Site's up. If the quality of this movie is anything like the first one, I'll be disappointed, but even still, the site at least is a lot more admirable than that crappy Joker viral site. This one has a blog, in-character video welcome, and a gallery of design sketches, some by creator Mike Mignola (whose work I LOVE).
More production artwork, and a Liz Sherman poster.
Now they have Hellboy and Abe Sapien posters. The Abe one looks okay, but the expression on Hellboy is awful. I don't know if it's because that brow ridge makes it hard to use that angle, but it looks like he's on quaaludes, or something.
Trailer 2. Quality isn't great, but hopefully someone will find a better quality one soon.
I like that trailer much more than the first one.
I thought that demon that they showed around "make the choice" was quite within what I've seen in Del Toro's work. And considering all I've seen is with Hellboy and Pan's...
Still, looking forward to this.
I saw the midnight showing for this one last night. I'll admit that I enjoyed the first one for all of its flaws. And it had a lot of flaws. Still, I've been looking forward to this one all summer.
Not bad. Like the first it's fun but far from perfect. It's obvious that Guillermo has a bigger budget with this one as the scale just goes way up. His imagination has always led to some interesting imagery and this film ups that. Two scenes particularly come to mind, one involving a "troll market" which I've already seen compared to the Star Wars cantina scene, and the character that shows up late in the film known as the Angel of Death which is particularly of del Toro style.
Welcome in this one are some expansion of the supporting cast. Both Abe and Liz get more to do and new character Dr. Klaus (and his amusingly familiar VA) is a solid addition to the team.
What also works better in this film is its humor. The first film had its moments, but I think it also had several jokes falling flat. This one has its ups and downs in that regard as well, but I think the highs hit higher (in fact, one of my favorite moments from the film is in the clips above).
Nits and notes:
The week before seeing this film, I rewatched the first with and without the commentary. In it, Guillermo jokingly points out that he always seems to film scenes taking place in subways and promised he wouldn't do it again after Hellboy. It's this reason that I chuckled when a subway showed up in the second scene.
Also in the first one, Mignola noted that he suggested Kroenen's false hand should be used as a weapon, able to shoot off to attack his enemies. He and del Toro ultimately decided that was too out there for the first film, so I was again tickled to see Wink's right hand able to be thrown as a weapon.
The BPRD is now in Trenton, NJ when in the first it was in Newark. Not necessarily a nit, though I'm surprised they would make the building exactly the same design.
As the previews showed, Liz's pyrokinesis power has changed from the blue flames with the orange internal glow to completely orange flames. Not necessarily a nit since it could have come of a result of her better control or some other reason. They do stay orange at remarkably hot temperatures, though (as in hot enough to melt metal in seconds).
When Nuada attacks the king's guards, his nose starts to bleed, causing Nuala's nose to bleed as well, demonstrating their link. Nuada wipes it and there's absolutely no evidence that it was ever bleeding. Now, obviously, he wiped it, but it still looked strange to me, like he shouldn't have been able to get it so dry the way he did it. Maybe I'm just crazy.
I had no idea Abe was so durable. He takes a beating from Mr. Wink without getting a scratch.
I wonder what kind of support Nuada had in his quest to destroy the human world. None of the king's court does anything either way and I had expected them to show up at some point, but at the end it's just him and his sister. I can understand no one wanting to hand around the dormant Golden Army with the homicidal Nuada, but I got the impression watching it that it was just him and Mr. Wink behind the entire movement.
At the end, Hellboy, Liz, Abe, and Klaus quit the BPRD. Why is this? Is it because Manning and the Bureau wouldn't let them give up the crown to save Hellboy? Do they feel that now that the secret's out, they don't need the BPRD's protection? It just seems that they were all doing an extreme thing for a decision made that actually makes a lot of sense.
A couple of things I forgot to mention. Like the first film, Manning again is the guy who gives the cover story to the press and he again goes on a mission in spite of being basically BPRD's top official. Now, I'm not sure these are necessarily nits since they're premises established in the first film, and noting them again seem a bit redundant.
