Hellboy has a new mission and that is to stop Prince Nuada from awakening these indestructible machines known as The Golden Army.
Blaine: Guillermo is one of those guys who has proven not all sequels are just about making money and he described "Hellboy II" as a beautiful, dark, poignant fairy tale. “Hellboy II” would have to be more of a fantasy movie compared to the first one. The thing I love the most about "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" is that it's not just focussed on Hellboy, but the other characters as well and their situations. Like you get to know Abraham more and see him more as a lead character. In the first “Hellboy”, Abe stayed behind because he was injured, but this time he is around the mission from beginning to end. In “Hellboy 2” he is learning the feelings of love for the first time in his life because he meets a female, Princess Nuala, who is almost like him in every way. Doug Jones, the actor who plays Abraham, got to bring more of a performance to the character, plus he provided his own voice instead of someone else doing a voice over like they did in the last one. Doug also got to hide his face behind two other creature masks in this film, the grim reaper, with twelve eye balls on the feathery wings.
Liz is pregnant with Hellboy’s child and she’s not sure if she should tell him that he is going to be a father because he is not acting responsible and is not focusing on what really matters at the moment because he is too focussed on fame. Hellboy has revealed himself to the public eye and acts like a celebrity, but fame isn’t what he was expecting to be because on the streets people are afraid of him or think of him as a freak and are calling him ugly. They don’t respect him as the hero he is by protecting them from evil. The look of Hellboy’s face is different compared to what he looked like in the first movie. For one he has wrinkles and his skin color is a darker red. The makeup they did of Hellboy in the first film, they used an old cast of Ron Perlman when he was a younger man in the late 80s.
“Hellboy II” also introduces the audience to a new member of the team, Johann, an ectoplasmic character who is contained in a suit….plus he’s German. Guillermo wanted him to be more of a by the book type of guy compared to Hellboy being a disaster. Guillermo del Toro had “Family Guy” creator and voice actor Seth MacFarlane in mind to provide the voice of Johann. But then he thought “why would Seth want to do voice work for something like this?” However Seth thought it would be a cool and fun thing to do. Guillermo informed Seth to make the voice sound arrogant and refined like Stewie on “Family Guy”, but also have Eurotrash mixed in. Guillermo didn’t know Seth spoke fluent German. Seth had spent four years of learning German in high school and it never came in use for him until “Hellboy II”. Guillermo said that Seth nailed it after the first day. Seth said he had worked with directors who don’t know what they want when they are making a film, but Guillermo is the first and possibly the only director Seth has worked with who 100% knows what he wants.
“Hellboy II” shows a lot more fantasy creatures from Guillermo's imagination. Guillermo always gives full detail of how the movie should look and everything in it. Guillermo went through several designs of sculptures and concept drawings to see what he liked the most and wanted to be in the film. Guillermo has an artistic ability and he has an eye for detail. The idea was to go more surreal. Guillermo didn’t want to do stuff that the audience feels like they have seen before. He wanted a lot of creativity into the work because this movie he believed could make a difference.
Guillermo needed two actors who almost look the same in order to play the twins Prince Nuada, the villain of the movie, and Princess Nuala, who is the good half compared to him. Guillermo had worked with Luke Goss before on “Blade II” and he looked like the type of person who could bring the weight, emotion, sympathy and also be tough which is what they wanted to see in Nuada. Nuada despises the human race and feels they deserve to be wiped out. Luke Goss didn’t like being in the makeup chair for so long. The make department would start applying the makeup on Luke at 4:15 in the morning and sometimes it would take eight hours to do that because he would have scenes where his character was shirtless. He would have to do that for seven weeks, but he was brave enough to go through with it. When Anna Walton was cast as Princess Nuala, Guillermo and his team would work on designs of how to make both her and Luke look similar to each other, but at the same time make her look beautiful. Both Anna and Luke had to wear prosthetic faces in order to look similar to each other. Nuada and Nuala are like voodoo dolls to each other because if one gets hurt or damaged the other gets the same thing and that is what it is like being twins for their species.
My rating on “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army” is five out of five stars.
Behind the scenes
Music
Hellboy 2's music score was done by composer Danny Elfman ("Edward Scissorhands", "Batman", "Beetlejuice", "Alice in Wonderland", "Spider-Man" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas”.) Danny is good with making his music scores sound fantasy and I think that is what Guillermo was looking for when he knew that the second movie was going to be more fantasy than the first one.
Song: "Can't Smile without You".
Guillermo del Toro working on a sculpture of one of the creatures
