Hellboy II: coolness, oddness, and Boxed Spoilers

Cafe Society
1

I liked the original Hellboy. It was pretty bare-bones story-wise, but fun enough. Guillermo del Toro takes the helm himself in Hellboy II, not content with a writing credit. And to be fair, the results are quite nice in a lot of ways. The world is handsomely realized, with strange color variations and fantastic creatures. I saw a sneak preview recently, and the results were very good.

The Good - light spoilers

Liz and Hellboy are living together. Liz wears a sexy black bodysuit. Abe Sapien gets some more screentime and some very funny moments, as does… everyone, really. The villain is appropriately scary and quite capable. The new character Johann Krauss is very nice.

The Bad

Hellboy exiled John Myers to an Arctic watch post or something. For some ungodly reason, the FBI agents who routinely go into action against extremely dangerous and versatile magical foes all wear business suits and carry pistols. Why they don’t come equipped with hefty body armor and large-bore automatics with a variety of ammo, I don’t know.

and the Ugly

People frequently stand around waiting to get killed or something, or don’t just grab what they want and scoot. The villain is over-the-top emo for someone who that callous and vicious, and talks a lot about defending mystical creatures after he tosses them into grave danger seemingly for kicks. The bloody FBI director dude went really pansy on us, and is sort of whipping boy notwithstanding that his positions and duties are extremely onerous, and his suck-upiness is probably due to the fact that he’s on the border of being fired). Heck, I’d be a nervous wreck, too. The squad treats him like crap, especially at the end. FInally, there are so many freakish creatures it just overwhelms. Few of them are explained or even identified, and they are used as sort of an ongoing Star Wars cantina scene.

Mostly, though, the real problem was just that the movie had a nasty message. Special creatures are different and better than the rst of us, who are nasty little terrors with no redeeming qualities. Or something. And the special creatures should all live together apart form us human scum. I’m not sure del Toro meant it that way, but that’s how it comes off.

Despite these complaints, I liked Hellboy 2, and it’s worth a watch. The opening scenes have some gruesome imagery and I wouldn’t take any kids along. The fact that they don’t show what happens is worse than actually seeing the horrors. The movie is overall much more serious and much more brutalistic, but also much more impressive visually. It has a bigger heart and more meat on the boens laid down by the first movie.

2

I enjoyed the first Hellboy; this one was fun, too. Talk about a popcorn movie–everyone around me was munching away through the entire thing! Not that I’m complaining, it kept them from talking!

What impressed me most was the fantastic realization of the underworld and its denizens. The scene where they resuscitated the tooth fairy was really, really cool. Was I imagining things, or did I see Yoda in there somewhere?

The Johann Krass character gets pretty close to Jar Jar Binks territory, don’t you think?

3

Well when Krauss says, “Suck my ectoplasmic schwanstuker!” you know he can make you do it. Jar Jar just bumbles around and gets lucky. As for the villain:

he is an elf prince after all, of course he’s emo. Elves invented emo.

4

I felt that the Krauss character was completely unnecessary – precisely what purpose did he her serve? They already had a play-by-the-rules foil; they already had a way to bring the dead back to life for interrogation. The accent was an over-the-top caricature, the same (or nearly) as Macfarlane uses for his fish character in American Dad. Was there anything inside that fishbowl besides ineffective comic relief? I couldn’t help but groan at the already cited

“Suck my ectoplasmic schwanstuker!”

Jar-Jar Binks is a perfect parallel.

As for the rest of the film, I can’t say I enjoyed it much – a first for me – as I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed everything else del Toro has made that I couldn’t help but develop something of a man-crush. It didn’t help that behind me were two idiots who laughed maniacally at anything that might have had the slightest hint of humor for someone, somewhere, in the right mood. It was like they were aliens in human guise who didn’t understand humor and were trying their hardest to be enthusiastic about it.

Ugh. Took me out of the movie, it did, though I wasn’t drawn too far in anyway.

5

I liked it, but I kind of wish that del Toro had taken all those fantastic visuals: the goblins and the fairies and the trolls under Brooklyn Bridge and whatnot, and made some movie that was not a Hellboy movie.

That said, Ron Perlman made me laugh a lot.

Especially that scene with him and Abe Sapien and the beer.

6

Well it was fairly obviously setting everything up for a sequel where Hellboy will have to decide on this issue in an apocalyptical sense.

