Fred Topel: Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman for Hellboy II

FRED TOPEL: Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman for Hellboy II

Guillermo del Toro has gone from a renegade visionary working within the studio system to an A-list director in the last year. His Oscar winning Pan's Labyrinth elevated him above "the director of Blade II" and now his job of helming two Hobbit movies puts him in charge of the most coveted franchise in all of Hollywood.

His big budget sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, reflects more of del Toro's own style than conventional comic book imagery. This time, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and...

decent interview but I guess nobody noticed that the first Hellboy movie was f'n terrible!

Guillermo del Toro noticed he was saying sorry for the first half of the interview when he talked about changing the style

Ron Perlman is a badass. Curious to see how he'll factor into The Hobbit?

i love hellboy's animated movies with ron perlman's voice
hellboy 2 looks amazing

Going to see this tonight . But man are they shilling this to death everywhere . All week all I've seen is Pearlman in the Hellboy makeup hosting things all over my TV . But I am really looking forward to the movie .

Hellboy II was awful. It tried (and failed miserably) to be funny and the effects and costumes looked like they were straight outta 1975.

You're so wrong. The first Hellboy was great.

You're half-right, but for the wrong reasons.

I really enjoyed the movie.

And this isn't really a spoiler, just a question. It names a location in the movie which is why I spoilered it.

I thought Hellboy II was pretty good. A few quibbles here and there, but it had some dramatic tension, and I thought the brief tone shifts to comedy were great.

All in all I'm not going to rank it in the highest tier of superhero movies, but it was entertaining and a hell of a lot better than a lot of superhero movies. About as good as Blade II (which isn't an insult; it's significantly underrated as a comicbook movie), not as good as Pan's Labyrinth, and better than Hellboy.

I don't know , we both enjoyed it quite a bit . I don't know that I had any problems with it . Best of all we saw it at a fairly new theater & it was in sharp focus through out . Pretty good sized crowd there too for a 10pm showing .

Del Torro was right, with the first one there was a feeling of being dedicated to the comic book. Hellboy 2 definitely has his touch. I remember seeing a preview and in the first glimpse I knew it was a Del Torro movie, surprised (happily so) to find out it was Hellboy. I thoroughly enjoyed both movies liking the shift in the sequel (except... is there a reason the elves look like Blood Elves?!). Yeah, there are quibbles I could make but those are constant in all of Del Torro's work so you accept them or you don't watch his movies.

I agree with Tekky though, the man is a genius, visually and in direction. I didn't know he had The Hobbit... it should be a feast of vision and fantasy. My only concern is Del Torro getting caught within his own style, like Tim Burton has done

Great interview. I love the first Hellboy and am looking forward to seeing the second.

Agreed. Completely and utterly.

Hellboy was very much like the comic and I loved it. Golden Army definitely felt more like a GDT movie. All I could think was Hellboy meets Pan's Labyrinth.

Which is totally fine, for me. I loved it. Though I didn't think the humour was as good in the second as it was in the first. Not as dry.

I will watch anything with Ron Perlman. I love that man. I just bought a life-size poster of him from Beauty and the Beast. I nearly creamed my pants when I saw it.