Also NNAN: Hellboy is really fast in this one. In the first movie he seemed more of a brutish brawler, though he was able to hold Kroenen off pretty well. This one he goes toe to toe with the exceptionally quick Nuada and holds his own, even drunk. Either the big guy's been training or he's been holding back on us.
I just keep forgetting things to add.
At the beginning, we see a scene from Hellboy's childhood in 1955. I guess taking care of a young demon from another dimension is tough work because the poor professor has aged quite a bit in 11 years.
Hellboy's choice of weapon as a "five-fingered" whatever it was is and interesting choice of words since I believe the RHoD only has four fingers.
Josh M: At the end, Hellboy, Liz, Abe, and Klaus quit the BPRD. Why is this?
I wondered this too. Hellboy and Liz I can understand, but the other two? It doesn't make much sense to me.
Pretty entertaining movie. Better than the first IMHO, but I knew nothing about Hellboy until the first so it didn't really capture me right away. They obviously got a new person to play Abe, I kinda miss Niles already.
I don't know if this was intentional but I found it funny that since Nuada et al were elves his sword was almost exactly like an elvish sword from Lord of the Rings. The other weapons had an elvish LOTH look to them as well.
Maybe I missed something, but that warning by the 'Angel of Death' to Liz about saving Hellboy versus letting him die never came to fruition, unless you count his line of "all that power." I was expecting something more to come out of that.
I know that in general when people get together they aren't very helpful as far as information goes, which is why multiple witness to something are seperated, but it was pretty obvious that Hellboy was helping that infant. Speaking of crowds, when Hellboy gets blown out of the window by Liz there were to tooth fairies still alive, and they both started finding their next meal. Hellboy shoots them and they both conveniently explode with nobody in the surrounding crowd getting injured.
Why didn't Dr. Klaus just go into another golden solider when his current one was (seemingly) destoryed? What took Liz so long to torch those tooth fairies? The second the swarm came out of the wall I immediately thought Liz should heat things up. It's not a big deal but wouldn't it have been prudent to get the golden army back into their spots before melting the crown?
quote:inblackestnight: Maybe I missed something, but that warning by the 'Angel of Death' to Liz about saving Hellboy versus letting him die never came to fruition, unless you count his line of "all that power." I was expecting something more to come out of that.
In brief: Ugh. I don’t care if they make a third one, I’m never going near it.
I didn’t care much for the first Hellboy, but I had reasons to be curious to see this one. For one thing, Myers, who seemed to be a fifth wheel stand-in for the audience in the first film, appeared to be absent from this one, from the appearance of the trailers. The production design and art direction looked gorgeous, and I figured that if I went to see The Dark Knight, why not see Hellboy 2 first, so that if it stank, TDK would cleanse the palette? In fact, after learning that Hellboy 2 had an 88% Rotten Tomatoes rating, I figured, hey, maybe this is much better than the first one! One RT critic even specified that it improved over the first film, and that this installment "had a mind and soul."
Sold!
I went to the theater, and even pondered with seeing Dark Knight first, if I got to the theater early enough, since the first DK showing of the day was earlier than the first HB.
Thank God I saw Hellboy first.
This movie is awful.
I got plenty of sleep, had a good breakfast, and even took a caffeine pill to start off the day with energy, and I was still nodding off during this film! This film has a mind and a soul? Ha! I had the exact opposite impression when watching it! Consider the scene in which Hellboy is fighting that giant pitcher plant while holding that woman’s baby. This sequence is three different flavors of stupid. I mean really, it’s friggin’ retarded. I mean, we’re supposed to believe that this woman (who apparently doesn’t watch the news, and is therefore unnerved by Hellboy’s arrival), simply leaves her baby. We’re also supposed to believe that rather than hand off the kid to someone else once he grabs him from his mom’s car (because, ya know, Nuada did tell that giant pitcher plant to kill Hellboy, and Hellboy alone), that he takes the kid car-hopping, and rather than run away (maybe seeing if that plant doesn’t have the ability to follow him, since it has no legs), he climbs up a storefront sign on a building. Yeah, that’s a great place to hide from the monster. Where he has a clearer line of sight to distinguish you from all the other people in the crowd. But no, that’s not enough. Instead of just taking out his gun and firing it, perhaps using his prehensile tail to hold the kid (which is established to be prehensile in that very scene), he has to make this big show of tossing the kid in the air in order to load his gun and fire it—because, ya know, Hellboy is the kinda guy to go out on a monster-fighting mission without having his gun loaded.
