I write this as my brother plays the Beowulf video game on his XBox 360. Ah, Beowulf – a movie that gets more unintentionally funny every time I watch it.
I’ve been waiting for Hellboy II since Hellboy came out in 2004. And I’ve been waiting even harder since I saw this preview.
The costumes and the scenery convinced me that this movie was going to be brilliant, as did the dramatic pacing and the Rammstein song playing in the background. And brilliant in scope it is, although the characters are flatter this time around, and at times, it seems that Guillermo del Toro is struggling to mesh two movies together – one that explodes with vivid magic, and one that is firmly grounded in our world’s comic books.
It seems reviving either huge armies or huge monsters from past civilizations has become a bit of a cliché. Just before Hellboy II, for example, came the preview for The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, another movie about reviving a lost army.
Briefly, in Hellboy II, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), an elf, seeks revenge against mankind for destroying the natural world, so he decides to revive the golden army. His sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) tries to stop him by running away with some of the artifacts he needs to revive the army. Meanwhile, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Liz (Selma Blair) deal with their developing relationship and encounter the typical problems – living together and possibly raising a family.
Luke Goss, surprisingly handsome once the make-up comes off (or, dare I say, mysteriously so with the make-up on?), played Nomak in Blade II, in which Ron Perlman also acted, and he makes Prince Nuada an empathetic character, just as he did Nomak. With his gold and red eyes, long white hair, pale skin, and pointed ears, not to mention the scars, I expected him to be a vampire-like character, although he came off as more noble and elegant, being a self-exiled elf.
Another newcomer was Johann Krauss, an ectoplasmic “person” crammed into what resembles on old diving suit. He’s voiced by Seth MacFarlane, something I did not find distracting in the least – indeed, although Johann became a bit of a one-note character despite his surprises, I enjoyed having him on Red’s team.
What surprised me to discover was that Doug Jones played the Pale Man, that monstrous creature with eyes in its hands, in Pan’s Labyrinth, while here he plays the less frightening (and occasionally C-3PO-ish) Abe Sapien and the just-plain-freaky Angel of Death. Abe gets more screentime than he did in the first Hellboy, becoming more human than sidekick, although the movie’s finale doesn’t do justice to his personal struggles. I can only hope later movies will address that.
Watching this movie, I often felt like I was walking the line between immersion and disbelief. The movie begins with a background story told by Hellboy’s adoptive father, a technique that instantly had me on-guard since the young Hellboy seemed stiff – despite his expressive voice – and the dramatization of the story reminded me of the out-of-place CGI fight scenes in The Protector. Later, Hellboy and Co. investigate the disappearance (and presumable murders) of 70 guests at a fancy-pants auction where Prince Nuada showed up earlier (don’t worry, these aren’t spoilers, it’s all in the preview), and what ensues is a rather awkwardly-paced fight with some strange fairy creatures. Several expendables die in blatantly expendable-character deaths that are less fun than in the first movie, when I think we at first hoped to bond with some of Hellboy’s human teammates. The awkward pacing – some scenes should really have been tightened up – threw me off and seemed to hold me at arm’s length from the movie.
But I really wanted to like this movie, and eventually it gave me reasons. Some of these were, of course, the incredible monsters that appeared. The creativity that went into the designs was unbelievable, and I’m sure everyone has already seen and been blown away by the strange angel of death creature that has eyes embedded in its wings. A prophetic monster that should have had some more screen time, albeit not all at once.
There’s no arguing with Hellboy’s nonchalant and proud personality, either, or the sense of humor these movies have. Hellboy’s confrontation with Johann is perhaps my favorite moment in the movie.
Still, as I mentioned earlier, I sometimes felt as if Guillermo del Toro were trying to fit two different movies together. Some scenes and landscapes were breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly imaginative and didn’t seem to belong in a movie that essentially takes place in New York and New Jersey (and Ireland, for a bit), even if some locales were supposedly underground and hidden from human beings. I thought Prince Nuada’s world was sufficiently compelling to merit its own world separate from ours, sort of like an extension of the fairy tales told in Pan’s Labyrinth, yet for some reason his story was fitted against Hellboy’s. I don’t know how closely this movie aligns with the comic book, though, so I’ll leave off there.
In short, Hellboy II is a compelling movie that definitely has clichés – the ancient army, the superhero’s struggle to deal with public opinion (especially New Yorkers’ opinions), the relationship drama – but is saved by its relentless charm – the utter beauty of it all, and the quirky uniqueness of its characters. Although if I had filmed this, I would have raised the stakes and made it still more ominous (you’ll see what I mean once you watch the angel of death scene), perhaps Hellboy II just isn’t that kind of animal – it’s entertainment that isn’t meant to get you down, no matter the material it deals with (for instance, Hellboy is the son of the devil but does he mope around about his destiny?). Hellboy II certainly leaves hints of what may come for the characters in Hellboy III. Which I shall begin waiting for now.
