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Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

"Mignola's the guy with the beard, right?"
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Seth MacFarlane
Rating: 7/10
Directed By: Guillermo del Toro
Runtime: 110 minutes

Once again Tim League and the fine folks at the Alamo Drafthouse, in conjunction with Universal Pictures, have provided us Fantastic Fest badge holders with another sneak preview; this time Hellboy 2 with director Guillermo del Toro in attendance - his first appearance in Austin since Hellboy and one of his last stateside appearances before jetting to New Zealand to make The Hobbit. Already cool. Universal provided the usual accouterments in buttons and t-shirts and a free drink coupon and the Alamo provided Baby Ruth candy bars and red chips and salsa. Universal, we would later find out, also picked up the entire tab for the evening - the entire tab of wonderful Alamo food and booze. I have been to a few of these, my friends, and this is the first time I've seen this level of promotion from any major studio so big thanks to Universal. So we walk in and Guillermo is doing interviews standing next to Doug Jones (!), unannounced and in attendance. Reeling from that we turn...right in to Mike Mignola, comic artist extrordinaré and creator of Hellboy! Very nice, most unassuming, soft-spoken a guy you'll ever meet. We began with an autograph session; Mignola is pure class, Doug Jones and I spoke of milkshakes and he admitted of all the press he was in the middle of he was most excited about being at the Alamo and del Toro and I spoke of "At the Mountains of Madness" and the funding thereof (sadly not yet). Then Tim League gave a rousing introduction, pointing out that 200 other people in Austin hated us for being there and ended with "screw all those people. We're the cool ones!" Well spoken. Mr. del Toro also gave a brief introduction summed up in one sentence: "We created a shitload of monsters, which is the point of film in my opinion." Also well spoken.

Ah, yes. We did see a movie, and a not too bad one at that. Superior to the first on every level, Hellboy 2 makes no pretense at anything other than being an ass-kicking monster good time. There's a crown that controls a golden army of indestructible robots. The elf king, whose distrust of humans made him construct this vast army of unstoppable-ness, wisely broke the crown and gave a piece to the humans and dispersed 2 in his realm for safety's sake. Well, not so safe or we wouldn't have a flick. The king's son, Nuada (Luke Goss) wants the crown because people suck, forgot the fairies and fucked up the earth so fuck them, man, let's take it back. The elves are smarter than that so they deny Nuada and he kills them, king and all. His corsican-sister Nuala (Anna Walton) flees with her piece and runs into Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and gang who must put this threat down. Pretty much sums it up. Ok, there's a little more going on. Hellboy and Liz (Selma Blair) are fighting because Liz is pregnant - and fuck you for spoilers because they tell you in the first 10 minutes so "big surprise" - Nuada is really up in arms about the lack of elvish pride and humanity's greed-obsessed ways and wants a war out of shame, Hellboy deals with a human world who sees him as monster, Abe (Doug Jones) finds love of sorts, stuff like that.

Where the movie really succeeds is the visual style. From new characters like Johann Kraus (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) the ectoplasmic B.P.R.D. Member to new antagonists like the tooth fairies (not what you think) to richly dressed and gloriously monster-packed sets like the Troll Market, del Toro and company create a vivid world slightly to the right of ours but infused with a magic that rivals that of Pan's Labyrinth. Hellboy 2 is beautifully filmed and brilliantly designed but let us not forget what Guillermo opened with: a shitload of monsters and he wasn't kidding. The preview made it look like Pan's rejects, steals from the Host and a little Mirrormask thrown in for good measure. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mignola, del Toro and noted artist Wayne Barlowe did most of the character designs and each monster was animatronic unless absolutely necessary. Couple that with the fact del Toro purposely stayed away from any US animation houses to preserve an "old world feel" and you've got a reason to watch, my friends, and a ton of really cool looking monsters like the water elemental who is straight up one of Lovecraft's Old Ones! With all that bad-assness the action does get unclear at times but it's a minor quibble. The film is much funnier than the first as well, reveling in Hellboy's love of Tecate, Abe's love of Barry Manilow and Selma's sly verbal backhands this time around and the comfort level of the cast is evident.

A long Q&A followed where we were treated to Tim League and Tim Doyle getting fucked up by a drink del Toro invented called a "Muppet" which involves holding a drink in your mouth while del Toro grabs the back of your head and plays Pope with it cumulating in 3 rebounds off his belly at which point whatever you didn't spit all over the first row you could swallow. When Doyle asked how del Toro came up with that drink, Guillermo replied "experimenting." Del Toro also teased Hellboy 3 ("return of the Nazis"), gave the original setup for Hellboy 2, defined film ("any comedy that features fart jokes is genius"), mastered swearing and said Hellboy 2 allowed him "even more freedom than Pan's" to do what he wished. Doug Jones loves milkshakes and, well "I love Barry Manilow and I'm man enough to admit it." He is too. Mike Mignola dogged M. Night and agreed with del Toro that the Brothers Quay (Piano Tuner of Earthquakes) would be great to do The Amazing Screw-On Head if financing became available. They also let spill that if they have their way, Lobster Johnson will be in the next film and, if so, they will pursue their #1 pick Bruce Campbell so you should go see this film and make it happen. Lobster Johnson is in the video game, however, as a bonus mission voiced by the aforementioned Mr. Campbell so there's your sneak preview. Afterward, Mr. Del Toro and I spent a good forty minutes discussing H.P. Lovecraft (his daughter's favorite bedtime story was "Hounds of Tindalos"), his ideas for Mountains of Madness, the "shining trapezohedron" in "The Haunter of the Dark," his interview in Lurker in the Lobby, Old Ones as envisioned by HPL versus August Derleth's Christianization and other geek bullshit you're probably sick of by now so let's just say he's a real nice guy and the event was a huge success.

I would like to make a valuable point, if I may. Go see Hellboy 2. It's one of the better summer films (Forbidden Kingdom buys an extra ˝ star for Jet Li and Jackie Chan) thus far and Guillermo was right - if we want "At the Mountains of Madness" or "Amazing Screw-On Head" by the Quays or even Hellboy 3 this movie needs to make some money. And it's good. Don't let the studio's mistrust of del Toro's wacky ideas stop him from making stuff we wanna see. Go see Hellboy 2. You'll like it and you'll be doing your part (and it's better than Indy 4).