A flawed sequel from Guillermo Del Toro, Lord of the Things
Though bearing the same distinct visual style and flair for production design that made 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth a critical darling and already something of a cult favorite, director Guillermo Del Toro’s sequel to his own Hellboy wears the deep and severe problems with its story and script like a crown of horns. Though at times the talented cast rises above the flat dialogue and plodding, tangent-ridden screenplay, their efforts can’t raise the film above routine or inject life into what is at its weird heart simply an exercise in costuming. Blame Del Toro, whose screenplay shows his limitations as a storyteller even while borrowing liberally and obviously from a constellation of influences.
Beginning with a prologue sequence that’s nakedly derivative of the opening to the first Lord of The Rings, the film’s tale of a broken truce between humans and the mythical creatures of antiquity quickly becomes a game of spot-the-influences, ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to the aforementioned Tolkien to a succession of sci-fi fantasy flicks of recent years, including Cloverfield, Underworld and of course the Matrix trilogy. That’s not in itself a bad thing – science fiction and horror alike are both genres that to a degree thrive on homage and derivation. Except in this case the influence feels disingenuous, even cynical. In creating a world of his own imagination, Del Toro seems to have forgotten how to create vivid characters, and a tin ear for dialogue (along with jokes that would seem flaccid in a Ben Stiller comedy) only makes things worse.
This is partly exacerbated by, ironically, the surprise success of the first Hellboy film, based as it was on a semi-obscure Dark Horse comic by former Batman artist Mike Mignola and starring a cluster of respected (if not exactly popular) character actors. A straightforward, pulpish yarn about demons discovered during World War II and a shadowy government agency that patrols the darker corners of the world, the film banked on audience novelty and delivered. Flash forward four years and a critical – if overrated – success in Pan’s Labyrinth, and the novelty is gone even as the expectations are raised for the modest Hellboy franchise. That the film resembles a Del Toro vehicle more than Mignola’s comic perhaps suggests the writer-director’s priorities in crafting the film.
This creative control even extends so far as to shuffle the cast. The admittedly bland agent John Myers is gone, replaced by Dr. Johann Krauss, a German scientist turned sentient cloud of gas that walks through scenes clad in a kind of Victorian diving suit. Voiced by The Family Guy’s Seth McFarlane in a peppy Colonel Klink impression, the professor has some interesting skills in his retinue (like reanimating the dead) but the praise incessantly lavished upon him by other characters makes his presence grating for much of his first half hour. Rather than characterize by action, Del Toro takes the far clumsier approach of audience-approval-by-telegraph, which practically never works. David Hyde Pierce is also gone as the voice of Hellboy’s chum Abe Sapien. Fortunately Selma Blair and Jeffrey Tambor return, as does (most importantly) Ron Perlman as Hellboy.
The story is nothing if not void of surprises. The goth-esque, sword-wielding villain Prince Nuada is ruthless and treacherous, prone to decapitating adversaries in flying head and Matrix-style wirework splendor. He’s even got a henchman that’s suspiciously similar to the cave troll of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. His plan for control of the Golden Army, a legion of steampunk robots themselves evokative of The Fifth Element’s Mondoshawan aliens, centers around possession of a golden crown (one crown to rule them all!) that’s split into three fragments. As you can imagine, the search for the third piece takes up much of the middle act. Eventually, order is restored and the quartet of heroes are free to resume their lives – albeit with big changes in store, in a denouement that’s almost sitcomish.
Ultimately, the film suffers from a fractured set of ambitions that does neither of its sides justice. Too much a conventional action flick to rival Pan’s Labrynth in ambition or scope and too much a trendy art piece to succeed as genre entertainment, Hellboy 2 will likely be remembered as a minor film in Del Toro’s celebrated career. At least his next project, adapting Tolkien’s The Hobbit, will allow him to bring much of his inspiration back to its rightful source.
- Michael Kabel
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