Hellboy 2

Hellboy 2 was great fun! I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was considerably more whimsical and celtic-influenced than the first one, and the plot wasn’t the most exciting thing ever, not to mention that you knew what was going to happen to the antagonist during his first scene with his sister. But it’s a comic book film – that’s fine. And we’ll always have Pan’s Labyrinth for a cracking plot.

As usual, it’s the visuals that are really the reward for your admission price. Oh, there is some glorious stuff here, and as usual it’s Doug Jones who really gets the best minor characters to portray: the Angel of Death is something quite special, and the chamberlain was awesome too. I loved Krauss as well, a hilarious character you could still take seriously. Abe Sapian missed David Hyde Pearce’s voice, but the way he was written was very sweet. I actually liked Luke Goss’s Prince Nuada; people have said he lacks presence, but I thought the way he was violent yet soft and almost wispy suited the character and his culture very well. Great fight scenes, too – and of course, there’s brash, sarcastic Ron Perlman anchoring it all as Hellboy himself. I wished there could be more of the Jones-style characters (and the guy with the cathedral on his head did tickle me) rather than big CG things and generic trolls, but of all the big movie franchises, Hellboy is the one that can actually have a sense of wonder, of gentleness and real scope, and that gives me a sense of loyalty I don’t get with something like Batman or Iron Man.