Hellboy II: The Golden Army surpasses the original Hellboy (2004) in many important ways. It has more heart, more character, and a story conflict that isn’t easily resolved with nothing but violence. There are lots of fighting, make up art and cool special effects, but that’s not the essence this time around.
Hellboy II is the fourth superhero movie of the summer, and the second best in my opinion. This is how I would line them up:
1. Iron Man (9)
2. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (8)
3. The Incredible Hulk (7)
4. Hancock (4)
Centuries ago, so a tale goes told by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt), humans were at war with elves, trolls and goblins. The elves devised an invincible and indestructible army of 4900 machines made of gold. When Balor, the king of the elves (Roy Dotrice) realizes that they were massacring the rest of the world, he felt great shame, and decided to stop the fighting by taking away the control panel, which was his crown, divide it into three parts, and hide the army of 4900 somewhere underground, only to be unified again when the very existence of the elven species was at risk. Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) didn’t agree with his father’s decision and decided to leave his brethren until the time would come when they needed him to lead them in battle against the humans again.
In New York City, at the present time, Prince Nuada has decided to come back, since human beings are on the verge of destroying planet Earth, have forgotten the contract made between man and elves, and have become apathetic to anything wondrous in the world. The prince wants to bring back the golden army and annihilate all humans. His father and his sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), don’t agree for some reason, and the prince is sentenced to death by his father. So the prince rebels against his father, kills him and steals the crown, and now with only one piece missing from the crown (the other he had stolen from an auction), he goes after his sister, who’s hiding the last piece.
Now, back to the auction. Prince Nuada left behind a path of death and destruction, so the agents at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, at the order of the bureau’s president, the self-interested and political Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) go to investigate. A few human agents, which are actually more like monster fodder, go along with Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and Abraham Sapien (Doug Jones). They manage to discover what’s going on by clues and monsters Prince Nuada left behind. There are thousands of little monsters called tooth fairies, that are so named since when they attack a prey, the start by going after their teeth.
After a battle that became too public for the taste of control in Washington, Manning is replaced by Jonathan Krauss (Seth MacFarlane) who can probably best been described as a phantom menace. You get the reference when you see it. Krauss manages to bring one of the little monsters to live, after Hellboy and his team have killed it, to retrieve important information about what’s going on.
And that’s basically the setup, but it has more. There is more depth in the relationship between the characters than ever before, and you sense their friendship and love between each other, and get to understand what it is that keeps them going in a world that doesn’t want them or believes they are needed. How wrong we are, the puny humans. Even though the themes are of death, despair and destruction, the main characters have a lively sense of humor, with Hellboy muttering “Oh, crap” and excelling at one-liners every now and then.
Hellboy is different from any other superhero movie in the sense that it embraces a world of ancient fantasy in modern times, and attempts to find place for those creatures of myth amongst us, in a very creative way, since most of the monsters and creatures are original creations by Guillermo del Toro, who is really letting himself lose with his fantastic imagination, and steady hand at directing. If the directing is going to be in this caliber when his version of The Hobbit starts coming out in 2011 and 2012, we are in for a treat.
The motivation of the villains is basically the same as in the awful The Happening that came out earlier this summer, but the difference is that this story doesn’t preach and it’s entertaining as hell, with a hero who’s actually supposed to be Satan’s own son, but who took catholic faith after being raised by a catholic priest. Talk about nature vs. nurture!
Trivia from IMDB:
Revolution Studios was originally set to produce this sequel but had to pull out once Sony decided they no longer wanted to fund Revolution Studios. Sony put the rights up for sale since they felt Hellboy wasn’t a profitable franchise for them. Universal felt differently and bought the rights to make the sequel immediately.
Quote:
Prince Nuada: You have more in common with us than them, demon.
Hellboy: Excuse me?
Questions:
1. Are we close to destroying Earth?
2. Those legends of old, are they of no value in modern times, or will history repeat themselves so that they will become meaningful again?
3. Does the Earth have any means to protect other life on the planet against human violence?
4. Are human beings truly the masters of the Earth, or are we Earth’s slaves?
5. If humans are the ones to rule the Earth, how well are we doing?
6. Will there be a Hellboy III?
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Creator: Mike Mignola