Cast Ron Perlman
Selma Blair
Doug Jones
Luke Goss
Anna Walton
Seth MacFarlane(voice)
Jeffrey Tambor
John Hurt
Screenwriter
Guillermo del Toro
Director
Guillermo del Toro
Running Time
120 minutes
After an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken, hell on Earth is ready to erupt. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Now, it’s up to the planets toughest, roughest superhero to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders. He may be red. He may be horned. He may be misunderstood. But when you need the job done right, it’s time to call in Hellboy. (Universal Pictures)
I honestly don't know whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. The first movie I thought was just about alright. One of the problems was how it differed so much from the comic, I know Mignola has said he likes adaptations to be really different, I don't understand why but he does, take the animated films as example. The changes made in the first movie, they weren't for the good. Like Liz Sherman becoming Hellboy's crazy ex-girlfriend was terrible and then the John Myers character what the earth was that about and his not being known to the public, none of these things were good changes. I suppose if I didn't know about them they would not have bothered me as much but I thought they were detrimental. In this sequel a lot of this stuff was fixed, somewhat, yes Liz is still his girlfriend but at least now she's a member of the B.P.R.D., out of the mental hospital and is a strong character. Myers is thankfully gone, that was just a mad idea, going off on a tangent it was like the Anne Hathaway character in The Devil Wears Prada who "didn't get fashion". The point is with Hellboy is that it's horror tales where the good guys and the bad guys are supernatural creatures, it's full on horror action stories, adding a central human character who didn't get what was going on messes up the whole dynamic. He becomes publicly known, excellent I thought but that went sour towards the end, anyway so they fixed some of those problems and all the creatures are really great and it has a fairy tale quality which is like some of the Hellboy stories plus adding the ectoplasmic man Johann Krauss was terrific. The whole Princess and Abe Sapien romance, there should have been more development of that. There was a kind of distance there between me and the characters and I'm not sure what that was about exactly. The Jeffrey Tambor character Tom Manning is still there and while I like him as an actor, again I don't understand the need. Also the canon fodder human agents, I suppose you sort of have that in the B.P.R.D. comic where Hellboy has gone but in the Hellboy comic proper you never had that, it was just the core team going on missions. Not loads of agents like the red shirted guys in Star Trek destined to die. They keep getting knocked off and I'm thinking surely Hellboy should be saving them not standing about watching them go. It was a HELL of a lot better than the first film.
