Saturday, July 19, 2008

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)



I liked it, but it wasn't Hellboy. (Minor spoilers may follow.)

It's not a Hellboy plot, for one thing. It's a standard Action Movie Doomsday Device plot. Bad guys want to take over/destroy the world and lack just one thing to make it happen. Heroes have to prevent the bad guys from getting what they want. Substitute fantasy characters for the mad scientists and superspies and you've got yourself a Hellboy sequel.

The subplot's not Hellboy either. I was okay with some Hellboy/Liz romantic tension in the first one, but it becomes a major development now and moves even further away from who Hellboy is in the comics. Comics Hellboy is a lot more comfortable with himself than Movie Hellboy. I'm sure that Comics Hellboy has his moments of loneliness and self-pity, but they don't dominate him the way they do Movie Hellboy.

Which is probably why I didn't like that Hellboy II spends so much time yet again on the Us vs. Them; Freaks vs. Normal People theme. The villain in Hellboy II keeps trying to convince Hellboy that he's on the wrong side. And the story keeps trying to make us wonder if the villain doesn't have a point. Hellboy and Company save a large number of New Yorkers from a giant monster only to have the humans turn on them because they look different. The first Hellboy movie already covered this territory and covered it a lot more effectively. Yeah, Hellboy isn't one of us, but he fights for us anyway. We get it. You've beaten the point dead. Let's move on.

I think I would've been much more okay with the Hellboy/Liz romance if the whole point of it wasn't Hellboy and Liz Against the World (or Us Freaks Have to Stick Together). And just to make pulp out of the theme's corpse, Abe has to be drawn into it too with a romance of his own. But where Hellboy and Liz had the whole first movie to get us to buy in to them as a couple, Abe's feelings for the Elven Princess Nuala develop way too quickly. It's a crush (and an only partially requited one from all the encouragement Nuala gives poor Abe), but we're told that it's passionate love every bit as deep as what Hellboy and Liz feel for each other.

There are some other problems I have with the movie too. In one important fight, the heroes start off doing very well, but as soon as their opponents show even a hint of being able to fight back, the Heroes immediately give up. Worse than that, they stand still and wait while the bad guys recover. And the only reason for it is to keep the heroes from claiming victory too soon and ruining the way the writers want the fight to end.

There's also a lack of awe or wonder from any of the main characters. It's a gorgeous movie with all sorts of imaginative creatures and settings, but the characters all act like it's nothing special. In the comics, even though Hellboy and his friends have seen and fought countless weirdos and monsters before, there's still a sense of fear or amazement whenever they encounter something new. And as a viewer, I need that, because I've certainly seen my own fair share of amazing, scary, awesome, wonderful creatures and monsters at the movies. If the film treats these things as if they're old and routine, I'm going to feel like they're old and routine too, regardless of how cool the designs are.

And the designs are really cool. And I like all the characters. And it's a funny, action-packed movie. In fact, even though it's a really bad movie on paper, it's so funny and action-packed and likable and beautiful and cool that those positive things pretty evenly balance out the negatives. I may have hated that Hellboy and Abe needed to whine about their love lives in the movie, but I love that they did it by getting smashed and belting out a Barry Manilow tune. I may have hated that the villain is a two-dimensional cliché, but I love that he looks and fights so cool and that his only friend is a huge troll named Mr. Winky. The film is really, really good at creating those moments of cognitive dissonance in me.

Three out of five Bootie-Kickin Dark Elves.

1 comment:

snell said...

I pretty much concur with you, and you do a good job of expressing some of the formless misgivings I had. A couple of other points (here there be spoilers):

**They changed the spelling of Kruass' name (it's Kraus in the comic) just to make an SS joke? That may be the perfect nexus of bad taste and lameness.

**Krauss' change of heart is completely unconvincing, as is the decision of everyone to quit BPRD at the end. Why? You don't want the world to be saved anymore? You want your babies to born in a world ruled by pissed off elves? And what's Abe's beef? Krauss'?

**If melting the crown will work, why not just melt princess' piece BEFORE Elric (oops!) shows up at BPRD? Why wait until the threat is fully manifest and then defeated to take this elementary step?

An enjoyable flick, but i concur, it's no Hellboy 1. More money, prettier to look at, but missing some spark.

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