Ah, good ol' Guillermo Del Toro. And good ol' Hellboy. Back together at last! We were unhappy about not having the munnies to see this on the big screen, but perseverance paid off, and, natch, we got to see it for free courtesy of someone else renting it. And what wonderful free stuff it was!
Working in realtime, Hellboy II: The Golden Army begins at around 11p.m. with an alarm at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development and keeps going clear through to the following afternoon. The plot is classic faerie tale, a story of an uneasy truce between humans and faerie folk (you keep out of the city, we'll keep out of the forest) having long been broken by the humans, and a faerie prince (the fabulous Luke Goss) who's decided that he's tired of sitting back and letting humanity break the truce while the faerie folk die. In a sweet (in both the traditional and contemporary sense) opening flashback to Hellboy's childhood, we learn a) that said truce was instigated by the repentant faerie king after he unleashed the indestructible Golden Army on the earth, and b) just how much of Hellboy's adult life has been shaped by watching Howdy Doody as a child. Back to the central plot, though: it's a good old-fashioned tale of patricide, fratricide, attempted fratricide, vengeance, mourning for the lost, and plenty of humour to keep it all from going Pan's Labyrinth on us. In short, Hellboy II is everything a good fairty-tale should be, morbid, funny, large in scale, and splendorous, by which I mean invoking a sense of wonder.
Director Del Toro is good with monsters, and his budget for Hellboy II gave him free reign to shine. His tooth fairies are a great Old World twist on the schmaltzy Western attitude toward fairies. The Troll Market scenes top Hellboy's "sense of wonder" quotient - imagine the Neverwhere miniseries with 85-110% more money and imagination. As all good set designers are also master scroungers and recyclers, I imagine that the dearth of Del Toro's sets budget went to paying those good folk for all their long, hard hours. This is one of the things I most appreciate about any director involved in the fantastical: he knows when to use CGI, and when to not. All the best-looking fantasy films employ that combination attitude, and Hellboy II is a fit addition to their ranks. A good example of combination FX is in the climactic battle situated inside a giant mess of gears and clockwork that uses both physical giant revolving gears and digitally created crevasses.
All the old faces from Hellboy are back, except for Agent Meyers, who has been replaced by wisecracking German Johann Krauss (voice of Seth MacFarlane) who is, essentially, a ghost. A lot of critics hated Johann, either because they felt he was a cheap stereotype or superfluous. He's absolutely superfluous; so what? He holds his own, and is lots of fun to have around. As far as being a cheap stereotype, well, that's what I would have said until watching a DVD featurette of the music of Babylon 5, starring series composer Christopher Franke. I believe this featurette is attached to season four. At any rate, it's all the proof one needs that Germans like Johann are no stereotype, but actual entertaining (and unwittingly entertaining) people. As for the core gang - Hellboy, Liz, and Abe - they're all in fine form. Ron Perlman's title character is up to his old tricks, lazy and obsessed with TV, candy, cats, and revolvers, and hampered by an inability and/or unwillingness to pronounce big words. In this flick, his disrespect for the authority of the BPRD (characterized by Arrested Development's Jeffery Tambor) winds up backfiring on him after he decides that he wants to go public and be recognized for his work, and Hellboy learns a thing or two. Pyrotechnic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), the quintessential brooding outsider chick, is learning a thing or two of her own after Abe accidentally uncovers her big secret. Speaking of Abe (Doug Jones, doing triple-duty as the Chamberlain and the Angel of Death), it appears that Jones voiced his character this time around. Doug Jones is most directors go-to guy for etheral or gangly on-screen creatures, having both that build and amazing control of his body, and typically speaks the dialogue during filming, which is then dubbed by someone else. In the first Hellboy film, Abe was voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who refused to be credited for his work because as far as he was concerned, Abe was Doug Jones' character through and through. I think I actually prefer Jones voicing Abe, because David Hyde Pierce's voice-over voice is a bit cartoonish, and this new sound adds a lot to Abe's character. He sounds much more comfortable this time around.
