Review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) by Gaben. — 06 Aug 2008

This movie is bad bordering on the incompetent. I was a fan of the first movie, even with all its flaws, and had high expectations for the sequel. The fear set in almost immediately with the scene between a young Hellboy and Professor Bruttenholm IJohn Hurt banking a paycheck).

This was not Hellboy as a kid - this was Guillermo del Toro lazily and incomprehensibly grafting a pointless backstory onto the film. It was downhill from there. Hellboy has gone from a flawed hero to a mildly repulsive loser.

Individual scenes fall apart with no sense of significance or consequence (e.g. killing the elemental is done purely to let loose the set designers even though emotionally it's completely disconnected from the narrative).

And all the praise the art direction and creature design has received in completely undeserved. Taking a monster from the Star Wars cantina scene and putting a house on top of its head is not design, it's self-indulgence.

Just like fight scenes, good monster design has to tell you something about the world, the characters, or the story, and not just be an excuse for more latex costumes composed of pieces selected by a random number generator.

B--23! A monster with wings and bananas. C-17! A siamese twin with a mouth where its belly button goes. This was a badly written, ill conceived film that comes across as a director indulging his worst tendencies.

It makes me worried for The Hobbit.