But humans have cheated on our end of the deal by building parking lots and shopping malls, and now Prince Nuada ( Luke Goss) defies his father the king and hopes to start the conflict again. The humans got the cities, and the trolls got the forests. It’s a pure expression of humanity’s love representing both selfishness (she’ll be responsible for destroying the world) and selflessness (she’ll bear that burden), and Hellboy III would have presumably followed through on this process.There was a truce. The Angel of Death asks Liz is she’s willing to damn all of humanity if it means saving Hellboy, and she answers yes. He puts in lovely little touches like Abe putting in contact lenses so he’ll look handsome for Princess Nuala ( Anna Walton), the dark jokes like the “baby tumor”, and the love story between Hellboy and Liz ( Selma Blair), which provides not only a nice character arc for the two characters, but also the thematic crux of the film.īefore the final battle, Hellboy, Liz, Abe, and Johann Krauss ( Seth MacFarlane) make a detour that basically set up a third Hellboy, but also tries to look at the long view of man’s weaknesses running up against the downfall of imagination, which includes all of its terrors and wonders, stunningly represented by the Angel of Death (Doug Jones). I wish directors always had the money to create these kinds of bizarre gems, and Hellboy II manages to be deeply sorrowful at times and batshit insane at others, but it absolutely works because del Toro knows mythology and he knows people. This movie should not exist, but I’m so happy it does.īecause this weirdness is where great cinema thrives. That leads to a scene where Hellboy-a demon destined to bring about the apocalypse-and Abe Sapien ( Doug Jones)-a telepathic fish man who eats rotten eggs-get drunk on cheap beer and sing “Can’t Smile without You”. While it still slumps a bit in the middle like the first movie, at least here it feels like pausing for breath while the heroes recollect and take a moment. I wish every studio took the chances Universal did with Golden Army because the movie isn’t just surprisingly sad it’s also downright bizarre in the best ways possible. The fight becomes even tougher when you look at how weird del Toro’s willing to be. We’re asked to consider if we’re worth saving, and that’s an uphill battle. The music is sorrowful hen the creature dies. The forest elemental is dangerous, but it’s also beautiful. He chooses the latter, but it’s the rare set piece where the hero “wins”, but the scene is played for tragedy. This dynamic comes through most powerfully in the scene with the forest elemental, and Hellboy is forced to choose between sending a mythological species into extinction or saving a bunch of strangers. Del Toro may not be against humans, but he’s got a lot of compassion for his creatures, and Golden Army always strikes the right balance of trying to protect us while understanding that our “enemy” may not be evil. They’re horrific little beasts, but they’ve been starved and cooped up, and they needed to feed. Instead, the world is out of balance, and while the dictates of an action movie requires that the bad guys come from the monster side (Hellboy isn’t going to be fighting street punks), it’s a world where even the Tooth Fairies, who are damn scary, deserve some element of understanding and sympathy. Looking at del Toro’s filmography, it’s not simply that “magic = good” and “reality = bad”, or that he favors his monsters over people. We’re supposed to be on Hellboy’s side, but would we really welcome him? The elven king took pity on man, and mankind has greeted that mercy by relegating magical creatures to live underneath the sewer systems. While it’s not a unique superhero narrative, it feels fresh because it’s based in del Toro’s fascination with how imagination in all of its forms is sanitized and destroyed. For the sequel, del Toro draws the thematic lines in the clearest way possible, capitalizing on Hellboy ( Ron Perlman) being kept a secret from a world he wants to join, a world that doesn’t want him.
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