DEL TORO ROUNDTABLE: PACIFIC RIM

Pacific Rim is the new film by avid monster geek, Guillermo Del Toro. This is his first film in five years and followed a series of projects fell apart before production could begin. I'm Loren Greenblatt, and joining me is Max O'Connell of The Film Temple.

Max O’Connell: We've been eagerly awaiting Pacific Rim, not in small part because we’re big fans of Del Toro. I have a personal connection because I’ve been a Godzilla fan since I was about 3. It was my first movie love, so seeing Del Toro effectively do a Godzilla movie just made me happy.

Loren Greenblatt: When I was 4, I saw Jurassic Park, and during the showing, I stood up on my chair and said, “I wanna do that!” I decided I wanted to make movies. I feel that there are kids walking out of a theatre showing Pacific Rim who are making the same decision. This movie is an absolute joy.

MO: Basic plot: in the near future a bunch of giant monsters, called Kaiju (named for the Japanese film genre that gave us Godzilla) from another dimension come through a crack in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and start attacking. After trying more traditional methods, humanity builds a bunch of giant, human piloted robots called Jaegers, which is German for “hunter,” to fight the Kaiju. But twenty years into the program, the war is taking a turn for the worse and the Jaeger program is being shut down in favor of building a wall. This turns out to be a bad idea, and the leader of the program, the awesomely-named Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba of Luther fame) brings in a former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) to be a final member of the human resistance.

LG: This isn't the kind of film we normally get in America, certainly not in live-action and at this budget level. The closest equivalent we have in recent cinema are Micheal Bay's awful Transformers movies. All these films are primarily concerned with giant monsters smashing up cities. The difference between Bay's films and Pacific Rim is that Guillermo Del Toro understands that an action movie’s success doesn’t depend on explosions, but on us caring about the people in those explosions. It’s not enough that we have a person piloting the Jaeger- we have two, because according to the film’s pseudoscience, one pilot isn’t enough to handle the neural load that comes with having your mind and movements connected to a giant robot. A jaeger requires two pilots liked through their memories. It's not one chosen person against the world, suddenly it becomes about teamwork, can these people overcome tension between them to work together. It's probably no coincidence that these Jaeger pilots tend to be family members, it makes thematic sense and it ups the stakes. Like we see In the film’s prologue, where Raleigh and his brother take Gipsy Danger, an American Jaeger, on an ill fated mission that end's the brother's death.

MO: He quits, and five years later, Pentecost brings him back. Raleigh gets to pick whichever co-pilot he wants, but the only one he really forms a connection with is Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi of Babel), who has her own past trauma with the Kaiju.

LG: After the first couple of giant monster battles, which really are quite wonderful, the film settles down and goes to the Jaeger complex in Hong Kong, dubbed The Shatterdome, and it turns into a bit of a drama about human cooperation in the face of outrageous adversity. I like that this is a reasonably multicultural group saving the world- we get a Russian team, a Chinese team, an Australian team, a British black guy running the program, and a final team made up of one American and one Japanese woman. It’s not just a bunch of Americans saving the world (but mostly New York) from certain doom. It’s a very universal-minded movie.

MO: There was a piece in The Dissolve this week by Tasha Robinson that argued that the film’s success was partly based in the fact that it doesn’t invoke 9/11, and that it tries to make it more universal.

LG: Not that it can't be done in a film like this. The original Godzilla very liberally quotes WWII imagery, like the destruction of Hiroshima and the firebombing of Tokyo, that would have been very fresh in the minds of Japanese audiences and arguably more traumatic. But we've been getting a lot of 9/11 imagery this Summer and I'm glad that Del Toro didn't resort to it here, and Robinson is right, the lack of that imagery with its coddled, American context fits in to Del Toro's universalist mindset. It's one of the key things this film gets from being directed by a non-American. Unlike similar films, we don't have a jingoistic military fighting against a dehumanized group of “others,” this is a film about humanity saving humanity.

MO: I also love that while the main appeal of the film is the brawny “giant robots fight sea monsters” angle, two of the most compelling and helpful people in the group are a pair of scientists.

LG: Charlie Day from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is sort of their version of Jeff Goldblum. He’s an excitable, he has Kaiju tattoos and fancies himself a rock-star scientist but he’s very nerdy and silly.

