HELLBOY II: GOLDEN ARMY.
September 8th 2008 22:32
Category: Movies
Based on the Hellboy comic by Mike Mignola.
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Producers: Lawrence Gordon, Mike Mignola, Mike Richardson, Joe Roth, Lloyd Levin & John Swallow.
Story by: Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola.
Screenplay by: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Selma Blair (Liz Sherman), Doug Jones (Abe Sapien), John Hurt (Professor Trevor ‘Broom’ Bruttenholm), Luke Goss (Prince Nuada), Anna Walton (Princess Nuala).
Produced by: Dark Horse Entertainment.
Released by: Universal Pictures.
Running Time: 120 minutes. Rating: M.
The last time Hellboy appeared on the big screen he and his comrades at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD) were dealing with a resurrected Rasputin, clockwork Nazis and an entity of gigantic proportions and decidedly Lovecraftian nature (Burrower Beneath anyone?). Obviously it all ended up well otherwise it would seem highly unlikely for there to have been any need to make the sequel. This time rather than opting for a distinctly horror feel to the affair Hellboy II: Golden Army decides to take a leaf from Gaelic mythology and good old fashion fairy tale stories, the kind that would be penned by Neil Gaiman or Ray Bradbury rather than those by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen.
It’s also rather apt as the story opens at a military base in the United States back in the nineteen fifties on Christmas Eve with a young Hellboy eagerly awaiting the sudden arrival of Father Christmas. His adopted father ably played by John Hurt wants him to stop watching Howdy Doodie, turn off the television, brush his teeth and go to bed. Naturally our hero isn’t having any of this; he wants to watch Santa show up as he’s puzzled how the man in red is going to pull off this feat considering that their quarters doesn’t have chimney down which he can enter, though as his father points out he has his ways and means. Turning the television off the good professor manages to convince Hellboy to brush his teeth and go to bed but on the proviso that he tells the youngster a bedtime story, reaching into a box and pulling forth a weighty tome he proceeds to do just that.
Of course the story he recounts is that of the Golden Army, not your usual bedtime fare but then again Hellboy isn’t you average run of the mill adolescent waiting for Santa to show up either. In days of yore when Humanity shared the world with the animals of field and forest as well as spirits of nature and Elves, Goblins and Trolls (the Fae races) it seemed that the world was a fairly wondrous place. But as usually happens Humanity was not simply satisfied with its lot and went to war against the Fae kind seeking to gain dominance over all. Elves being the kind of people that they are were naturally not having a bar of this short lived upstarts taking over and thus they girded their loins and more importantly sharpened their blades. Off course they didn’t count on the sheer numbers of their foe and things began to go against the Fair Folk, which was when King Balor realised he needed some kind of edge to regain the upper hand. A Goblin smith proclaimed that he could create for the good king 70 times 70 unstoppable warriors made of gold to fight his battles against the humans – and thus was born the Golden Army. To control this legion of killing machines the King also bade the Goblin to construct a crown; the wearer of this crown would be the controller of the army.
Army and crown duly constructed the King returned with his people to the fray to finally gain the edge of their seemingly relentless adversaries. When the king saw the carnage that his army was capable of wreaking he knew in his heart of hearts that he had unleashed a potential for destruction that should have never been made. Still as they say what has been made cannot be unmade, the fear of the army and its wrath eventually forced the humans to negotiate and a truce was formed between the worlds of man and Fae, in order to seal the truce King Balor had the crown of Badhmorda (Willow anyone?) broken into three pieces one of which he gave to the Humans so that the Golden Army could hopefully never be used again. But the king’s son, Prince Nuada, disagreed with his father and chose instead to go into exile. And there the story ends, our hero believing that it is simply just a fairly tale…
Fast forward to the present day, Manhattan, and a rangy, muscular man with long white hair is engaged in series of martial arts moves with a rather unusual looking blade that can extend into a spear. He looks otherworldly and his companion Wink is definitely not of this world. The white haired man is none other than Prince Nuada; the son of King Balor who went into exile so many long years ago, precisely how long is not mentioned but it must have been some considerable time. Naturally keeping his muscle tone up to spec is not what the ‘good’ prince is all about he has other fish to fry and he definitely looks like a man who wants his Piscean well done in a beer batter with a large side order of chips and some particularly fine mead.
Prince Nuada makes for a distinctly interesting protagonist against which Hellboy is pitted. Certainly he is definitively set against the entire human species yet his cause is born not so much out of a sense of superiority or even malevolence. If anything he has seen the writing on the wall, has no doubt been seeing it for a good few centuries if not millennia and has realised that he and his kind are doomed if humanity is allowed to blithely continue on its way unchecked. The wonder in the world is slowly fading and dying, drowned out beneath the strains of Brittany Spears, choked by the chemicals and pollutants dumped in the water or filling the air and paved over by strip malls and substandard housing projects. In its endless drive to satisfy its societal ‘needs’ the human race has become blind to what and who it is destroying, as Prince Nuada declaims to a bewildered audience in a plush Manhattan auction house “You have forgotten about us and why you should fear us”.
