I remember first seeing this film when it came out on-demand, I think I was 10 years old at the time, and even to this day I remember my excitement at watching the astonishing sight of the Golden Army awakening, the gorgeous final battle sequence with Prince Nuada, and that eerie Troll market. These images have long stayed with me and re-watching it again, they still hold their power. That’s the amazing ability of Guillermo Del Torro, not only does he produce visuals that are unlike anything else I have ever seen, but also powerful images that stir the imagination and make you really believe in a fantastical and mystic world lurking beneath all we know. Hellboy II The Golden Army is a fantastic film, filled with amazing characters and astonishing visuals that once again prove why Del Torro is one of the best directors working today.

Hellboy II also delves a little deeper into the main characters of the film than in the first one. We see Hellboy finally coming into the public light and struggling to be accepted. We also see Sapein getting a love interest and Liz finding out she is pregnant. We are also get introduced to some new characters; a ghost named Krauss inhabiting an old deep sea driving costume, as well as Prince Nuada and family. And each and every one of these new characters are wondrous and well-fleshed out.

The score in this film, by Danny Elfman, is also significantly better than in the first one. There are some really memorable tracks in this film that mesh beautifully with the scene, especially the “In the Army Chamber” track which plays over the final battle sequence in the film. The same goes for the visual effects which are once again stunning. CGI is used more in this film than in the first, but how else are you going to show a giant tree elemental monster wreaking havoc on NYC? Nevertheless it is quite well realized and I had no issues with it.

My biggest issue; however, is that some of the characters make some really dumb decisions. Specifically the whole love angle between Spaien and Prince Nuada’s sister seems to have somehow wiped out Sapien’s intelligence and he ends up making some big decisions that I didn’t buy into. It just seemed really odd that he would do something like this given the penchant for his character being so smart and for-thinking.

The other thing is you can also really see that this film was setting up a lot of things for the third Hellboy film, which never came and I don’t think will ever come. The ideas behind Liz being pregnant and Hellboy prophesied to destroy the world aren’t fully explored, and you can tell that they were meant to be further explored in the third and final installment. Nevertheless, this film doesn’t fall into the trap of focusing so much on the next film that it forgets about itself, this is undoubtedly from beginning to end a film that can stand on it’s own, but it’s weakest points are where it is trying to setup for a third film.

Now, I would’ve loved to have seen the third Hellboy film, I feel as though that it could’ve been really really great but alas it was not meant to be. Though I do consider the first Hellboy better than this one, this film is still an excellent and powerful piece in the Hellboy franchise with everything that I loved in the first one and more. Though it has some weak points, overall this is still a fantastic film that stands among some of the best comic book movies made to date.