I have to admit, when I went to see the first Hellboy movie, I didn't know why I was seeing it. My in-laws were coming into town on the opening day, and so we bought tickets for all of us to go see it that evening. I had seen the trailers, and my reaction was a resounding "meh." It looked okay, maybe some good, stupid entertainment, but was it worth opening night crowds? I hate crowds. I was pretty grumbly while I stood in line. Then I sat down and watched the movie and found that it was awesome. I enjoyed myself. It was in fact worth standing in line and being in a crowded theater. As a side note, yes, my mother-in-law wanted to go see Hellboy. I pretty much have the coolest mother-in-law on the planet (although to be fair, my husband has a pretty awesome mother-in-law too). So anyway, last year, trailers for Hellboy II started popping up. I seem to recall that my first exposure to it went something like this: Chris was on the QuickTime trailers site, and he was all "Hey, there's a new Hellboy movie coming out" and I was all "Oh cool, I wanna see." Then we watched it, and between then and now I have been constantly going "OMG! EVIL STEAMPUNK FAERIES!!!!" Sometimes with a fangirlish squeal. There was no doubt that Hellboy II: The Golden Army was a movie that I would be seeing on opening night, come hell or high water. I could make this short and sweet and just say "The movie is awesome, go see it!" but let's be honest with ourselves. Am I ever short or sweet? No. Because most of this review is going to consist of me gushing, I think I'll go ahead and get my few complaints out of the way. Here goes. I have to say that I found the melodrama surrounding Hellboy and Liz's relationship, and Abe's crush on a faerie princess, kind of... lacking. It wasn't necessarily bad, it just didn't hold up to the high standards presented by the rest of the movie. I'm really not good at being a woman, because instead of being into all the romance stuff, I wanted more action, dammit. One of my friends brought up a valid point, and that was that in both Hellboy films, the villains were more interesting than the heroes. I really wanted more faeries and less Hellboy. The plot is sadly predictable. You know how sometimes you're watching a movie or reading a book, and something clicks in your mind early on, and you say "Oh, this is what's going to happen?" and then it does, and then you're a little disappointed, because you wanted to be surprised? Yeah, that's pretty much Hellboy II for you. A big complaint is that, as usual, the numerous trailers that have been around for about a year now showed pretty much all of the awesome faeries, creatures, and action sequences. So much of the imagery would have absolutely blown me away if I hadn't already seen glimpses of it 20 times. As much as I hated Cloverfield, more marketing departments should look to those trailers as an example of what to do. Give us just enough to get us interested. We'll go to the movie to see the rest, and we want to see some good stuff while we're there! And my own personal, nerdy little nitpick is this: seriously people, stop using mythology names for characters. Balor (the elven king in this film), is a Celtic god, as is Nuada (the prince), but the roles they play in this film are not the roles they played in mythology, but they were just close enough that it nagged on me through the entire film and I had to look it up when I got home. Ok, I feel that I've been sufficiently negative. Now on with the gushing. OMG this movie ROCKED! I can sit here now and make complaints, but during the film I seriously enjoyed myself. There was lots of action, a bit of humor, and so much amazing imagery. It was incredible. It's like all of the best parts of the original Hellboy movie, and all of the best parts of Pan's Labyrinth, and some extra awesomeness thrown in for good measure. Let's start with the fact that this movie doesn't present us with a black and white good vs. evil conflict. Ok, yes, the faerie prince wants to kill all of humanity with his indestructible goblin-built mechanical army. But we brought it upon ourselves by breaking an ancient truce. And how did we break that truce? By building shopping malls and parking lots, destroying more and more of the wilderness that we were supposed to leave to the "children of the earth." I found that I really had to side with Prince Nuada on this one. I mean, not only are humans big jerks, cluttering up the planet with our junk, but the Prince is hot. I don't really go in for the freaky scarred face thing, but he's got a rather nice body and mad spear skills. He can destroy the world all he wants, as long as he saves me for last so I can watch. For the men in the audience, Nuada has an attractive, nice faerie princess sister named Nuala. She's soft-hearted and doesn't want the world destroyed. She enjoys poetry and has nice fashion sense, but she does not have mad spear skills. If you prefer your girls a little tougher, well, Liz is still an attractive character who burns lots of things. I do like a movie with equal opportunity eye candy, don't you? And while we're talking about eye candy, the creature effects are amazing. Guillermo Del Toro never ceases to amaze me with his imagination, and with the skilled creators that he gets to bring it to life. While many movies leave me griping about how fake the monsters looked, Hellboy II brought force no such complaints. You know they're not real, but they sure look it. I've mentioned in the past that I have a real fascination with faerie markets, and I love it when they're well done, whether in the written word, comic books, or movies. The Troll Market in this film was beyond well done. The scenery and atmosphere were perfect; it was just what I see in my mind's eye when I read the words "faerie market." As I watched the movie, I wanted to be there, to smell the exotic scents and rub shoulders with otherworldly creatures and shop for things undreamed of by mortal men. The action scenes are over all well-choreographed and interesting. I do have to say that the titular Golden Army, while nigh-indestructible, didn't seem quite as badass as the trailers made it out to be. "Oh noes!" They insisted. "The Golden Army must be stopped or all humanity is doomed!" Maybe, maybe not. But as cool as the evil steampunk faerie robots are, the best fight is probably the final one between Hellboy and Nuada. Definitely worth the price of admission. Anyway, there really is a lot to like in this movie. Even if you've never read a single Hellboy comic (and I haven't, but I probably should), the film is designed to appeal to geeks, and is sure to please.

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Copyright © 2008 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com