MO: He’s kind of the Guillermo Del Toro stand-in. He’s made entirely of boyish enthusiasm, and Day is very good in this role, credibly spitting out the pseudoscientific dialogue in a rapid-fire pace while still serving as a pretty great source of comic relief. And on the other hand, we have Burn Gorman as the other scientist, Herman, who’s much more button-down. It’s kind of a battle between an intuitive, experimental scientist and one who believes almost solely in testing numbers. So we’ve talked a little bit about how we actually care about the characters in the explosions…but what about those explosions?

LG: Oh my god, those explosions are wonderful! Shooting and framing these kinds of battles is very difficult. It’s difficult when you have these large things fighting each other to capture everything and still convey a sense of scale. If you’re too close, you can’t see anything. If you’re too far away, we don’t get the size. Michael Bay showed us how not to do it. Del Toro finds a very nice middle-ground where it feels almost like these are giant sporting events. And the creatures are a lot of fun- every Kaiju is a little different, they come in different sizes and have different abilities. The Jaegers themselves are full of these wonderful gadgets, some have three arms, some have swords, etc. All this keeps the fights from being repetitive There’s always something else going on, and we feel like the stakes are being raised with each battle, which is essential.

MO: There’s a sense of levels to everything, which was a problem with, say, the Chicago sequence in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which is just an hour of carnage. We don’t feel exhausted at the end here because there is a gradual build. Part of that is the size of the machines and monsters, part is Del Toro’s natural gifts with pacing. I’ve heard some people complain that the fights are all staged in the rain at night, which I guess I can understand, but they all look great. He’s able to use some frenetic editing when it’s called for, but we have a sense of where everything is, we can tell what’s going on…for almost every fight, I know exactly where every character is in relation to each other, whether it’s established through photography or through cross-cutting. That sounds simple, but so many blockbusters forget basics of spatial dynamics. And that’s what makes everything so exciting, not just the robots with swords. Though, come on, my inner 9-year-old was about to have a joyful heart attack at that sword. But then there’s the look of this: the way it’s composed, the way colors blend together in an impressionistic blur. It’s a beautiful film.

LG: And there’s a sense of humor in the fights when there needs to be. Del Toro is great with those cartoonish moments in the middle of his fights, like the Wile E. Coyote shot in Blade II. Not to spoil anything, but there's a wonderful moment involving a Newton’s Cradle (the clicking metallic balls that go back and forth when you hit one) and another involving a football stadium. I almost feel like we’re underselling it by saying that the fights are staged competently. It's almost a commentary on how badly many action scenes are shot that we are too often impressed with 'competently shot, ' but this goes beyond that. There’s a lot going on in these fights to make them work. There's a lot things going on with the mismatching of the abilities of the different Kaiju and Jaegers and then on the inside of the machines- Raleigh and Mako need to link their memories in order to pilot them. And Mako has a similar past trauma, so there’s a lot of tension in whether or not she’ll be able to hack it. It’s a little bit of a Top Gun set-up.

MO: It sort of is, though that’s subverted. This is kind of a regular thing with fighter-pilot movies, where the cocky fighter-pilot gets someone killed, but by the end he saves the day, so it’s no big deal. Del Toro’s not interested in celebrating the macho hero. It’s actually though shared experiences and understanding each other that these people can fight together.

LG: I also love how detailed this film is. This isn’t a film bound by realism, it isn’t trying to be a realistic Godzilla movie. But it does imagine what it might be like if a society had to deal with these attacks for twenty plus years. In the beginning of the film, we see the government deciding to abandon the Jaeger program and build a giant wall. Now I’m not going to read into it too much, but I do think there’s some sly humor here. We have a Mexican director making a thing about a wall to keeps aliens out. It’s a cute, clever little jab at how ineffectual that strategy is and at how alien invasion movies tend to use their aliens as stand-ins for “foreigners”.

MO: Oh, that’s clever. I didn’t notice that.