I thought it was really good for this, though I’ve not read the original comic, so I don’t have any particular idea of what is or isn’t fitting for a Hellboy movie. My only problem was that they showed every single fantasy creature there is in the movie in the movie trailers. The visuals was one of the main selling points from the trailer, and then I get there and find out that they already spoiled it all.

Sort of interesting but:

Apparently there’s a bit of a set look for fantasy princesses (which I don’t entirely find to be the most attractive, though am fine with it.)

7

I was just sorry Abe didn’t get a big heroic part. The Golden Army was cool, I would have used the crown to make them just fight each other for eternity, then dropped it down a pit. The little “Tooth Fairies” were creepy.

8

I wanted to like it, but there was too much relationship stuff. And I could see the ending coming from a mile away…

Did anyone else think, after the Princess killed herself (thereby killing her brother) that she could have done that a hour and a half ago and saved us all that trouble?

9

Speaking of The Princess…every time she was on screen, I thought, "Calista Flockhart!"

10

Totally. Especially since She stood there and watched him kill her father’s royal guard and then him, but sacrificed herself later for Hellboy?? And why did her brother back away when he sent the tree creature after them, when all he had to do was get the missing crown piece from his sister right then and there?

Oh, and Why did Johann not just keep seeping into other Golden Army bots? Wouldn’t that be better than the worthless robot suit again?

11

My biggest problem was that Abe…

handed over the crown in the first place. That made no sense at all. By this point, he seems to have known that bro and sis Elf Laird are linked; taking the sis hostage was quite pointless. What was bro Elf going to do, kill himself out of spite? 'Cuz that’ll help his evil plans. :rolleyes: So when Abe hands over the last crown peice, it’s for nothing, and he should know it.

12

I enjoyed the movie, but it does not hold up to any analytical thought. Very little made sense and the Krauss character was senseless.

If they were going to treat the agents that poorly, couldn’t they have had at least put them in Red Shirts as a joke. :wink:

Yes!
Visually the movie was great. It had many humorous scenes, but it loses a full star in my rating for using that odious song as a joke and again for the credits. Damn Del Toro, damn you, that is one of the worst ear bugs in the history of mankind.

So overall I will give the movie a 6.

Jim

13

I saw it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it, much more than the first Hellboy. It wasn’t deep, and I had to deliberately not think about the plot too much, but, hey, it’s a summer comic book movie. Visually, it was such a treat. My favorite part was the Troll Market.

Given that the magical creatures were treated like freaks and monsters by most of the human beings in the movie, why should they stick around for more abuse? If someone keeps kicking you, you should just stand there and take it? Doesn’t seem like a nasty message to me.

14

Execpt that it’s done hamfistedly and illogically. I can imagine people would be scared, but where are the legions of fanboys, advertisers wanting endorsement deals, or the people wanting autographs? In the movie, not only does virtually everyone behave like a dick for no reason, but they (freakishly) mostly seem not to notice the big red devil (just pre-troll scene, when he’s walking around openly but they’re largely not paying any attentiom). Like it’s no big deal at all.

Or, in the “Elemental” scene. They wait until after Hellboy clearly saved the day to suddenyl and for no reason freak out randomly… when he hands the baby back, unharmed and well, having just saved the city from a giant rampagin terror.

To be blunt, the human characters, all not-many-of-them, were depicted as helpless, stupid, evil, and pointless. And the plot was scripted so they could be killed off or mocked, although none of that was logical. And the movie vaguely acts as if Liz isn’t human, either.

15

I thought the Princess looked more like Sally from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” - just a woodier version. TheKid was grokking the Prince, but she’s way into the whole “looking dead and warped” thing anyways.

We liked it fairly well. It seemed a little too much maligned super hero (c). It had it’s humorous moments, but not quite enough to make me want to see it again.

16

So the Prince sends the tree creature after Hellboy, then acts all sad when it might die? Shouldn’t have sent it in the first place, idiot. Didn’t you have anything tougher to unleash?

And as a Mignola semi-fan, I’m sorry the Torch of Liberty never even made a cameo. Though I’ve heard that They want Lobster Johnson in the next one, played by Bruce Campbell.

17

OMG! Thank you! Just saw it this afternoon, and this has been driving me nuts since about 4:30. The first time she came on-screen, I was, like, “Oh, yeah, that’s…er…whatsername…” And then I sat through the credits expecting a People magazine name to come up that I would recognize and go, “Oh, yeah, her”. But, no–NO clue who she is, had to leave the theater mystified who I’d been thinking of. Calista Flockhart, yeah.

