Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

When Guillermo Del Toro made the first Hellboy in 2004, he was still basically a horror film director for hire. Then, he made the critically ejaculated-upon film Pan's Labyrinth, which gave him massive artistic credibility as an auteur. It might seem puzzling on the surface that Del Toro would use his newfound clout to do a sequel to one of his mercenary jobs. Turns out, though, Hellboy 2, which Del Toro also wrote, is much more of a sequel to Pan's Labyrinth than it is to the first Hellboy. Sure, it has the same characters, cast and basic premise as Hellboy, which originated as a Dark Knight comic, but Del Toro is much less interested in developing the Hellboy universe than he is in taking the ideas that animated Pan's Labyrinth and injecting them with the ambition that only a summer blockbuster budget can provide.

Pan's Labyinth explored the idea of fairy tale creatures living secretly amongst humans. Hellboy 2 takes that premise and runs with it in audacious directions. One of the chief deficiencies of Pan's Labyrinth was best articulated by my good friend and retired archduke John Muther, "not enough monsters." Hellboy 2 corrects that with gusto. Pan's Labyrinth has a dude with two eyes on his hands. Hellboy 2 has a dude with, like, 30 eyes on his...wings! That's the main gag in Hellboy 2: taking Pan's Labyrinth's secret fairy folk and pumping them full of steroids, creating an unstoppable parade of magnificently inventive beasts. Del Toro's aim with all these impeccable CGI creations (and they really are impeccable- the creatures are all part of a seamless universe where the spell is never broken) is to ask the question: what if Tolkein's Middle Earth (or an off-brand facsimile of same) coexisted alongside the modern world? It's a gripping idea that pays off spectacularly in a few scenes: particularly the sequence where Hellboy blows the head off of a giant tree god and a corner of the Lower East Side slowly turns into a garden as the monster dissolves into moss and flowers. That one scene is a more poignant, majestic expression of Del Toro's vision of fairy tale wonder interacting with the mundane familiar than anything in Pan's Labyrinth. Unfortunately, Del Toro chose to shoehorn his personal vision inside the established framework of the Hellboy universe, which just doesn't have room for it. As a result, the fairy tale elements end up fighting for screentime with the same stale schtick and well worn conflicts that animated the first film: Hellboy struggles to come to terms with his uniqueness in the world, Hellboy fights with his bosses, Hellboy agonizes over his relationship with firestarter Liz Sherman, Hellboy cracks wise all over the place.

For all the wow moments, and there are more than a couple, Hellboy 2 never really comes together because Del Toro's world and the prefabricated Hellboy world fail to gel. This is a common pitfall when directors with ambition and a strong viewpoint tactle comic book fare. It's difficult for even the canniest director to avoid getting tangled up in the broad characters, inherently ridiculous dialogue and unavoidably clunky exposition that the genre requires. Still, even a mixed effort like Hellboy 2 contains more than enough eye candy and pathos to make me thankful that dudes like Del Toro are still willing to make a go of it.

Score: 7.8