LG: And the biggest scene dealing with it is set in Alaska, a very Republican state. Again, don’t read into it, it’s just a joke. But it is the kind of detail that sets this film apart. Any other movie would probably not even think of something like this, let alone would it find the time to show the wall being built or give a sense of what it’s like building it. But Del Toro does. We see how dangerous it is and it does a wonderful job of showing the cost of living under this kind of a constant threat. In one short scene, we get the sense that economies have tumbled, and that society has had to rebuild itself in new and strange ways. But it isn’t a movie that wallows in despair. Instead, it finds new questions to answer and new details to dazzle us. I don’t know that too many people wondered what happens to giant monsters after they die, but we get a pretty good answer here. We get cites built around their skeletons, which is awesome, and we get to learn what the government does with the Kaiju organs and brains for experiments, not to mention what a black market dealer like Hannibal Chau (played wonderfully by Ron Perlman) does with them. They explain, at least in a very general way, how the new Jaegers work differently from old ones, and how some are analog where others are digital and some are nuclear powered. It’s all gobbledygook, but it’s done with such care that we believe it. It’s real gobbledygook. The same thing goes for the Kaiju who have a well thought out biology.There’s no detail of this world that Del Toro and screenwriter Travis Beacham didn’t think of.

MO: I like that we get a sense of how the Kaijus do work. Del Toro believes that monsters are beautiful creatures, and they are here. But we also get a complicated view of monsters. (Spoilers) Where past Del Toro films viewed monsters as animals rather than evil creatures, here they’re perhaps evil, but they’re not just dumb animals. There’s a method to their destruction that’s perhaps not too complicated, but there’s an intelligence there. It’s something that could have been explored more, but we get enough here. If we got a sequel, we’d probably see more. There’s a little bit more to the monsters than usual.

LG: It’s kind of ridiculous to assume that creatures this large, with equally large brains, are stupid. Yes, I know that brain's don't necessarily work that way, but this is sci-fi logic.

MO: We also get a sense of being in the Jaeger experience. When Mako and Raleigh first mind-link (it’s called drifting here), there’s a wonderful blur of colors as we see some of their past experiences in a blue light that reminded me of Minority Report. It highlights how important it is to share past experiences with each other, and it’s beautiful just to behold. And I also love what happens when Mako can’t handle her past trauma, which her first mind-link makes her re-experience. It turns out that her family was killed in a Kaiju attack when she was a little girl, and we her get lost in that memory. It’s a little bit like Del Toro’s recreation of a past experience in Hellboy, and it’s a lot like how Christopher Walken sees the past in David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, which Del Toro is a huge fan of. We’re placed inside a memory, and Raleigh can observe, but he can’t change it, and he can’t convince Mako that it isn’t real. This is problematic because she’s connected to the Jaeger, and when she gets scared, the giant killer machine responds to her emotions. This was my favorite scene in the film- I was genuinely terrified not only by what she might do, but by the memory itself, which is like the “raptors in the kitchen” scene in Jurassic Park blown up to gigantic scale. And there’s a beautiful image of her carrying a little red shoe that’s wonderful. (End spoilers)

LG: The thing about this film is that it does outdo at least one aspect of the Godzilla series. You’ve seen more of those movies than I have, but I've never cared about the humans in those movies except for in the original. Especially if it’s the 1998 version. I don’t go to these movies for humans doing human things. I go for monsters smashing things. And it’s very interesting that in this, I do care about the human people doing human things. It really makes the movie. Some of the human drama is a bit clichéd, which is often true of Del Toro’s American films, but he does it so earnestly that it doesn’t really matter.

MO: Yeah, the fact that we get an Independence Day speech from Idris Elba or a hoary father-son story from the Australian characters might be clichéd, but it’s a fun cliché, damn it! It’s handled rather well. I was initially a little let down that the actual emotional arc with our protagonist, Raleigh, and our other lead, Mako, is solved about halfway or two-thirds of the way through when they are able to establish a mind-link. It’s a bit messy, structurally, I’ll admit. But at the same time, it kind of seems like they’re leads in name only. It’s more of an ensemble piece, because the other characters’ arcs take over after that. We get to see the Australian father-son duo (Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky, both great) work out their relationship.

LG: He’s a cocky alpha-male shithead, and the father admits that he loves him but doesn’t know whether he needs “a hug or a kick in the ass”. Them learning to work with others and admit their love for each other is a cliché, but it’s rather effective.

