AT THE MOVIES WITH JUSTIN SIMS
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hellboy II, in many ways, is a complex movie, but simple in the same regard. The general story is about Hellboy (HB) trying to defeat Prince Nuada, who is heir to the throne of a mythical race of beings. His father created a pact between his people and the humans to stay in their respected areas, the humans to the cities and the creatures to the forests, but as you can tell by looking outside, we haven’t quite upheld our end of the deal. After seizing power, Nuada wants to destroy the humans by utilizing the Golden Army, which has defeated them once before a very long time ago. But throughout all of this, the story gets much more complex with two love stories, a new boss for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development, and HB’s acceptance by humanity.
With all of this happening, it became very difficult to just focus on the main storyline of good versus evil; if you can call it that. I found Nuada to be the most interesting character because of his perspective on life. HB was not being accepted by the humans for what he was. Although he has been helping them for years secretly, once they know about him, they’re scared of him. Nuada can see this and believes humans have over-stepped their boundaries, so he wants to regain what his father allowed to be taken from him. Granted this is by destroying human life, which is obviously very bad, his look on life and understanding of how things interact is exceptional. For a villain, I thought he was treated very fairly because he has a well-rounded character persona who was evil and liked being evil, which is important for the bad guy, but also compassionate about his world. He knew what he wanted out of life; his methods just weren’t entirely admirable.
The side stories begin to cloud this storyline because there was so much happening. Although the love stories created an interesting look at how non-human beings look at life and love and created very humorous moments at the same time. I kept wishing for them to get back into HB doing what he does best, fighting. But to fill in the gaps between battles, these stories created enjoyable moments that were able to make me laugh and smile.
None of this would have been possible without Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) directing. His style of sci-fi stories mixing with fairytale worthy creatures and special effects always makes for an enjoyable time, which Hellboy II is completely. It’s not Del Toro’s best film, but even then Hellboy II is much better than other films. It follows well with the feel of the first Hellboy film by combining action, special effects, and comedy to give you the complete story of a misunderstood, childish demon, who has chosen the path of good even though his existence says otherwise, as he lives life and tries to understand the world around him, including love.
3 ½ Stars
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