I’m totally psyched to see the movie, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which has finally come to theaters this week. I’ve been a huge fan of the creator, Mike Mignola and the director, Guillermo del Toro for a long time now, so my expectations are pretty high for what they’re going to do this time around with the Hellboy character and his universe.
The thing that intrigues me most about this one (as opposed to the original movie) is that, although they worked on the film together again, this looks to be more del Toro’s vision than Mignola’s. In the supplemental materials on the Blu-ray of the first Hellboy movie, for good or ill, del Toro talks about how much a fan he is of the comic and how he wanted to adhere to the look and feel of Mignola’s creation. In Hellboy II, at least from the trailers, the film appears to be something more akin to the fantasy world of del Toro’s Academy Award winning film, Pan’s Labyrinth than to the gothic, Lovecraftian nature of the first Hellboy film (and comic), and that has me excited.
I’ll have a POSTview up soon, and post whether the film lived up to my expectations or not, a few of which are:
• an expansion of the Hellboy Universe where we’re seeing more of the “monster” world rather than the “human” world
• more character development, especially between Hellboy and Liz (hopefully the John Myers character is out of the picture), and more Abe Sapien, a favorite character in the comic and movie
• more “Guillermo-infused” than the original movie
• a bigger, more epic storyline