Taking this idea and running with it I’ve been giving a huge amount of thought to Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Â You see I find the film barely passable, it was reasonable enough to divert your attention for an hour or so but it never really feels like it’s doing anything more than scratching the surface of a good Hellboy movie. Â Is it better than the first? Â I don’t know, a lot of people are saying it is, but then a lot of people didn’t care for the first one.
I didn’t mind the first one, this second one doesn’t really generate enough spark for me to make a real decision as a result I’m probably more apathetic towards it.
So if I was the man in charge of bringing Hellboy to other media outside of comic books I would certainly have approached it differently (this is taking up the mantle after the first film):
A BPRD television series
The BPRD have such a wonderful group of characters that all deserve story lines and fleshing out that no movie could really do them justice, not in an ensemble cast and since I don’t think they could each individually carry a film this is the best option.
The key here is to follow suit of the comic book series and have the BPRD series focus on the supporting cast, Liz, Abe, Johann, Roger etc. Â The approach to the show would be one of individual standalone episodes, mini-movies each one at first bringing the individual characters out in front (not origins as such) and then follow an X-Files season one monster/myth of the week.
Hellboy would make infrequent guest appearances for key mythology episodes but would essentially be a only a guest character, saving him for the big movie.
The other thing I would have done in the approach to the series is remove the Del Toro. Â I like him, I think he’s visionary, I also think that he high jacked the Hellboy look and feel. Â It’s too Pan’s Labyrinth and not enough Mignola. Â Write the whole season out before filming anything. Â I would want to know where the series was going and filter stuff through it for the second season and the sequel film.
Hellboy 2
The essential storyline is fine, I’m happy to keep the whole concept of The Golden Army in fact given  seeding throughout the series the villains within the film could have been given a whole lot more depth and urgency.
They were fine as baddies go, just needed more storyline, more motivation.
I would drop the humour, or at least tone down the Manning character, he was a buffoon in this and the BPRD agents all incompetent. Â I would also drop the Liz romance too, I don’t know, I just didn’t get interested in it.
The cast though would remain untouched, they are all so perfect in their roles that to change those would be a travesty and in my mind impossible.
Theme music for the BPRD series opening sequence: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Red Right Hand - not the cover version featured in the first one.
I was asked about the new Incredible Hulk trailer the other day and had been meaning to write something up about it because it certainly falls under the type of thing I write about. Here is the Incredible Hulk trailer in HD or you can watch it here:
Cool. But I’ll get back to the trailer in a minute.
You see there is very little joy I take in the whole Incredible Hulk character, I often find him boring, limited and uninspired. I get the whole ‘rage within’ thing, it’s very clever and watching Hulk smash things is always going to be entertaining, not entertaining enough to subscribe to, but entertaining enough that if I see one his comics I’ll pick it up and have a flick through. The whole world war hulk series left me very ‘pfft, whatever’.
It didn’t help further when the first Hulk film was, how shall we say…? ummm crap. Well crap is maybe too harsh a word but I certainly wouldn’t buy it on DVD, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone and I didn’t force Tracey to sit through it.
Of course Marvel currently has a very exciting (for me anyway) franchise beginning in Iron Man and I think that Hulk is their second tent pole for 2008 (there may be others but certainly not in this half of the year). So my attention has really been focused on Iron Man and anything I’ve heard about Hulk I’ve filed away in my ‘I think you’re supposed to be interested in that’ folder.
Edward Norton is a Hulk fan and they managed to sign him up to play Banner, well that’s good, he is a solid actor and it doesn’t hurt having someone actually interested in the source material. I read that he took to the script with a very vicious red pen and rewrote it. I heard him speak about the new movie and his role and he really knows his stuff and dug the series which gives me hope.
So Norton being on board was enough to get my interest enough to have some small hope that a Hulk film may prove interesting.
A few days ago I was left awe inspired as I watched the latest Iron Man trailer and thought to myself have awesome that they were treating it so well. Now after watching the Hulk trailer I’m feeling some of the same things about this upcoming film also. Not all of them I have to say and that is simply because I’ve been an Iron Man fan for nearly twenty years… oh god that makes me feel old.
Trailer is awesome, exactly what I wanted to see, Norton is doing something interesting with Banner and it has Liv Tyler to boot. The casting seems to be really good, whoever is doing the casting for Marvel is doing a bang up job. I saw the producers talking about the film and in answer to a special effects question spoke a lot about how it is driven by the characters and the Hunchback of Notre Dame themes behind it.
There is only one thing that has me feeling a little cold on the whole thing and is beside the whole character driven thing is that green skinned behemoths are hard to CGI in life like detail.
Extraordinarily hard.
And that whole scene with Hulk going to smash that steroid dude looks awesome but is going to draw a shit load of criticism from the internet faithful. Me? I can live with it, hell I love Farscape and it is the story telling and great acting that makes me forget that I’m dealing with Muppets. I can only hope that Hulk can do this for me this time.
I want it to.
I would like nothing else to say that there were four big, huge, awesome comic book movies that made me weep with joy in the darkened cinema.
Hulk has got everything going for it right now, no baggage from the old one or my apathy towards the comic. I’ll go see this thing with enthusiasm, popcorn and maybe a diet Pepsi.
Taking this idea and running with it I’ve been giving a huge amount of thought to Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Â You see I find the film barely passable, it was reasonable enough to divert your attention for an hour or so but it never really feels like it’s doing anything more than scratching the surface of a good Hellboy movie. Â Is it better than the first? Â I don’t know, a lot of people are saying it is, but then a lot of people didn’t care for the first one.
The key here is to follow suit of the comic book series and have the BPRD series focus on the supporting cast, Liz, Abe, Johann, Roger etc. Â The approach to the show would be one of individual standalone episodes, mini-movies each one at first bringing the individual characters out in front (not origins as such) and then follow an X-Files season one monster/myth of the week.
