Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Well, it's a pretty fast turnaround for a sequel review, but I saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army to participate in the LAMB devours the Oscar event coming up soon. So I figured I could write my own review in addition to writing up my summary of Best Achievement in Make-up. So the sequel picks up soon after the original. Our hero Hellboy has been pursuing his relationship with Liz (the fire-starter who has learned to control it) and they're into the standard mid-relationship fighting stage except that when Liz gets really mad, the clothes get burned up rather than picked up. Anyway, agent Myers has been transferred away, and a new agent has been brought in to keep Hellboy in line. Johann Kraus is a German, ectoplasmic being, which is to say he's a ghost that can inhabit a mechanical body and thus interact with people. He's annoying and sticks to the book through all the missions, though Hellboy of course likes to break all the rules. So they're sent to figure out why all these "tooth fairies" were put upon an auction house (they're called tooth fairies cause they eat people starting with the teeth!). It all leads back to Prince Nuada, the Prince of the Elves who ages ago made a truce with the humans that the King wants to continue to honor but the Prince wants to fight. Back in the day, the King commissioned an unbeatable army to be controlled by he who wears the crown. The Prince was seeking pieces of the crown so he could command the armies and kill the humans (hence the auction house), the other pieces are within the King and Princess Nuala. After the Prince kills his father to get a piece, Nuala runs off (so she won't be killed for the final piece - in the picture), and runs into Abe Sapien, Hellboy's aquatic sidekick. Basically, it's a good continuation of the original story (that Hellboy can fight the demons cause he's witty, big and somewhat indestructible). Guillermo del Toro amped up his gues monsters with a demon missing his legs and a witchy monster with her eyes on her wings. There's just the right amount of fighting, a lots of Hellboy one-liners. I'm guessing this will become a trilogy, but we'll see if everyone jumps in again.

1 comment:

Reel Whore said...

With so many open plotlines from this movie. I hope they move forward on a third. Del Toro says it will happen even if the studios are being stubborn.