Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

What happens when an elf prince plans to overthrow his father and try to take on the humans with an arsenal of indestructible robots? He gets matched against the agents of the B.P.R.D. including the giant ugly demonic red ape known as Hellboy.

1955 Professor Broom (Hurt) read Hellboy (Perlman) a bedtime story telling the tale of when magical creatures and humans lived in peace. A war had eventually arisen between the two and the king of the elves saw that after many a battle too many of the magical creatures lay dead so he had a goblin make him an indestructible army. However, after the king saw that this army destroyed too many humans he decided the army should never battle again. He removed his crown that controlled the army and split it into three pieces; one for the humans to keep and the other two for him to hide. The humans and magical creatures called a truce that the humans would remain in the cities and the magical creatures to the forests. The king’s son Prince Nuada (Goss) disagreed with this plan and was thus exiled. Current day; and the Prince is still exiled but has been in training and has been tracking down the piece that the humans have. Nuada steals it from an auction and the aftermath is left for the members of the B.P.R.D. to investigate. The B.P.R.D. gets a new agent to act as a superior to Hellboy; Johann Krauss (MacFarlane), who is an ectoplasmic entity that was a medium, could talk to ghosts, when he still had a body. Krauss and the others find a trail of breadcrumbs that opens a can of worms in this battle between man and magical creatures. They end up traveling across the globe to Scotland where they find the golden army. Hellboy challenges Nuada’s right to rule these mechanical monsters, and then they begin their epic battle. Naturally good triumphs over evil and the natural world is once more saved from the supernatural world.
I really liked this Hellboy. Most of it was better than the first; however, it still had small room for improvement. The most phenomenal thing about this movie was definitely the creatures. Oh my G-d they were cool. I hope you saw Pan’s Labyrinth because these monsters were just as cool as the ones in that movie, which of course makes sense since they were directed by the same fellow. This movie truly continued with the mysterious feel of the comics, cartoons, and first movie. The gang is eventually led to this place called the Troll Market and it looks like if you combined Diagon Alley, from Harry Potter, with Mos Eisley Spaceport from Star Wars A New Hope. It only looks this way to me because it is full of a plethora of different creatures and they are all so intriguing looking as though each of them has their own back story. I think it looked like Diagon Alley because it had a lot of interesting shops and things. There was even a guy who had a miniature castle on his head!!
The story was good and solid at least. There were not really any plot holes; however, the movie strayed away from the main plot a few times because there are two love stories going on in the film. They play a small part so it is not some big deal and does not distract from the big picture, but I think the movie could have done fine without them. The action sequences are through the roof with amazing acrobatics and just crazy situations that the stars are put in to do battle in. There were fights in the middle of the city street just below the Brooklyn bridge, and fights in the troll market streets, a fight in the locker room at the B.P.R.D., and of course a fight in the chamber where the golden army was for so many years. There was good comedy, crazy gizmos, a short scene with John Hurt, and even a very young Hellboy. Keep your eyes peeled for the helmet of Kroenen, evil knife wielding undead Nazi from the first movie, in the background at the B.P.R.D. somewhere. If you enjoy the comics, the cartoons, or the first movie then I am sure you will like this one as well. Go grab yourself some popcorn and take a seat at the movies for another good comic to silver screen summer movie.

Run time: 110 mins
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Written by: Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Seth MacFarlane, Luke Goss, Anna Walton, and Jeffrey Tambor