they remind me of a lot of other creatures. Guillermo del Toro creatures. There is a bizarre creature with no eyes in it’s head, but rather in it’s wings, that at one point helps to heal Hellboy. And it really reminded me of the creature with eyes in it’s hands from Pan’s Labyrinth. The bad guy, an elf prince named Nuada, played by Luke Goss, reminds me very much of the bad guy in Blade II. Perhaps that is because, now that I’ve done my research, in Blade II the bad guy Nomak was played by…Luke Goss. But he seems to be made up the same way in this one - he’s just Nomak with hair - and it’s a little disconcerting.
I really don’t want to rag on Guillermo del Toro for ripping off…himself. Once you’ve created such memorable stuff in your career, it’s not such a bad idea to revisit the things that worked once before. After all, we all want to hear the new AC/DC album, knowing full well it will be exactly the same as every other AC/DC album. But the story in Hellboy II is a little weaker as well. This movie could have been a much deeper commentary on the “nature of heroism” and so forth. Not that I’m asking it to be The Dark Knight, which would be an unreasonable expectation, but this sort of thing is hinted at so often in the movie that it’s disappointing not to see it fleshed out.
Hellboy is of course, being a young adult at heart, eager to escape from the close confines of the government lab where he is housed. He now lives with his girlfriend from the first movie, played by Selma Blair, a woman who can control fire. And he’s constantly at odds with the government management, represented ably by Jeffrey Tambor. Hellboy wants to be a hero, beloved in the city, and wants the public to recognize him for his good deeds. Basically, he feels he deserves to be a celebrity. And perhaps he’s right. The government wants to keep him under wraps. They want to relegate “Hellboy” sightings to the tabloids, creating a “bigfoot” or “loch ness” aura around him. And perhaps they’re right.
There are a few scenes where Hellboy IS seen by the public, and even though he has clearly just helped them out, they are afraid of him and assume he’s a bad guy, because, well, he looks like the devil. All of this stuff would be really interesting if the movie was willing to go into it, but it never really does. Also interesting would have been the real motivation of the elf prince, Nuada, and his relationship with his twin sister. He wants to resurrect the Golden Army, an unstoppable force, to take over the world from the humans. He points to the fact that the elves and mystical creatures have abandoned the world to the humans many years ago, and human beings have just screwed it up. Unless these supernatural creatures reclaim the world from the humans, the Earth will be destroyed. And it’s their Earth too.
This could be a really fascinating debate. Is it worth killing the humans if you know they are in the process, inadvertent or not, of killing you? Does the word of the elf king, given to the human race many thousands of years ago and forgotten by today’s people, mean more than protecting your environment? I could see this movie becoming a serious ethical dilemma for everyone, but it never goes there either. Nadua is the villain, he wants to destroy all human beings, and he must be stopped. He is evil. End of story. It;s too bad, because Hellboy II is every bit as visually impressive as Hellboy, the cast is equally terrific (although I do miss David Hyde Pierce as the voice of Abe Sapien), there is still a lot of good humour and the energy is still fantastic.
But Hellboy II does not reach the level of Hellboy simply because it sets up some interesting stuff that never pays off, in favour of throwing even more impressive and stunning visuals at us. And all of that is great - Guillermo del Toro is one of the directors who can make the best use of a massive budget - but it’s a little overwhelming while the story ends up being a little underwhelming. The first one was a must-see. And if you liked that one, this one is a should-rent.