Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

The most disappointing film of the summer, thus far, is Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. As a fan of the 2004 Hellboy movie from the exceptionally talented writer-director Guillermo Del Toro, I was stoked to see his follow up. Now, I wish he had just moved on to his next project, The Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army returns Ron Perlman to the role of Hellboy a red demon fighter for humanity. For the uninitiated, Hellboy was discovered by the Nazis but raised by an American scientist. Working for the bureau of Paranormal Affairs, a secret arm of the government, Hellboy fights battles that no one is supposed to know about.

Four years since Hellboy lost his father, played by John Hurt, and won the heart of Liz (Selma Blair), Hellboy remains a cantankerous, rebellious soul who can't resist getting his picture in the paper, over the objections of his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) who's forced to come up with ever more elaborate spin to convince people Hellboy doesn't exist.

Keeping Hellboy under wraps however becomes far less important once a former member of the Elf royal family, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), decides to end a centuries long truce with humanity. His goal? Destroy humanity and bring the creatures darkness into the light.

To do so Prince Nuada will call on the Golden Army, indestructible soldiers made of solid gold. Standing against him is his sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) who wants to keep the truce in place. She turns to Hellboy for protection and to Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) Hellboy's fishy best friend who falls head over gills in love with her.

Hellboy vs The Golden Army sounds like it should be a pretty awesome battle and as a special effect it's impressive

Unfortunately, it also will by the end be fought with little context and consequence to the story. Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro simply loses interest in the story and turns his attention to crafting creatures and giant special effects.

Some will find Del Toro's choice of visual splendor over storytelling to be dynamic and imaginitive. For me however, I was quickly bored with the creatures and the giant effects and longed for the characters to deepen and the story to take on some meaning. I wanted the dueling love stories of Hellboy and Liz and Abe and the Princess to gain meaning.

And finally, I wanted the vibe of cool that Hellboy carried in the first film to return. In the first movie, Star Ron Perlman cultivated a Bogart like air of detached cool mixed with vulnerability. In Hellboy 2 that vibe is replaced with a bizarre sense of humor that ranges from Men In Black lifts to references to Barry Manilow.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army has a number of unformed ideas that could have been more interesting. At one point in the movie Prince Nuada gets in his head about how humanity doesn't appreciate Hellboy, asking him why does he still help them. For a moment Hellboy is conflicted.

The conflict last for about a minute and is then discarded. Worse yet, the same idea was played out with more depth and understanding in the X-Men movies. Essentially, the most interesting idea Hellboy 2 has has been done already and done far better.

Final

With its bizarre sense of humor and focus on creature creation over story development, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army becomes an odd melange of disappointments and undermined ideas. Yes, it's a good looking movie. But who cares.