Nope.
Sorry.
I don’t think so.
Hellboy is supposed to be a hero. And not an anti-hero like the Punisher or even a fundamentally flawed hero like Hancock. Heroes like him are supposed to have a good sense of priorities. But by endangering that kid, he shows that he cares more about creating a spectacle than in protecting that kid, or even just killing the plant monster, a likely echo of the creators' approach to making this film. Sure, the creators are allowed to think about spectacle, even encouraged to, but only to the extent that they don’t make the character seem like he is. There’s plenty of beautiful eye candy in this movie, which made this idea unnecessary. Indeed, Guillermo del Toro and his team deserve Oscars noms for art direction and visual effects. But it would’ve been nice if they put as much thought into a solid script. The characters were paper thin, uninteresting, and annoying, the humor was unfunny, and by the time of that dreadfully unamusing “Can’t Smile Without You” sequence an hour and twenty minutes or so in to the film (which felt longer), I was just mentally begging for the movie to be over.
While the entire fantasy world that HB and his team explored was creatively interesting on a visual design level, I never felt the sense of gravity or depth that I felt when entering other fantasy worlds. I didn’t really feel any sense of tension or dread that Prince Nuada was a villain that I should feel frightened of until the very end of the film, when, after nearly killing HB, I was able to actually fear that HB would die, and even flinched a bit when he got caught in those grinding gear wheels. Indeed, the end was the best part of the film, with the narratively strongest elements. Krauss’ possession of members of the Golden Army was nicely set up, and its sudden healing represented a nice surprise reversal of fortune in terms of story structure, even if I had trouble buying into them as anything other than cute and cuddly toy robots. I even correctly predicted how the villain would be defeated.
And there are other little touches here and there. The decision to quit the BPRD at the end gave the climax a sense of change and closure. I was mesmerized by watching Nuada’s martial arts mastery of that bladed staff. And again, there were those beautiful character and set designs. But it was not enough for me, and if they make a third installment, I’m not going near it, even out of curiosity.
But if del Toro publishes a book of the art direction and design of his films, I’m there in a hearbeart.
---NITS & NOTES
When I was in art school, for our final exam in World Art, we had to memorize several hundred different pieces from the ancient world to modern times, and the details about each piece’s artist, time period, etc. The big sculpture seen in the beginning of the film at the auction, and which HB later shoves to the ground when he and the others are being attacked by the “tooth fairies” is called Venus of Willendorf. The only problem is, it’s completely wrong. For one thing, such “Venus figures” tended to be small, and Venus of Willendorf, which may be the most famous among them, is only 4 1/8” high. It’s not as tall as that figure in the film. In addition, it’s not 10,000 – 15,000 years old as the auctioneer says (IIRC), but between 28,000 and 25,000 years old, and I don’t know of any large scale perfect replicas of it that were made during the time period mentioned by the auctioneer, nor does my 1,135-page text book, which it certainly would if such a piece existed, since even a replica would make the book if it were that old. I also find it hard to believe that such a piece would be up for auction, rather than in a museum.
I admit I’m not that well-versed in Trenton, but was that the Manhattan skyline in the background in that shot of the BPRD HQ in the beginning of the film? There’s no way that Manhattan is close enough to Trenton to be visible like that. Or does Trenton itself mountain ridge from which one can see a skyline of the city buildings? (It happened too fast for me to be sure.)
Wasn’t Liz’s flame in the first film blue? I recall it as such, but in this film, it’s the normal orange/yellow color. Or does it come in different colors?
quote:Luigi Novi: Wasn’t Liz’s flame in the first film blue? I recall it as such, but in this film, it’s the normal orange/yellow color. Or does it come in different colors?
quote:Josh M: As the previews showed, Liz's pyrokinesis power has changed from the blue flames with the orange internal glow to completely orange flames. Not necessarily a nit since it could have come of a result of her better control or some other reason.
They explicitly stated that her power changed? Or was it just a decision on visual FX guys' part?
I figured it was the latter.