MO: I was even more involved in the relationship between Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the diametrically-opposed scientists who find a way to blend their approaches- hard science with intuition- which ends up playing a major part in saving the day. I love where Idris Elba’s character winds up going, which ends up playing to Del Toro’s pet theme of self-sacrifice. There is more going on in terms of character than people gave it credit. It’s kind of like Jurassic Park: not as rich with character as some of its creators’ past blockbusters, but it’s more complicated than it looks on the surface.

LG: The characters in Jurassic Park weren’t incredibly deep, but there is more going on intellectually than people gave it credit.

MO: Del Toro did cut out about an hour of character material. He said that we can’t pretend this is Ibsen with monsters and giant robots. We get sketches, and that’s all we really need.

LG: I think it's kind of amazing that the movie finds time to do as much as it does and does it in only 2 hours. That’s short for most blockbusters these days, which are bloated all the way to 2 ½ hours. It’s OK to have a long one when it’s deserved, but it’s getting automatic. This doesn’t stick around too long. It gets in, does what it’s doing, and gets out. It’s very lean, and it moves well.

MO: It moved so well, and it’s made with such boyish enthusiasm that it made me not care about the few problems I did have with it, whether it’s the structural problems with the protagonists, or the quasi-romance between Raleigh and Mako. It’s cute in the beginning, especially in a fight scene they have that determines how perfect they are for each other for a mind-link. It’s adorable.

LG: And (spoilers) the movie doesn’t force a romance on these characters. It could go there at some point, but at this point at the end of the world, it’s about them working together, not learning to fall in bed together.

MO: That helps Mako stand out as more than just a guy-accessory, which is what Del Toro wanted to do. And it does serve the film’s central theme of teamwork by not having them fall in bed together. But my issue is that the romance is built up, and at the end, it looks like they’re going to have that moment to admit their love and kiss, but it doesn’t really go there. It felt to me like Del Toro was a little too afraid of making her a guy accessory that he kind of defeated what was left of their emotional arc.

LG: But their relationship at that point has transcended “will they or won’t they”. They’re co-combatants, they’re siblings in arms, and they’re literally in each other’s minds. Remember that this film associates the co-pilot relationship with family roles. I'm not saying that they can't go there in a future movie, but not going there in this film is a very deliberate statement on Del Toro's part.

MO: I agree that it works intellectually and thematically. It serves the film’s key theme of learning to work together and trust each other. But by the end it sacrifices a bit of an emotional peak. (end spoilers)

LG: But we squeeze a lot more emotion out of this movie than I thought was possible.

MO: Yeah, this is really just a minor qualm. The film did make me forget most of my complaints. All but one really. There’s one teeny-tiny one that we can’t overlook. Almost every performance in this film is wonderful- Perlman is fun, Day and Gorman make a great comic-relief/heart of the film, Elba gives the gravitas, Kikuchi is great. Charlie Hunnam…

LG:…he’s…not the worst actor in the world. I haven’t seen him in anything else before, but he's not great here. He’s particularly deadly when asked to narrate.

MO: The exposition in the beginning of the film works rather well, considering that they have to get a lot of information out at once, because it’s played with a bunch of monsters attacking the world. The only problem is his narration, which is deadening. And it’s not just because he’s a British actor doing a terrible, terrible American accent. That’s not the issue. He has no charm or charisma in this thing. The best thing I can say about this performance is that he’s not Sam Worthington. He’s boring, but he doesn’t look sleepy the whole time.

LG: He’s much better than Sam Worthington, but we all are.

MO: We needed a light up in the smile kind of guy. Chris Pine was busy with Star Trek Into Darkness, but if we could just get a guy with that kind of charm we’d be fine. Some of my friends complained that it’s not the most interesting character anyway, which is true. Almost by default, he’s the least interesting character.

LG: I love Pine, but I don't think his brand of cockiness would fit here. The film almost needs a quieter character to contrast all the loudness of everything else. We need stoic and haunted isn’t up to the task. It’s very unusual for Del Toro to cast someone so bland in the lead. I know he’s wanted to work with Hunnam for a while, but it doesn’t work.

MO: I’ve seen him in a few other things. I only saw the pilot of Sons of Anarchy, which I thought he was fine in, but again, not the most interesting character in the show. And I remember liking him in Cold Mountain, but it’s been years since I’ve seen it. I don’t know what happened. He didn’t work here.

