Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

If you’ve read my review for the original Hellboy, you know that I did not like it. I thought that it was just flawed in so many ways. The second film, while it still has some flaws, some old and some new, I did enjoy it a lot more. In fact, it was pretty great. The film begins between the first half-hour of the first film and the second hour-and-a-half, and while the first film began with a prologue that just dragged on, this film had a prologue that actually explained the situation, and wrapped up. So points for the film within ten minutes of it. Then, the film jumps to after the first film. The villain from the first film that didn’t make any sense to me at all is gone, and replaced with a villain that I could actually understand and want to be defeated at the end. Then, the characters actually are more than just cardboard, and I respect that greatly. Previously, there were maybe two or three characters that I actually thought had feelings, but here, almost all of them did (although the actor that played John from the previous film [one of the few people I liked] quit or something, and that kind of ticked me off). The plot is also much better, pertaining to a golden mechanical army that was created years ago, but was locked away. But…oh…the bad guy starts up the golden army again! And to make matters worse, Hellboy (played by Ron Perlman) is fully living out his name for the secret government agency seen throughout the film, as he is not really happy with keeping this all a secret. And to make matters worse, his girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) is pregnant, but he doesn’t know. Also, there are two other main characters in Abe (Doug Jones) and Tom (Jeffery Tambor, who I mention basically because he was on the greatest television show ever made, Arrested Development), one being the grouchy leader of the agency and the other being a fish-man. All of the actors listed here are back from the first film, just to say. And just to clarify, Tambor is not the fish-man. I’d be kind of awesome if he was, but sadly, he is not…shame…Either way, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is an insane improvement on the previous installment, I enjoyed it immensely, and I will recommend it to a lot of people. And I will be happy to see a third one. As long as they don’t pull a Spider-Man 3…you better not, Hellboy.
8.5/10