The Case for Revisiting Hell

The scene: Tuesday evening, reclining in a leather seat in the glorious Embassy cinema. Trailers roll as I anticipate the start of Hellboy 2: the Golden Army, a movie that has, apparently, on the success of the incredible Pan’s Labyrinth, allowed the director to indulge in his fantastical imaginings. I expected too much.

First the positives: The film looks amazing. I found the animation for the bedtime story told at the beginning of the film (especially the rendering of humans as incomplete wooden puppets) particularly cute. The creatures are a mix of horrific and cute (the dark angel was my favourite), the sets are sadly sumptuous, and the action sequences are breathtaking and filled with lots of loud bangs.

So is the story. The bangs are the sounds of the audience (well, of me) shooting myself as highly obvious plot developments take ice ages (and about 10 minutes of then-rendered-pointless action ) to eventuate. Other clunking sounds were caused by the jokes, which mostly fell flat, ably unassisted by a new character who bore a strong resemblance to a Nazic Stewie Griffin – perhaps not so surprising when I realised he was also voiced by Seth MacFarlane. And the character development… well, there was none. An old relationship went through motions while a new romance was given so little time to develop that, besides a Manilow moment (used as a bland blunt instrument to drive home a later plot point), one would hardly realise it was there.

So yes, I was not overly impressed with the story itself. Oddly enough, at the time, the film passed by without too much pain. I later realised that, after I while, I had kind of started ignoring the dialogue and paid attention instead to the background and the fight scenes. And the prospect of the much-hinted at sequel… well, here’s hoping that gets stuck in its own kind of (development) hell…

Verdict: A step forward visually, but several leaps backwards in anything resembling a film franchise that I would care about seeing. Hellboy 2: the Golden Army is about demons and the underworld, so, perhaps inevitably, it lacks heart and humanity. 3 Hail Mary’s out of 10.