A brief geeknote on Hellboy 2:
I saw it Saturday night, and I have to say any anxiety I had about Guillermo del Toro directing the upcoming Peter Jackson-produced Hobbit film (and its bridge-to-LOTR sequel) is now completely squashed. Okay, so I didn’t have that much anxiety to start with; the man seemed pretty darned competent already, but then he DID direct Blade 2. (My problem with those movies primarily stems from the source material itself, though. The vampires in Blade’s world are laughably weak.)
There are scores of Hellboy 2 reviews all across the Net, so I won’t bother with one here other than to say that the extent to which del Toro is willing to commit himself to a fantasy world is extraordinary. This is–in spirit, at least–the faerie world of Gaelic legend, where faeries are as like to rip the flesh from your bones as they are to dance for you*. If you’ve read any reviews, you’ve heard about it before: the savage tooth faeries, the mind-blowing troll market, and the ruthlessly evil (yet somewhat sympathetic) elf prince who’ll have the geekier folk in the audience thinking “Hey, a bladesinger! …With a spear.” It’s a wonderful movie, provided there’s still a part of you that’s willing to embrace the fantastic.
~~Quick spoiler alert~~
Was anyone else pleasantly surprised that the confrontation with the tentacular forest elemental–which, again, anyone who’s seen the trailers knew was coming–happened in the middle of the movie rather than the climax? Along the same lines, was anyone rather irked at the prince for forcing it, the last wonder of its kind, into a battle rather than keeping it safe and perhaps finding a way to spawn more of its kind? This guy’s supposed to be fighting humanity to safe such things, yet he’s immediately willing to sacrifice something so rare. Slight flaw in character writing, or the writing of a flawed character?
~~End spoilers~~
So, bring on The Hobbit!
*sits, checks watch*
Is it out yet?
-Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com
*“What, you learn about faeries from that Walt Disney guy? Want I should wear a tutu and prance around with some bloody unicorn or something? (Unicorns! Sanctimonious bastards, don’t you get me started on them!) That Disney-man has spread so many lies about us Faerie-types that I’ve ‘alf a mind to get a group of spriggans together and bite ‘is arms off!”
–-Excerpt from “Squirrel!” (by Michael G. Munz, published 2003)
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