Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Viewed: Theater

I’ve never read any of the Hellboy comics, but I enjoyed the first Hellboy movie, so I expected to enjoy this sequel. Sadly, no. It wasn’t really bad; it was just failed to succeed for me. There were a lot of little problems with it. Things like:

Liz’s fire apparently isn’t hot — she doesn’t burn anything around her when she’s lit up, including people, like when she pats Abe’s shoulder while in full flame. (I’m willingly giving her clothes a pass on this complaint.)

Red’s powerful handgun has no penetration — he shoots down a tiny, bug-sized fairy right in front of a crowd of civilians, but the slug doesn’t go through and hit the civs.

Red clobbers a harmless little-old troll lady, knocking her 50 feet into a wall. That doesn’t endear me to him.

Red takes a dozen punches to the face from an ogre’s iron gauntlet, but a thrown beer can cuts his face.

The badass elf prince physically attacks and kills anyone who gets in his way, except Red and friends. Then he uses a convoluted surrogate.

Near the end, when the group is attacked by the Golden Army, no mechanical soldier bothers Liz or Abe, who are standing right there in the middle of them.

All the turning gears in the Golden Army “throne room” don’t actually connect with each other. They’re apparently just for show.

The above are just a few of the problems that I noticed; just the ones that came to mind immediately as I wrote this. There are many more. And they all add up to prevent my suspension of disbelief.

And the end of the movie, after the climax, just makes no sense. The team members each make a decision (the same decision) that really follows no logic. This last part left me thinking, “Huh? Why?” I could see the rash Hellboy making that decision, but the others apparently completely loose their intelligence and follow along.

Visually, the locations and scenes are pretty cool and fun. The basic story and plot is interesting. But the way it plays out, and many minor problems all make me not love this movie. I don’t hate it, but I don’t really like it. I don’t expect a fantasy movie like this to be realistic, but it should be believable. This one is unbelievable in logic and physics.

There is nothing to see after the credits.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com