Hellboy II Dossier: What We Know About The Golden Army
by Tom Burns

THE SCRIPT:

According to the official plot description on hellboymovie.com, the general story of The Golden Army is as follows:

"After an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic is broken, hell on Earth is ready to erupt. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Now, it's up to the planet's toughest, roughest superhero to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders. He may be red. He may be horned. He may be misunderstood. But when you need the job done right, it's time to call in Hellboy (Ron Perlman)."

Both Del Toro and Mignola worked on the script and decidedly chose to move the story away from the Nazi/Lovecraftian themes of the first movie (and many of the earlier Hellboy comics) and move towards the more mythological/fairy tale-centric stories that became popularized in such Hellboy comics as The Corpse, The Iron Shoes, and The Island. In February 2007, Mignola talked about the script with IGN.com, commenting that, "The focus is more on the folklore and fairy tale aspect of Hellboy. It's not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world. I kind of equate it to the whole American Indian situation. The Indians were shoved onto reservations. You had your old, wise Indians who said, ‘You know, this is the way it is. We can't fight anymore. We just have to accept our fate.’ You then have your Geronimo character saying, ‘Or we could just kill the White Man.’ That's kind of the situation we have in the film. We have our elf characters resigning to the way things are and then there's one saying, ‘Or we could take the world back.’ The main difference is - what if the Indians had a nuclear warhead? The elves have their equivalent of the weapon that is too terrible to use. What if this guy decided to use it?"

That "too-terrible-to-use" weapon is the Golden Army, a legion of unstoppable goblin-made robots capable of wiping the floor with humanity. Other story details soon slowly began to leak out - Del Toro’s web site released a cast breakdown revealing new characters (including the popular BPRD character Johann, a man made of gaseous ectoplasm who has to live inside a containment suit) and that suggested that the roots of the elvin characters could be found on the Irish tradition of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

However, in typical internet fashion, the script was soon leaked to both iesb.net and latinoreview.com, and, after checking their spoilage against the footage in the first official trailer, their scripts definitely seem to be legitimate.

Here are the highlights:

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Apparently, the story revolves around an elven prince, Nuada (Luke Goss), who hates that his people have retreated back into the shadows of the world, due to a treaty with mankind, and wants to reclaim the globe for his supernatural brethren. To accomplish this, he needs to find the three parts of an elvish crown that will allow him to control the rampaging Golden Army (he’s getting the first piece in that auction room scene that opens the trailer). Nuada’s attack on the auction house attracts the attention of the BPRD, and the resulting chaos (including a battle with a horde of demented tooth fairies) effectively "outs" Hellboy to the general public. (Hellboy is publicly known in the comic book, but the movie version chose to cast him as a government secret.) While HB, Abe Sapien, and Liz Sherman deal with their new fame and a new boss, Johann (i.e. Mr. Ectoplasm), Nuada continues to quest for control of the Golden Army. The BPRD’s investigation eventually leads them to a goblin market right out the mind of Christina Rossetti and Nuada’s sister, Princess Nuala, makes eyes at Abe Sapien when she’s not opposing her brother’s plans for genocide. Meanwhile, Hellboy has to deal with his burgeoning romance with Liz, the fairy world’s familiar cries of “you’re more like us than them”, and a 50-foot tree monster threatening the Brooklyn Bridge. Let’s see Iron Man deal with that.

OUR OPINION: The fairy world stories were always our favorites in the Hellboy comic, but can they sustain a full movie? The plot surrounding the world’s forgotten magical creatures deciding that they don’t want to be forgotten any more sounds fantastic – very engaging, exciting, and pure Hellboy goodness. Our main worry is – where does Hellboy fit in? The mystery of Big Red’s origin was the driving force of the original movie, so hopefully, a tale where HB is just an investigator will work just as well, even though Hellboy can’t nearly be as invested. The key will be whether Del Toro can make Hellboy’s ambiguous feelings about how the fairy world is being treated by humanity seem genuine rather than annoying “who am I” angst. Also, while we like the idea of an Abe Sapien love story in theory, it’s going to take all of Guillermo’s directorial might to make a fishman/albino elf love scene not look stupid.

THE CAST:

Aside from Rupert Graves’ Agent Myers from the first movie (a character who never appeared in the comic), all of the major players are back for Hellboy 2. Del Toro has even confirmed that John Hurt will be returning for a cameo as Hellboy’s surrogate father figure Dr. Bruttenholm (he was killed in the last movie). Luke Goss (who played the main vampire baddie in Del Toro’s Blade 2) is playing Prince Nuada, and Doug Jones is returning as Abe Sapien, while playing several other characters (most of which, from the brief glimpses in the trailer, look like relatives of the fairies and demons from Pan’s Labyrinth). However, while Frasier star David Hyde Pierce dubbed in Abe’s lines for Hellboy, in the sequel, Abe gets to keep Doug Jones’ own voice. He told VH1.com, "When I first took the role of Abe Sapien, it was with the understanding that they might do a celebrity voiceover-type thing, because I was not a celebrity at that point. They were thinking about Kevin Spacey and Steve Buscemi and then David Hyde Pierce, who ended up doing the voice. Now I am really excited to have the voice back."

The other big character addition is the ectoplasmic Johann, who becomes the fourth member of the BPRD’s main strikeforce with Hellboy, Abe, and Selma Blair’s Liz Sherman. Johann’s body is played by John Alexander, while Tomas Kretschmann (who you might remember as Captain Englehorn from Peter Jackson’s King Kong) provides the voice. Johann definitely counts as the weirdest action lead in 2008’s summer movie season, and you can see an image of him in his containment suit in the photo gallery at hellboymovie.com (he looks part-spaceman, part-deep-sea-diver).

OUR OPINION: Ron Perlman’s performance as Hellboy hands-down made the first movie for us. He was note-perfect – loveable, charismatic, bad-ass, and gruff – and we can’t imagine a Hellboy movie without him. Kudos to Doug Jones for getting the voice back, but we’re so used to seeing him in non-speaking roles that let’s all hope that the man has the vocal chops to go with his ridiculously dexterous body. Luke Goss... oh, we’re a bit worried there. Our main complaint with Hellboy 1 was that Rasputin was such a boring 2-dimensional bad guy. We really want Prince Nuada to have levels of complexity, but all Goss did in Blade 2 was open his mouth really, really wide. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but, to be honest, the bad guys are what make us nervous about Hellboy movies. They’ve been weak in the past and they’ve got such a ridiculously cool hero to live up to.

FINAL OPINION:

We’re really liking what we’ve seen from Hellboy 2 so far, and the first trailer absolutely ROCKED. For a movie that’s supposed to be budgeted for less than the original Hellboy, The Golden Army looks ten times bigger and more impressive. No one can say that Del Toro doesn’t know how to make every last penny of his budget show up on the big screen. We’re digging the fairy-land premise, but we’re skeptical about Del Toro’s ability to make us believe in and care about such potentially goofy plot points as a merman/elf love affair and a walking gas-cloud for a leading man. However, the leaked script reviews have all been overwhelmingly positive and the prospective of getting more Perlman-as-Hellboy action is just too enticing for us to ignore. We’re definitely be there to watch Hellboy fight the golden goblin army this summer and, hopefully, next year, we’ll be able to see Hellboy vs. The Monster Squad on the big screen too.