Rounding out the players are the afore-mentioned Luke Goss as faerie Prince Nuada, and Anna Walton (Crusoe) as his twin sister, Princess Nuala. Goss plays his old, mournful, warmonger character to a tee, in voice and body alike, and may just be my favourite on-screen elf. Part of this credit is to the character and makeup design - you know how in other films, you always see these beautiful hundreds- or thousands-year old elves who look about 25 and are perfectly unblemished, Hugo Weaving in The Lord of the Rings being the exception because they let his wrinkles show? While Nuada looks mostly young, Del Toro remembered that he is a warrior, and as such is covered in thick, ropy scars, the souvenirs of his centuries of battle - even master swordsmen get blooded, especially when they've been alive that long. Nuala is more subtle, but the effects of age are still there, such as a close-up of the back of her hands in the Map Shop scene - her hands are crepey like an older woman's. Another nice detail on Del Toro's part is that, when faerie/elves are together, they don't speak English. But neither do they speak a made-up language - a "set visit" featurette identifies it as Old Irish Gaelic, which lends far more gravitas to the faerie folk by being something an old humanoid creature might actually speak.
A lot of the criticisms I saw surrounding The Golden Army were mostly related to a lack of gravitas. Hellboy was certainly a darker, more gravid film, and The Golden Army was made on the heels of Pan's Labyrinth, which is probably the most grave and horrific film I've ever seen (which may have something to do with it being lighter than Pan). There was also criticism because it didn't use Judeo-Christian myth this time around; that, I don't know what to say about - I'm a Christian, and I don't see that using pagan myth made for a lesser story. It seems to be a pattern that, when comedic directors or actors try out serious work - Dreamgirls, Reign Over Me - the critics hail them and see this as a step up, but when serious directors try comedic or less serious work - like this piece - it's a step down, it's not as good as his other stuff, etc. Well, okay, The Golden Army is a less cohesive film than Hellboy, but not by much. And by using more humour and having a greater sense of excitement than of dread, it's a rollicking good faerie tale adventure, a better one than its predecessor. Most of the humour also fleshes it out as a character piece, for example, Hellboy and Abe's drunken "women confuse me!" hang-out/karaoke in the library, a beautiful and hilarious sequence. This is not to say that The Golden Army lacks gravitas. Prince Nuada's story is a tragic one from start to finish; our introduction to his character is ingeniously heartbreaking in its visual cues, and though his pride is his ultimate ruin, it is not the cause of his defeat, providing both a nice twist on the usual as well as heightened tragedy.
Do you like faerie tales? Do you like comfortable humour? Do you like action films that are neither excessively gory nor populated by potty-mouths? If so, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the film for you.
Hellboy II: It's worth paying to see.
Working in realtime, Hellboy II: The Golden Army begins at around 11p.m. with an alarm at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development and keeps going clear through to the following afternoon. The plot is classic faerie tale, a story of an uneasy truce between humans and faerie folk (you keep out of the city, we'll keep out of the forest) having long been broken by the humans, and a faerie prince (the fabulous Luke Goss) who's decided that he's tired of sitting back and letting humanity break the truce while the faerie folk die. In a sweet (in both the traditional and contemporary sense) opening flashback to Hellboy's childhood, we learn a) that said truce was instigated by the repentant faerie king after he unleashed the indestructible Golden Army on the earth, and b) just how much of Hellboy's adult life has been shaped by watching Howdy Doody as a child. Back to the central plot, though: it's a good old-fashioned tale of patricide, fratricide, attempted fratricide, vengeance, mourning for the lost, and plenty of humour to keep it all from going Pan's Labyrinth on us. In short, Hellboy II is everything a good fairty-tale should be, morbid, funny, large in scale, and splendorous, by which I mean invoking a sense of wonder.
Director Del Toro is good with monsters, and his budget for Hellboy II gave him free reign to shine. His tooth fairies are a great Old World twist on the schmaltzy Western attitude toward fairies. The Troll Market scenes top Hellboy's "sense of wonder" quotient - imagine the Neverwhere miniseries with 85-110% more money and imagination. As all good set designers are also master scroungers and recyclers, I imagine that the dearth of Del Toro's sets budget went to paying those good folk for all their long, hard hours. This is one of the things I most appreciate about any director involved in the fantastical: he knows when to use CGI, and when to not. All the best-looking fantasy films employ that combination attitude, and Hellboy II is a fit addition to their ranks. A good example of combination FX is in the climactic battle situated inside a giant mess of gears and clockwork that uses both physical giant revolving gears and digitally created crevasses.
