Hellboy II: The Golden Army

[MacGuffin]

[Stefen]

So this is getting awesome reviews. Anyone see it yet? They say it's visually stunning.

[modage]

i thought it was really bad.  and i liked the first one.

[pete]

the first one didn't have enough bad guys, this one had too many.  I fell asleep during the second half and couldn't discern which parts were in the movie and which I dreamed up. 

[cron]

i don't want to see it.
this looks a lot like my definition of boring. it's the whole monster fetish in del toro's work that is starting to become tedious. i wonder if a  hellboy movie ever had the potential of being something more than a forgettable summer blockbuster. i've never read the books so i wouldn't know.  i feel like my sister by not giving it a chance at all and just assuming i will hate it and talk shit about it.

[w/o horse]

I loved it.  I mean really really loved it.  But then, I'm the kind of Del Toro fan who owns Blade II, and who on most normal days, in casual conversation, doesn't even feel the need to justify the owning of Blade II.

If you're in the theater watching Hellboy II and you don't buy into the first couple minutes in which Hellboy is told this myth about the golden army and loves this myth and believes in this myth so strongly that he remembers the story and remembers his challenging of certain claims from the myth when several minutes later in the film he enters into the story - that's when the movie is going to go wrong for you.  Del Toro's intentions are clear, his path is true.  I get swept into his films like an older generation talks about being amazed by Ray Harryhausen films (another filmmaker with a monster fetish).  I love the energy, the passion, the visual intensity, the imagination, and the immense talent of the filmmaker.

As a storyteller he's evolving as well.  Cronos and The Devil's Backbone are more dichotomized fairy tales with strong good/bad polarity.  Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II invoke complex human emotions and their stories work with contradictions that arise when you talk about a person who is innocent, a person who is making a sacrifice, or a person who is loving someone.  Maybe the first strong example of Del Toro doing this is the bully in The Devil's Backbone, who becomes the friend, who becomes the hero and victim.  Hellboy himself is a character of more force than that.  And fucking seriously if Hellboy isn't the most obviously amoral and conflicted comic book hero in any of these big summer blockbuster movies, and fucking seriously if he isn't much better thought out than his competitors for that tile in, say, Sin City.  Or Iron Man, for that matter.

If you can't agree with what I'm saying I'm still 100% on the fact that all of you know what I'm saying and probably wouldn't mind if Hellboy II had worked the same way for you.  For me Del Toro is the classic dreammaker kind of filmmaker.

[diggler]

sometimes i wonder if del toro wishes his eyes weren't on his head

i really enjoyed this too. i thought the first one was passable but not really very memorable. everyone seems a bit more comfortable in their roles this time around.  a perfect detox from the long dreary road that is TDK.

[MacGuffin]

sometimes i wonder if del toro wishes his eyes weren't on his head

i really enjoyed this too. i thought the first one was passable but not really very memorable. everyone seems a bit more comfortable in their roles this time around.  a perfect detox from the long dreary road that is TDK.

Agreed on all accounts. I liked this one better than the first; the action was more energetic and the creatures and effects were wonderful to look at.