Thus there is the element of a morality tale surrounding the story, Prince Nuada is not just a slavering psychopath looing to end the world or a slave to some alien entity as was Rasputin, he does have a legitimate grievance although the means by which he seeks to redress that grievance are questionable. Of course as history has shown one does necessarily not have to be an otherworldly creature to be the brunt of genocide, one only has to recall the atrocities perpetrated in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina in recent memory to demonstrate mans inhumanity to man let alone that to completely different species. Unfortunately for Prince Nuada he has picked a time and place where his schemes and goals are bound to draw the attention of Hellboy, an unstoppable force if ever there was one, and naturally not someone to let a guy like Nuada get his own way. Hellboy II: Golden Army has its moments of pathos, wry humour and action packed scenes that lead to a satisfactory if somewhat sombre denouement. Well worth taking the time out to catch at your local cinema.
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Producers: Lawrence Gordon, Mike Mignola, Mike Richardson, Joe Roth, Lloyd Levin & John Swallow.
Story by: Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola.
Screenplay by: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Selma Blair (Liz Sherman), Doug Jones (Abe Sapien), John Hurt (Professor Trevor ‘Broom’ Bruttenholm), Luke Goss (Prince Nuada), Anna Walton (Princess Nuala).
Produced by: Dark Horse Entertainment.
Released by: Universal Pictures.
Running Time: 120 minutes. Rating: M.
The last time Hellboy appeared on the big screen he and his comrades at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD) were dealing with a resurrected Rasputin, clockwork Nazis and an entity of gigantic proportions and decidedly Lovecraftian nature (Burrower Beneath anyone?). Obviously it all ended up well otherwise it would seem highly unlikely for there to have been any need to make the sequel. This time rather than opting for a distinctly horror feel to the affair Hellboy II: Golden Army decides to take a leaf from Gaelic mythology and good old fashion fairy tale stories, the kind that would be penned by Neil Gaiman or Ray Bradbury rather than those by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen.
Army and crown duly constructed the King returned with his people to the fray to finally gain the edge of their seemingly relentless adversaries. When the king saw the carnage that his army was capable of wreaking he knew in his heart of hearts that he had unleashed a potential for destruction that should have never been made. Still as they say what has been made cannot be unmade, the fear of the army and its wrath eventually forced the humans to negotiate and a truce was formed between the worlds of man and Fae, in order to seal the truce King Balor had the crown of Badhmorda (Willow anyone?) broken into three pieces one of which he gave to the Humans so that the Golden Army could hopefully never be used again. But the king’s son, Prince Nuada, disagreed with his father and chose instead to go into exile. And there the story ends, our hero believing that it is simply just a fairly tale…
Fast forward to the present day, Manhattan, and a rangy, muscular man with long white hair is engaged in series of martial arts moves with a rather unusual looking blade that can extend into a spear. He looks otherworldly and his companion Wink is definitely not of this world. The white haired man is none other than Prince Nuada; the son of King Balor who went into exile so many long years ago, precisely how long is not mentioned but it must have been some considerable time. Naturally keeping his muscle tone up to spec is not what the ‘good’ prince is all about he has other fish to fry and he definitely looks like a man who wants his Piscean well done in a beer batter with a large side order of chips and some particularly fine mead.
Prince Nuada makes for a distinctly interesting protagonist against which Hellboy is pitted. Certainly he is definitively set against the entire human species yet his cause is born not so much out of a sense of superiority or even malevolence. If anything he has seen the writing on the wall, has no doubt been seeing it for a good few centuries if not millennia and has realised that he and his kind are doomed if humanity is allowed to blithely continue on its way unchecked. The wonder in the world is slowly fading and dying, drowned out beneath the strains of Brittany Spears, choked by the chemicals and pollutants dumped in the water or filling the air and paved over by strip malls and substandard housing projects. In its endless drive to satisfy its societal ‘needs’ the human race has become blind to what and who it is destroying, as Prince Nuada declaims to a bewildered audience in a plush Manhattan auction house “You have forgotten about us and why you should fear us”.
Thus there is the element of a morality tale surrounding the story, Prince Nuada is not just a slavering psychopath looing to end the world or a slave to some alien entity as was Rasputin, he does have a legitimate grievance although the means by which he seeks to redress that grievance are questionable. Of course as history has shown one does necessarily not have to be an otherworldly creature to be the brunt of genocide, one only has to recall the atrocities perpetrated in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina in recent memory to demonstrate mans inhumanity to man let alone that to completely different species. Unfortunately for Prince Nuada he has picked a time and place where his schemes and goals are bound to draw the attention of Hellboy, an unstoppable force if ever there was one, and naturally not someone to let a guy like Nuada get his own way. Hellboy II: Golden Army has its moments of pathos, wry humour and action packed scenes that lead to a satisfactory if somewhat sombre denouement. Well worth taking the time out to catch at your local cinema.
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