All the old faces from Hellboy are back, except for Agent Meyers, who has been replaced by wisecracking German Johann Krauss (voice of Seth MacFarlane) who is, essentially, a ghost. A lot of critics hated Johann, either because they felt he was a cheap stereotype or superfluous. He's absolutely superfluous; so what? He holds his own, and is lots of fun to have around. As far as being a cheap stereotype, well, that's what I would have said until watching a DVD featurette of the music of Babylon 5, starring series composer Christopher Franke. I believe this featurette is attached to season four. At any rate, it's all the proof one needs that Germans like Johann are no stereotype, but actual entertaining (and unwittingly entertaining) people. As for the core gang - Hellboy, Liz, and Abe - they're all in fine form. Ron Perlman's title character is up to his old tricks, lazy and obsessed with TV, candy, cats, and revolvers, and hampered by an inability and/or unwillingness to pronounce big words. In this flick, his disrespect for the authority of the BPRD (characterized by Arrested Development's Jeffery Tambor) winds up backfiring on him after he decides that he wants to go public and be recognized for his work, and Hellboy learns a thing or two. Pyrotechnic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), the quintessential brooding outsider chick, is learning a thing or two of her own after Abe accidentally uncovers her big secret. Speaking of Abe (Doug Jones, doing triple-duty as the Chamberlain and the Angel of Death), it appears that Jones voiced his character this time around. Doug Jones is most directors go-to guy for etheral or gangly on-screen creatures, having both that build and amazing control of his body, and typically speaks the dialogue during filming, which is then dubbed by someone else. In the first Hellboy film, Abe was voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who refused to be credited for his work because as far as he was concerned, Abe was Doug Jones' character through and through. I think I actually prefer Jones voicing Abe, because David Hyde Pierce's voice-over voice is a bit cartoonish, and this new sound adds a lot to Abe's character. He sounds much more comfortable this time around.
Rounding out the players are the afore-mentioned Luke Goss as faerie Prince Nuada, and Anna Walton (Crusoe) as his twin sister, Princess Nuala. Goss plays his old, mournful, warmonger character to a tee, in voice and body alike, and may just be my favourite on-screen elf. Part of this credit is to the character and makeup design - you know how in other films, you always see these beautiful hundreds- or thousands-year old elves who look about 25 and are perfectly unblemished, Hugo Weaving in The Lord of the Rings being the exception because they let his wrinkles show? While Nuada looks mostly young, Del Toro remembered that he is a warrior, and as such is covered in thick, ropy scars, the souvenirs of his centuries of battle - even master swordsmen get blooded, especially when they've been alive that long. Nuala is more subtle, but the effects of age are still there, such as a close-up of the back of her hands in the Map Shop scene - her hands are crepey like an older woman's. Another nice detail on Del Toro's part is that, when faerie/elves are together, they don't speak English. But neither do they speak a made-up language - a "set visit" featurette identifies it as Old Irish Gaelic, which lends far more gravitas to the faerie folk by being something an old humanoid creature might actually speak.
A lot of the criticisms I saw surrounding The Golden Army were mostly related to a lack of gravitas. Hellboy was certainly a darker, more gravid film, and The Golden Army was made on the heels of Pan's Labyrinth, which is probably the most grave and horrific film I've ever seen (which may have something to do with it being lighter than Pan). There was also criticism because it didn't use Judeo-Christian myth this time around; that, I don't know what to say about - I'm a Christian, and I don't see that using pagan myth made for a lesser story. It seems to be a pattern that, when comedic directors or actors try out serious work - Dreamgirls, Reign Over Me - the critics hail them and see this as a step up, but when serious directors try comedic or less serious work - like this piece - it's a step down, it's not as good as his other stuff, etc. Well, okay, The Golden Army is a less cohesive film than Hellboy, but not by much. And by using more humour and having a greater sense of excitement than of dread, it's a rollicking good faerie tale adventure, a better one than its predecessor. Most of the humour also fleshes it out as a character piece, for example, Hellboy and Abe's drunken "women confuse me!" hang-out/karaoke in the library, a beautiful and hilarious sequence. This is not to say that The Golden Army lacks gravitas. Prince Nuada's story is a tragic one from start to finish; our introduction to his character is ingeniously heartbreaking in its visual cues, and though his pride is his ultimate ruin, it is not the cause of his defeat, providing both a nice twist on the usual as well as heightened tragedy.
Do you like faerie tales? Do you like comfortable humour? Do you like action films that are neither excessively gory nor populated by potty-mouths? If so, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the film for you.
Hellboy II: It's worth paying to see.
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