LG: But that’s about the worst thing I can say about this movie. Hopefully, maybe, by the skin of their teeth, we’ll get enough to see a sequel.

MO: I think this thing is going to be a success, I think there will be a word-of-mouth for it that might make it stick around. A lot of people are walking out of this thing thrilled.

LG: Kids are going to love this.

MO: They will, and I think there is more to chew on than people are giving it credit. It’s not as rich as, say, Hellboy II or obviously Pan’s Labyrinth, but it’s not intellectually bankrupt. Most of all, though, it’s an absolute blast. I had a reaction of pure childlike joy.

LG: In a summer of heavy blockbusters trying to be dark and serious, this is a movie that really wants to entertain to the fullest extent possible. It's a mega-budget film without cynicism or pretension and that’s becoming increasingly rare. 

Loren's Grade: Now, I’m of two minds when grading this film. If I were reviewing this on its own without the context of the Roundtable, I’d give it an A because it’s a top-notch summer blockbuster, easily the best tentpole I'm likely to see this year.  But in the context of his other films, I’d give it a B. I’ll split the difference and give it a high B+.

Max's Grade: I’m giving it a pretty unreserved A-. It’s the most joyful experience I’ve had in a theater in I don’t know how long. Go see this fucking thing!
Roundtable Directory:
Geometria
Cronos
Mimic (director's cut)
The Devil's Backbone
Blade II
Hellboy (director's cut)
Pan's Labyrinth
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Unmade Del Toro
Pacific Rim

DEL TORO ROUNDTABLE: HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

Hellboy II should not exist. The first film had a fan base, but middling box office, not to mention the bankruptcy of the studio which financed the film, made a second outing seem unlikely. But Guillermo Del Toro kept tinkering with ideas and eventually he was able to get the film set up at Universal, reportedly through sheer force of will, not to mention some leveraging of the critical clout he accrued on Pan's Labyrinth. But was all that effort worth it? Does Hellboy II improve on it's predecessor? I'm Loren Greenblatt and joining me for this discussion of Hellboy II: The Golden Army is Max O'Connell of The Film Temple.

Max O’Connell: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, a sequel only a select few were clamoring for, but those who were clamoring for it were correct.

Loren Greenblatt: Oh, it is delightful. The film came out in 2008 and was a little overshadowed by Iron Man and The Dark Knight, along with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. Now a lot of us, myself included, were immensely disappointed by Indy IV, but for me Hellboy II erased my disappointment completely. The film is in much the same vein and gave me the pulp adventure fix I didn't get from Spielberg. I know some people will find this controversial, but I'm gonna say it: As much as I truly adore The Dark Knight, I prefer this film.

MO:…I’m not going to get into this argument again (NOTE: we did, and we had to edit that out of the conversation’s transcript). Let’s talk about Hellboy II.

LG: They're both doing new and interesting things with the genre, but while the Nolan film is mostly a natural evolution of the trends of the time, Hellboy II is a 180. A rebuke of all the dark cynicism of modern superhero and post-9/11 blockbusters. It has dark moments, but in the context of pure whimsy. It opens in 1955, and John Hurt’s Professor Bloom is raising a young Hellboy (who, adorably, thinks Howdy Doody is real). Bloom tells Hellboy a bedtime story about the Golden Army, which is a group of mechanical soldiers created by elves to battle humanity and his industrialist encroachment of nature. The whole exposition scene is done through CGI wooden puppets, and like to think this is Hellboy’s imagination of the story. It gets the exposition across (war happened, elves regretted it and broke the crown needed to control it, prince of elves wasn’t happy) but it’s delightful to watch. And yes, I noticed when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part I stole this idea.

MO: Yeah, that’s the best part of that particular film, but it’s not as good.

LG: And I love that Hellboy’s thing of mispronouncing words started as a kid: he pronounces “indestructible” as “industable”. Then we get these wonderful gear-credits before we meet the most sympathetic villain in all of Del Toro’s films.

MO: Prince Nuada, played by Luke Gross (Nomak from Blade II), is unhappy that the humans forgot about the elves and destroyed most of the forests, has decided to repair the crown, reclaim the Golden Army, and fight back. He’s not a bad man- he’s fighting for his dying culture- but he’s doing bad things. Humanity has not exactly respected his people.

