Hellboy 2 Review

Upon seeing the trailer for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army I thought: 'That looks really good, but it looks like a better movie than the first movie did from its trailer.' I had not seen the first Hellboy movie upon viewing the second; deciding that if I wanted more after watching The Golden Army, I could still watch the first movie. I can now say with confidence that the second movie cannot have been better than the first, despite still not having seen the first, simply for the fact that the second was so abysmal that if it had been an improvement over the first, the movies would have been forcibly stopped there with no chance for any sequels.

I was quite disappointed with the movie as (I thought) the trailer made it look so good. The plot (no spoilers) involves the prince of a forgotten elven race coming back to piece together a magic crowd so that they can command the Golden Army to destroy the human race. The main protagonists who aim to stop this plot include Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Abe Sapien and I'm going to throw in the name of Johann Krauss for reasons mentioned below.

In the film, Hellboy (despite 57% of his name) displays absolutely no abilities that you would attribute to someone with 'hell' being in their name: no fire manipulation, no summoning demons to do his bidding, nothing. Though I mustn't complain as this is true of the original comic Hellboy also. Instead I will only take issue with the fact that despite his other verified abilities (see the wiki page on him but they include invulnerability and accelerated healing factor) all he does in the movie is provide a battering ram that will run into or shoot any obstacle he is faced with, leaving us with no doubt that he retains his superhuman strength from the comics but uncertainty as to the rest of his alleged abilities, not to mention the fact that it gets kind of old.

Liz Sherman is the resident pyrokinetic of the group (the B.P.R.D). Does this mean that we'll see a bunch of cool flamethrowing sequences? The answer is no. Liz uses her fire manipulation abilities so scarcely that, if the aforementioned events were counted up through the movie's entirety, it would equal the number of minutes in the movie (out of 120) that did not contain a gaping plot hole. Her relationship with Hellboy through the whole movie is a display of how movie makers deal with the romantic relationships they introduce (not consistent with the comics of course) in first movies to make sure that every movie has a love story (I'm still fuming about Get Smart the movie!). The love story is all of: drawn out, pointless and relentlessly boring - a thorn in the sides of viewers watching an already thorny movie.

Abe Sapien is essentially a frog-man; living underwater and only able to walk on land with a breathing apparatus resembling a toilet-seat. Curiously enough, the breathing apparatus begins to disappear throughout the movie, as Sapien is freely walking around their base with no such aid. Are we to believe that he can hold his breath for a very long time? Should we suppose that there is some difference between needing a breathing apparatus in some places but not in others? The answer is that we do neither and simply add it to the already lengthy plot holes list, along with the elf prince not taking the last piece of the crowd despite the fact that it is right in front of him - he obviously thinks it's a better idea to watch the giant shrub-man he released as a distraction die; this seems a bit pointless and ironic to me.

Lastly, Johann Krauss (spelt Kraus in the comics) is a gas-man (I hope you're starting to see a pattern here: fire-woman, aqua-man, giant shrub-man, gas-man - it seems as if alot of the ideas stem from mixing an element (the old concept of elements) with a person and seeing what comes out) that can take control of essentially anything he desires, though we see as much use of this ability in the movie as Liz's pyrokinesis. The sole reason that I mention him is that his voice is provided by Seth MacFarlane, whom I am a fan of.

In summary, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was a thoroughly disappointing movie. The only good thing about it was the very creative and good looking creatures provided by (I think) Guillermo del Toro - seen also in Pan's Labyrinth and Blade II. The plot (including the holes and the awful ending) could make you cry and the relationship stuff even more so (and not in a good way) and as such, Hellboy 2 receives a 1 The Marine DVD out of 10, with the awesome creatures receiving 10 Reapers (from Blade II) out of 10. It is a worrying concept that there will be a Hellboy 3 made.