hellboy II: the golden army (guillermo del toro, 2008)

The most auteurist (in the original sense of the word) of major contemporary filmmakers strikes again. Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a film that could not have been made by anyone else but Guillermo Del Toro. Every bit as much as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), it is a parade of Del Toro’s recurring obsessions: the coexistence and interplay of the real world and the mythic/supernatural world, the influence of a forgotten past breaking into the present, clockwork figures and contraptions, tree, root and branch imagery, and a procession of weird and wonderful supernatural or monstrous figures

Del Toro paints his second Hellboy story on a much wider canvas than his first. Where Lovecraftian cosmic horror was the reference point in the first film, here it is Tolkienesque epic fantasy, with allusions abounding to a past age where elves, trolls and goblins lived alongside humankind.  Despite the mythic depths this opens onto, however, Hellboy II is not The Dark Knight. Although it leavens its knowing, tongue-in-cheek irony with moments of genuine wonder and poetry (or perhaps that should be the other way round), this is a film that is gleeful, riotous fun first of all. Hellboy does most of his communicating with his big handgun and his even bigger red stone right hand, and the story never wanders far from the next thrilling, no-holds-barred fight.

There is a lot in Hellboy II that works wonderfully. As with the first film, the cast of lovably endearing characters that make up the BPRD – Hellboy himself (Ron Perlman, as perfect as ever), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) and newcomer Johan Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) are the film’s heart and soul, and they are faultlessly judged in their very human foibles and hang-ups (Krauss perhaps comes off the worst, acting as little more than uncomplicated comic relief, but he is very effective comic relief, so that’s not really much of an issue). These are characters you care for, with the result that the two romantic relationships that underpin the film emotionally – predictable as they are – are affecting and involving. This also means that one of the best moments in the film – Hellboy and Abe’s drunken singalong to Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” – is cute, sympathetic and amusing where it could have been trite and corny.

As always with Del Toro’s films, the interlocking of the real and the fantastical worlds is perfectly judged. In this regard, Hellboy II is even more Del Toro-esque than the original, conjuring up a mystical shadow-world of fairies, elves and trolls existing in the dark and hidden places of the world that reflects the most enduring images of faerie lore and folk-tales.

The narrated prologue explaining the origin of the Golden Army (framed as a bedtime story told to a young Hellboy, and brilliantly visualized through toy-like make-believe figures) strongly recalls the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), and achieves a similar level of mythic grandeur. It’s an astonishing scene and a perfectly-judged opening, and it’s far from the only standout sequence. The forest god Prince Nuala unleashes on Hellboy (and Manhattan) about halfway through the film is a richly-imagined creation, and is responsible for the most strikingly beautiful scene in the film – a scene which, like the forest god itself, owes much to the pantheistic poetry of the Miyazaki of Princess Mononoke (1997). And this is only one of the delightfully inventive and gorgeously-imagined fantastical encounters and scenes that populate the film. The troll market, for instance, is the cantina scene from Star Wars (1977) by way of 1980s fantasy, a rich cornucopia of wondrous creatures filling every corner of the frame. And the encounter with the Angel of Death (one of the most riveting creations of Del Toro’s career, and that’s saying something) approaches the intensity and power of the best moments of Pan’s Labyrinth.

There is, then, a lot in Hellboy II, and most of it is great, and a lot of it brilliant. But it often feels like there is too much, and little of it is allowed space to breathe. The moment a scene starts digging its claws into you and dragging you somewhere wonderful, the film cuts to something else – something equally interesting, or entertaining, or awe-inspiring, but then that’s gone too just as you start getting involved in it. It’s not exactly that the film feels rushed, more that it seems like too many disparate strands and moods are squeezed into too small a space. The pacing problems therefore spill over into tonal issues; the appeal of Hellboy – in print and celluloid form – has always been the seamless blending of seemingly incongruous themes and cultural references, but here the seams start to show. Hellboy II will often move from mythic to a slapstick-inflected punch-up, to a tender romantic interlude. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but, while all the individual scenes are, almost invariably, great, they don’t always gel as well as they should, with the result that Hellboy II sometimes feels like less than the sum of its (impressive) parts.

There is another issue with the film, and it’s to do with the narrative structure of the series as a whole. Fundamentally, in Hellboy II we don’t learn anything new about Hellboy or any of the other members of the BPRD. No overarching story is progressed or developed; in fact, the whole film has the feel of an episode in a TV series – a stand-alone, self-contained adventure is set up and resolved, but, apart from a couple of minor plot points, everything stays the same, ready for the next episode. This does have the advantage of making the film perfectly comprehensible for newcomers in a way that, say, the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films weren’t, but you can’t help but wish Del Toro had been just a little more ambitious with his plotting for the series as a whole.

All of this probably sounds more negative than my impression of Hellboy II actually was. On a level of pure entertainment it beats just about anything else this summer, and there is rare imaginative brilliance and film-making skill in its finest moments. It is a film I will undoubtedly watch (and enjoy) again and again, but it is a film that disappointingly falls short of the greatness that lies within its grasp.

anticipating hellboy II: the golden army

I realize I’m several years behind the times, but over the past few months I’ve started working my way through the Hellboy TPs. Guillermo Del Toro’s 2004 film – in my opinion one of the best superhero movies of all time, certainly the most entertaining – was, I suppose like many people, my introduction to the character. The big red guy himself is an easy hero to love. I can’t think of any other superhero so constantly amusing, sympathetic and downright endearingly lovable. As is de rigeur for any modern hero, there’s a darkness to him, mostly due to his occluded, demonic past, but what makes him so unique is his brash, no-nonsense demeanour and his unexpectedly soft side (I can’t really see Batman fighting off a rabid hell-beast to save a crate of kittens).

Coming to Mike Mignola’s comics after Del Toro’s film – which is remarkably faithful in tone and atmosphere to its source – meant the set-up, broad narrative arc and cast were already familiar, but this didn’t in any way diminish the exuberant joy, thrilling plotting and endless invention of Mignola’s work. His artwork is the first thing to grab the attention, and it is truly wondrous – endearingly stylised yet emotive, cartoonishly energetic yet restrained, with bold, bright colours and solid, deep shadows.

The world depicted through his art is a delight – a pop-culture carnival of the comic-macabre, borrowing as much from traditional folk-tales as from B-movies, indebted equally to H.P. Lovecraft, the Brothers Grimm and Hammer movies. This contrast is reflected in the tone of Hellboy’s adventures. His battles against the scum of the underworld and his quest to understand his origins are sheer, shameless, glorious pulp entertainment, packed with Nazi brains in jars, giant undead gorillas, vampires, fairies, golems, ancient demons et cetera et cetera. But in the spaces and around the edges of the action there is something more than a hint of the cosmic, ancestral horrors lurking in the darkness of ancient folk-tales. These suggestions are never overplayed or focused upon; their place is in the background to the action, colouring in the scene, not dominating it, but there are moments of poetry in between the fist-fights that might almost be called beautiful.  In the best Hellboy stories, for instance “The Corpse”, from which the above image is taken, the two sensibilities – the pulp and the mythic – bleed into each other – an Irish folk-tale retold in a B-movie idiom, not losing its eerie mystery, but gaining in wit, energy and colour.

Besides its titular character, it is this interplay that makes Hellboy so absorbing and downright fun. And just as Del Toro got Hellboy himself just right (it’s difficult to conceive of anyone but Ron Perlman in the role), he achieved the necessary tonal balance to bring Mignola’s world to life. If nothing has gone horribly wrong, Hellboy II is bound to be the most fun two hours I’ll spend in a cinema this year. There’s space for two great superhero films in one summer.