LG: Humanities ability to reject anyone it sees as different is a huge theme here. Hellboy is still not happy being an outsider who has to hide, and he’s going to make his presence known. I love that he has to deal with the real world now. It’s man vs. nature again, but nature is fighting back. It's a very different film tonally, It’s lighter and zippier, but no less complicated and sincere.

MO: Since John Hurt died in the first film, Jeffrey Tambor is the new boss, and he still has a wonderfully contentious relationship with Hellboy.

LG: It’s played a little more for laughs here. Hurt was Hellboy's real father figure and now comes Tambor as a kind of step-dad whom Hellboy just has no respect for. The harder he tries to get Hellboy in line, the more he regresses emotionally. The first film dealt with how these monsters dealt with being outcasts, this one deals with how they fair in the spotlight when Hellboy decides to reveal himself to the public. This was probably inevitable. Hellboy's greatest aspiration has always been to be just an ordinary guy.

MO: And Abe (Doug Jones, voicing the part this time) is horrified, because he knows this isn’t going to work out, while Liz (Selma Blair) is horrified because she’s used to being stared at and hurt by normal people.

LG: And this puts a lot of tension on her relationship with Hellboy. It’s a bit cartoonish and exaggerated, but it’s fun and it fits the tone of the film very well. Liz needs Hellboy to grow up, and there’s more urgency to it because she learns early on that she’s pregnant.

MO: There’s also more push against Hellboy. As he fights for humanity, they don’t accept him. He saves a baby, and the mother screams at him and asks him what he’s done to the baby. He gets stuff thrown at him and people call him a freak.

LG: He’s a very conflicted guy. He’s a demon from Hell, sent ostensibly to bring the apocalypse, but because of his upbringing, he was brought up to love people. But there’s always that sheet of glass between them, and it really bothers him. His need to be loved becomes so obsessive that it’s self-destructive.

MO: Liz points out that they’re just not going to accept him, so she and Abe will have to be enough. There’s a sense that they’re more comfortable with each other at this point. In some of the arguments between Hellboy and Liz, she’s on fire (she’s pyrokinetic), and that’s just something that’s kind of accepted.

LG: Yeah, she’s more casual about her powers now. She’s learned how to control it, but when she gets angry, it still comes out. It’s a bit like if the Hulk went through anger management.

MO: There’s also a great scene with Abe and Tambor walking through the halls while casual monster stuff happens in the background of the Bureau, and they’re not paying attention to it at all. Abe’s explanation for something weird when Tambor does glance back at it: “Oh, it’s Friday.”

LG: That sequence does have a bit of a Men in Black/Ghostbusters feel.

MO: That’s astute, because like Men in Black, these are just people doing their jobs, and sometimes not doing it very well. Plus, Danny Elfman does the music this time, and there are tones similar to his stuff in Men in Black.

LG: And there are wonderful monsters. There’s a large sequence in what’s called a Troll Market. It’s like the Tattooine Cantina sequence turned up to 11. All of these creatures are well designed. There’s a fish guy who sells fish to eat…

MO: Which Abe is mortified by. There’s the troll that has a baby thing on his side that keeps making fun of him (it’s like a humorous Total Recall homage). And when Hellboy apologizes for scaring the baby, it says, “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor”.

LG: There’s a creature who runs a map store, and his head is shaped like a cathedral. This thing is bursting at the seams with imagination.

MO: A lot of this is Del Toro getting the chance to run wild with delightful showmanship in monsters. It actually reminded me a bit of Evil Dead II. Nuada’s troll guardian Wink has a mechanical hand that crawls by itself at certain points. And the fight between Hellboy and Wink has moments of great slapstick humor that shows Raimi influences. Hellboy has a cigar that gets smashed: “That was Cuban! Now you pissed me off!”

LG: It’s kind of like a riff on the sunglasses action movie thing, where the bad guy breaks the hero’s sunglasses, and then we know shit just got real. It’s very funny.

MO: One of the big changes amidst all the weirdness- we got rid of that useless audience-surrogate character. I understand that the actor was unavailable because he was doing something on Broadway, but I can’t imagine Del Toro minded. Mr. Studio Note, as we remember him, didn’t really add much.

