I love Guillermo del Toro (if I could marry a film then Pan’s Labyrinth would be that film) and I’ve been seeing the trailers for Hellboy 2 recently and it looks visually amazing, although I’m a bit :dubious: as to whether there will be any plot or just a bunch of cool action sequences.
Metacritic seems to rate both movies okay, but I’d appreciate the doper slant on these films. Worth getting into? Bear in mind this will require a trip to either Blockbuster or a DVD store to see the first one before I can watch the sequel.
Actually, I wouldn’t spend my money on it. Having seen both in theaters, they are… decent. For movies starring a Catholic demon blowing away monsters, they are immensely bland. It is definitely not del Toro’s best work. The fist is B- and the second C+. Ron Perlman is the bigget fun factor.
Yes, the cinematography and SFX are good, but after a while it’s pretty much just random stuff happening so we can have this CGI scene. The first is the better movie, however, because the second is distrubingly incoherent and nonsensical. It contains some better scenes (and one in particular which is but-gusting hilarious), but characterization, synergy, sense, and plot.
Rent the first one. If you like it, think about the second.
I haven’t seen the second, but I loved the first. Took me totally by surprise because I went into it with really low expectations. I have watched it one other time with first-time viewers who felt the same way. Pretty good movie…for what it is.
I liked the first one a whole lot, but the second had a serious case of Idiot Plot that made it difficult for me to enjoy it. Also, somewhere between the two films, Hellboy became a whinging emo teenager.
If you like Guillermo del Toro I highly recommend seeing the second one. His imaginings of fantasy set against/aside the modern world are excruciatingly stunning. His influence on the second film is the sole reason to see it in my humble.
Okay, so the consensus is to check it out but not if it involves buying it or anything. Guess I’ll try Blockbuster tomorrow and see if they have it in stock to rent (buggered if I’m going to buy it). Also to go in with expectations set to “low/medium” to avoid disappointment, fine.
I was surprised at how much I liked Hellboy. I came to it tabula rasa, not having read the comics or realizing it was del Toro. My nephew was loaning me DVDs and pushed it on me, hard.
I liked Blade II. I didn’t think it was good as the original but it’s a little unfair to expect a director to come in on a sequel and produce the same level of wow, still make it his own, etc. Not disappointed with it per se…if it had been Blade “I” I would have liked it even more.
I had high hopes for Pan’s Labyrinth and felt let down. I’d heard del Toro on NPR talking about it, realized then he’d directed Hellboy and knew he directed Blade II. IMO Pan’s wasn’t a bad movie; I just had high hopes for it.
While at Blockbuster I noticed and also rented Apocalypto, which I had never seen in theaters. I had heard the hype and didn’t believe it could be that good, had no big hopes for it…but I LOVED it. I mention this b/c my appraisal of Pan’s wasn’t just “I wasn’t in the mood for a movie that weekend” or “Hype always dooms a movie for me.”
I would rent Hellboy 2. Should. Next time I find myself in Blockbuster, which isn’t often.
For me, the weird thing about the Hellboy movies is that they turned out, as you said, so incredibly bland.
The Hellboy comics aren’t Watchmen or anything, but they’re a lot of fun, and you would have thought that Guillermo Del Toro would be the perfect person to adapt Mike Mignola’s stunning visuals to the big screen.
And while both movies do actually look pretty, it’s kind of a head-scratcher how they managed to turn a movie about a giant devil guy fighting monsters into something sort of boring.
I think they’re good movies to catch on FX during a lazy weekend. I saw both in the theater, and while the first was worthwhile, I thought the second movie was pretty much a mess.
I don’t think that there will be a more visually inventive or gorgeous film, than Hellboy II, this year. I thought the movie was good - not great, but good summer fun. I think I may have liked it more than the first one, actually.
Same here. Never read the comics, and I’d only heard the name Hellboy and understood he was a comic hero before seeing the movie. Probably that’s why I enjoyed the first movie so much, as I didn’t have any preconceived notions from reading the comics. I haven’t seen the second one yet, but it looks good.
Blade 2 is Del Toro’s best comic book movie so far, IMO. Hellboy was OK. It wasn’t the greatest movie of all time, but I wasn’t sorry I saw it. The sequel is basically Monsters on Parade, with a macguffin to tie them all together. Imagine the creatures in Pan’s Labyrinth removed from their grim context and allowed to raom freely through a comic book universe. It was fun but not great. One minor reason I liked the comics better (Very mild spoiler):
In the comics the human and inhuman members of BPD work together and part of the stories’ charm is their interactions. In Hellboy 2 the human BPD agents were little more than red shirts
I really liked the first movie(tentacles coming out of the sky do it for me every time). The second one felt like they didn’t put enough effort in, but I’d still watch it to prepare for the inevitable sequel.
