I’m not that into Hellboy. I think he’s a cool looking character and Mike Mignola’s art is amazing. I think the stories are fun but it’s just a bit on the light side and I could never get too invested in them. I am, however, a huge fan of Guillermo Del Toro. So I was quite excited when the first Hellboy came out. It gave a filmmaker I adored a fun world to play in. The end result came off a bit like the Hellboy comics though. It was fun, it looked cool, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care too much.
Since the release of Hellboy, Guillermo Del Toro has grown immensely as a filmmaker and has proven himself to have one of the most vivid imaginations of any director working today. He has also earned critical acclaim and his name now carries some weight. So it’s a new, more powerful Del Toro who is tackling Hellboy 2, and it shows.
Hellboy 2 is a wild ride through a mad genius’ imagination. Del Toro finally had the freedom to go all out and every inch of the screen is filled with amazing little details. He took Mike Mignola’s world and really made it his own without betraying the source material, and in doing so turned something I only kind of liked into something I loved.
Yes, I loved Hellboy 2. I think it improves on the original in every way. The story is clearer and better told, the action is more spectacular, the visuals are breathtaking, and the characters that matter were front and center. In Hellboy we were forced to view this world through the eyes of a human outsider and as such we were one step removed from everything. This time we are with Hellboy and his crew and we are thoroughly entrenched in their world and it makes us do something we didn’t the first time around. It makes us care.
Luckily we have a good story to care about. The plot of Hellboy 2 is very simple but it’s told in an incredibly strong manner. There is a thing the bad guys want and that the good guys can’t let them have. That thing of course doesn’t really matter. It’s a classic MacGuffin that just serves as an excuse to get our characters moving. We aren’t buried under boring exposition. The real meat of the movie is with the characters and their relationships. Everyone gets screen time here and their characters are very clearly and strongly defined. We watch as Hellboy deals with doubt over his place in the world, as Liz deals with fear over the future of her family, as Abe deals with an impossible romance. We also get a villain who isn’t just “evil”. He’s not a cardboard cutout. He has depth and he has purpose and he is sympathetic, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Character and plot are all well and good, but the real star of the show here is the art design and makeup work. There are very few humans in this movie but there are tons of monsters and they all exist. What I mean by that is these aren’t empty CG shells. This isn’t one character design repeated ad naseum in a computer. These are wall to wall crazy creatures made with practical effects and makeup. They have personality, they have life, and it’s absolutely wonderful to watch. That’s not to say there isn’t any CG but it is used sparingly, and it is used to enhance rather than replace.
I was really taken aback by all of the different character designs on display here. It’s either an effects department’s wet dream or worst nightmare. The Troll Market scene in particular steals the show and has been getting a lot of comparisons to the Cantina scene in Star Wars. For my money this outdoes Star Wars by a large margin.
Makeup can only go so far without a skilled actor making it move and all the major players bring their A game here. Perlman IS Hellboy. He is so comfortable in the role and completely makes you forget that there is a nearly 60 year old human in there. Doug Jones finally gets to use his real voice in a movie and, even though I preferred David Hyde Pearce, does an admirable job as Abe Sapien. His true talent lies in his body language though and in this department he is second to none. The big surprise this time around was Seth MacFarlane, of Family Guy fame, as Johann Krauss, the German accented gas… guy. He provides some of the funniest moments in the film and is a very welcome addition.
I feel like I should say something negative about the movie, but there is really very little wrong with it. Kid Hellboy looks kind of stupid. Abe’s relationship with the elf princess seems a bit abrupt and he makes a questionable decision because of it that you don’t quite buy. I’m really having to try to nit pick here.
Point is, the movie is awesome and I’m kind of bummed that The Hobbit is going to keep us from seeing Hellboy 3 for quite some time.