seth

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:52:28 -0600

Guillermo del Toro out-Lucased Lucas As I sat at the Highland 10 theater waiting for Hellboy, a trailer for a computer-animated George Lucas Star Wars film screened. "Utter rubbish," I thought. Then, as I watched Hellboy 2, I couldn't stop thinking how embarrassed George Lucas should feel. If you've seen his recent fare (Indy Jones or any of the Star Wars prequels), you can't help but wonder if his storytelling ability has been impaired by a premature case of Alzheimer. This guy, del Toro, has an imagination and knows how to craft a story. Hellboy 2 is an unbelievably rich world of characters, creatures and effects, all given a recognizable motivation and context. As a direct comparison to Lucas, there's a scene at the "Troll Market" that smacks of the New Hope's Cantina, but instead of just throwing a bunch of odd-ball creatures on the screen, del Toro gives them purpose. If you watch the Indiana Jones movie, there's hardly any thought put into what's thrown in front of the audience. "Why are we showing this?" was never a question asked on the set of that hunk of crap. It's clear that while making Hellboy 2, everything you see was run through a filtering process that left only the best and richest material in the movie. If you didn't see Hellboy 1, you'll get by fine with seeing this movie. The producers assume most people haven't seen it, so there's a synopsis at the beginning that sets everything up. There aren't a lot of references I picked up to other movies in Hellboy 2, but there was a nice tip-of-the-hat to John Woo's Hardboiled. Perhaps it's a token of appreciation given to Woo for breaking down Hollywood's barriers to foreign directors. Sadly, Woo's career laid down on LA's barbed wire with Hollywood-crapfest films like Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and MI:2 so that another foreign talent could get studio backing to create a gem like Hellboy 2. Seth

Austinist: New Movie Releases: Hellboy II, Journey to the Center of the Earth and More

seth