One thing's for sure: with Hellboy 2, Guillermo del Toro is assuredly getting comfortable with his wholly unique cinematic sense of sight. Visually, this superhero sequel is a mesmerizing tour de force replete with stylizations to make even Tim Burton blush at outperformance.That, and how cool is a superhero whose catchphrase is "Aww, crap"?
Ron Perlman is the titular Hellboy, a devilishly good hero rescued from a Nazi ritual by American forces led by Professor Broom (a nice cameo from original cast member John Hurt). Now a member of the BPRD (a supernatural covert task force that for all intents and purposes "does not exist"), Hellboy joins fellow adventurers pyrokinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), aquatic Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, vocally and adequately replacing David Hyde Pierce, though the motions are still all Jones), and German ectoplasmic ghost Johann Kraus (the voice of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane). Hellboy's mission here is threefold - defeat the villainous Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), who's bent on destroying humankind; frustrate Tom Manning (George Bluth himself, Jeffrey Tambor), the boss of the BPRD; and find out what secret girlfriend Liz is keeping.
Where the first movie had all the earmarks of a Mike Mignola comic book - deep shadows, talking corpses, larger than life (literally) characters - Hellboy 2 couldn't be more Guillermo del Toro. I'm not sure how to encapsulate his particular "look," but you know it when you see it: lanky creatures with multiple eyes in all the wrong places, fascination with global mythologies, and an underreliance on CGI effects that have similarly earned Christopher Nolan a few heralds for his work. While superhero sequels often allow the writer to expand on a character without the burden of an origin story, this one allows del Toro to spread his visionary wings to create the artistic sight he's been bearing his whole career.
That's not to say that the movie is too dark or too "del Toro." Kudos to the team for finding a way to integrate humor in small doses to keep the tension of the film from crushing its audience; kudos also for the Baby Bear way of finding a "just right" amount of humor to inject without creating a self-mockery like Spider-Man 3. Perhaps the most classic example here, without giving too much away, is a moment right in the middle of the movie in which an intoxicated Hellboy and Abe sing along to Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" over discussing girl troubles (Abe has been smitten by Nuada's twin sister Nuala). Too much of this would have destroyed the movie, but a few sprinklings here and there can only help.
Admittedly some of this movie smacks of a cry for a threequel - Hellboy's "destiny" for example seems fertile soil from which a threequel can grow, as does Liz's penultimate-frame delivery of the peace sign (not quite the intention, but I'd hate to spoil it). And I'm glad to hear that A) del Toro has a plan for a third movie involving the Universal Monster crew, and B) del Toro and Perlman are more than willing to keep doing Hellboy movies as long as they can.
If nothing else, though, this one is visually stunning in a way that comic book movies seldom are. Good thing the rest of the movie lives up to the eyeball assault. We'll have to wait a few years for the next one? Aww, crap.
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