Concerning what Krauss was there for…clearly he was there for two reasons.

One was so he could do the “Rules! We must have rules!” thing that Hellboy could play off of, and that Jeffrey Tambor could suck up to. It’s no fun being a rebel if you don’t have somebody to rebel against, and since Father was killed at the end of the first movie, there’s no real authority figure any more, Jeffrey Tambor being too much of a pussy to count. So they have to trot out some two-dimensional heel-clicking token Authority Figure.

Which I thought was rather cartoonish of them, and felt a tad insulted that the filmmakers would talk down to us that way.

And the second reason was

so that they could have Krauss do the kewl Blue Warrior thing up against the Red (Golden, but it was basically Red) Warriors, which served the twofold dramatic purpose of showing us that he wasn’t just a talky wimp in a suit, he could really kick some ass if he felt like it, and second that he helped to show the Golden Army could be fought, even if they did just self-repair.

Second that this isn’t a movie for small children. At the showing we went to, there were some folks down front that by the sound of it had at least one 4 to 5 year old, and I thought, “what were they thinking”. This thing is practically non-stop nightmare-begetting monsters with a capital M from the first moment, and just because they don’t show spurting gore doesn’t make it any less intense for young children.

Numerous minor plot holes, as mentioned, that it didn’t pay to think about too much. It’s a comic book, after all, and another likeable entry in the Summer of 2008 Popcorn Movie sweepstakes, so sit back and enjoy your popcorn. You do not need to have seen the first movie in order to understand this one; the Better Half, who did not see the first one, was able to be brought up to speed by leaning over before it started and asking, “Does he have, like, superpowers?” “Not really, just really strong. It’s more like Marvel Comics, where the relationships are more important than the superpowers.” Satisfied, he nodded and sat back. And I needed to tell him at one point,

“The father died in the first one.”

I liked the first movie a lot, I liked this one about the same, only I wished there had been just a little more character development and not so much of the routine by-the-numbers action. I wished I had brought some Dots or Jujubes about 10 minutes into it, but I was worried I’d miss something so I didn’t go out and get some.

And I should have.

BTW…

Annoying.

Product placement for Tecate beer.

Cool.

…best use of Barry Manilow evah.

18

It was a good movie, but I don’t think it was as good as the first. Several moments were pure misfires.

[spoiler]1)Jeffrey Tambor losing his spine. The whole freaks vs. norms thing would’ve been much better had the norm actually kept his dickish bossy nature and Strauss had been just another member of the team.

2)As was said by Love Rhombus, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for Prince Emo to get all mopey about Hellboy killing something that was sent to kill him in the first place. Had he sent it after Hellboy without being right the hell in front of him, it would’ve meant more for him to talk about killing the last whoozey whatnot of endor.

3)The place for the horrified mob to freak out about Hellboy would’ve been better placed after he was blown out of the window in the beginning and not halfway through after he just killed the beast that was destroying the downtown area right in front of everyone and their mother.

4)Had Tambor still been in charge, his refusal to protect the elfen princess and his refusal to save Hellboy by chasing the Prince would’ve further pushed the freaks/norms plot.[/spoiler]Overall, it was a good movie. It’s just that it could’ve been better.

19

Good summer movie - A few points

[spoiler]The troll market was neat

The dynamic between Liz and Hellboy doesn’t really seem at all authentic. There’s may be lots of fire, but there really is no spark between them.

Sapiens decision to give the elf the final piece of the crown to save the Princess (and thus destroy the world) makes him seem like an utter and complete imbecile. His competence in the last film was wrecked by turning him into a lovestruck retard. In the books he’s strategically pretty adept, and not an idiot.

Introduction of one of the best characters visually, the faceless witch, was done with almost no setup whatsoever. She’s obviously close to omniscient, and yet she’s introduced and discarded in a minute or two. She has no place in the story other than the get rid of the spear point for Hellboy.

Visually the Golden Army was very well done.

The little scene in the troll market where Hellboy is complaining about getting his tooth knocked out, and Mr. Wink the troll like creature gestures with his shattered iron fist as if to say “Stop bitching look what you did to me” was a brief second of time, but kind of amusing.

Unlike some others I really enjoyed the The Krauss character, and he made a good foil for Hellboy although they hammed up his role a bit too much.

The decision to quit at the end was kind of pointless.[/spoiler]

20

Sorry, this bit just annoys me slightly. Geek knee-jerk reaction, I guess.