Super Tuesday III:

Last Friday I attended “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.”  It was a good movie, and I essentially enjoyed it, but I had several issues with it.

First up, let me assure you that the visuals were often stunning—the mix Del Toro’s vision combined with Mike Mignola’s stylings were creepy, beautiful, unnerving, and to die for.  The angel of death alone, with the eyes in her wings, was worth the price of admission.  The Faerie folks costumes were weird, alien, yet point perfect.  This movie had some killer eye-candy.

All right, let’s discuss the villain Nuada.  To be honest, I spent the movie feeling a lot of sympathy for him.  While it would be easy to dismiss this character as a loose analogy of modern terrorists, I simply saw Nuada as fighting for what he believed in.  Where his methods too extreme?  Sure.  This was a character who had deep wells of emotion, who believed that the “world will be a poorer place” for the passing of his people and supernatural beings like himself.  When his servant Wink died by Hellboy’s hand, Nuada’s grief was palpable, yet even then he offered Hellboy a chance to do the right thing.

One of the things that worked about Hellboy I was that the “freaks” truly stood out among the human cast and the otherwise real seeming world around them.  When Hellboy and crew went to the Troll Market, however, the movie took on the air of a Muppets movie—nobody looks cool and different when everyone is different.  Similarly, I was left a little cold by the golden army itself at the end of the movie, and the fight grew tiresome for me quickly.  An animated Hellboy fought big animated golems, and the live-action cast looked maybe a little bored with it too.  These giant looming robots are gathering menacingly, and the actors seem almost non chalant about it. 

There are some other over-the-top moments I didn’t care for.  We are introduced to Hellboy and Liz with a flying vault door that nearly kills Manning and Abe Sapien, and nobody even comments on the wildly irresponsible destruction and near death of two series regulars.  Hellboy’s chance to be outed in public seems in poor taste, too, especially considering that several members of his team have been eaten alive and killed by tooth faeries.

The underlying theme in these movies is that we can choose what we want to be, man or monster.  You might be demon, or a “freak,” but you can choose what to do about it.  Are you going to destroy the world, as you were intended to do, or are you going to be a beer drinking, cat loving, blue-collar workingman with a taste for Al Green and Cuban cigars?  The choice is yours, and predestination be damned.

Abe Sapien got more screen time in this installment, and he even had a very sweet but ultimately doomed romance.  Abe has always been a popular character among comic readers, and has starred in many of the BPRD comics and a few of his own comics.  He is an innately noble person with a gentle spirit, a love of reading and scholarship, and a keen student of human nature.  What’s not to love?  He’s the outsider with heart, much like Hellboy himself. 

Liz comes off as much more nagging in this movie, but we find out later in the show that much of that may be because of fluctuating hormones.  In the first movie, her sanity was held together with tape and staples; in this installment, she seems to have largely integrated her psyche and become a whole person.  She’s often emotional, but in a healthy way, not ruled by wildly fluctuating and erratic emotion as she was in the first movie.

From what I understand, the first movie broke even in the box office, and I expect much the same of this one.  That means there is unlikely to be a sequel.  This one got made because of the strength of Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” giving the director great leeway in choosing what to film next.  So, if Del Toro wants a third movie, he’ll probably get it—After he spends four years filming the two episodes of “The Hobbit” in New Zealand, that is.  Personally, I’m still miffed at him for not making H.P. Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains of Madness,” a favorite book of mine, and a movie Del Toro planned to make but now has to put aside for other projects.

In final summation, I give “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” a straight B.  It’s good for a colorful, adventurous diversion, but it suffers under closer scrutiny.