LG: There would have been no place for him in this narrative. Now, the Tooth Fairies in general are very much like a Raimi or Looney Toons thing, where the tooth fairies are constantly crawling up people’s legs and, when they’re smashed, they splatter on the camera in a really fun and inventively gooey way.

MO: Del Toro has said that his favorite movie of all time, though, is Bride of Frankenstein, and you can tell considering how much he sympathizes with these monsters. He actually plays a clip of it on one of Hellboy’s TVs after he gets rejected, where Karloff’s monster yells “We belong dead!”. These people don’t have a place to belong, except with each other. That feeling was present in the first film, but it’s amplified here.

LG: I’m really glad they changed up the tone. If it had the same gothic feel as the first, it’d feel repetitive. Del Toro’s at a different point in his life. The first film is more about finding yourself and trying to get into a relationship, and this one is more about maturity. It allows the characters to progress, unlike what happens in most superhero narratives where people are just sort of frozen in time.

MO: And there are moments of inventiveness that I really love that play into the story. Nuada has a twin sister name Nuala, and there’s a bit of a yin-yang thing. She’s very sweet, but she and Nuada have a thing where if one of them is injured, they both feel it. Nuala has a connection with Abe because they have telepathic powers, and Abe falls in love with her almost instantly.

LG: That would be annoying in another movie, but it’s justified here because of the way Abe works. He’s such a sweet, inexperienced and innocent guy that I’d believe him falling in love that quickly.

MO: And his awkwardness trying to court her is the best thing ever. He has giant contact lenses for his big eyes to get rid of the goggles he needs to see outside. And there’s a wonderful scene between him and Hellboy. Liz is angry at Hellboy, who feels really rejected, and Abe doesn’t know how to talk to women. Abe is playing a CD of classic love songs, and the two of them get drunk together. One of the songs on the tape is Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You”. Now, I hate Barry Manilow…

LG: Me too.

MO: …but this moment of them drunkenly singing out of tune to “Can’t Smile Without You” filled my heart with joy.

LG: It’s one of the most wonderful surprises in a film full of wonderful surprises. It’s borderline surrealistic to see this blue fish-man and a giant devil get drunk and sing Barry Manilow. It’s adorable.

MO: We also get another new character, Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth McFarlane), who’s interesting because he’s ectoplasmic energy within a mechanical suit (with mandibles, no less, because Del Toro loves bugs). And he’s German. Hellboy doesn’t like Germans. He makes a couple of cracks about Nazis that are in poor taste, but Hellboy can be kind of a dick sometimes, so it’s just the character’s actions that are in poor taste, not the film itself. He does not like Krauss’ sense of order.

LG: He’s another in Del Toro's line of clockwork men.

MO: But there's more to him. After (Spoilers) Hellboy is critically injured, Liz rebukes him for not being human anymore, but Krauss finds his inner humanity, and they’re able to save him. (End Spoilers) But to the same extent, there’s some part of Krauss that is right in his criticisms of Hellboy, because His macho thing is pretty over-the-top. When they’re in the roll market and Hellboy beats up on everyone, a lot of it is unjustified.

LG: Yeah, he’s going over-the-top. He loses his temper. Del Toro indulges a bit here, but he’s taking the piss out of macho stereotypes, as Hellboy’s methods too often aren’t effective. I also want to talk about some of the monsters, some of the most sympathetic ones Del Toro ever put on the screen. Wink is wonderful, he’s just a big nerdy misfit, like Hellboy, but he’s too introverted, and he compensates by being brash. We have this elemental plant creature borrowed from Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, and a precursor to the giant monster city destruction we’ll see in Pacific Rim. Hellboy has a moment where he has to kill the creature, and it’s kind of sad. Del Toro doesn’t see monsters as evil, but as animals. We learn that this is the last of its kind, and Hellboy understands, but he has to kill it to save people, and he’s really conflicted over his decision. The only crime this thing committed is existing in a world without a place for it, something Hellboy can certainly relate to.

MO: And as it’s killed, blood starts turning into moss, and it spouts flowers all over the place. There’s something beautiful about it, but it’s also very sad. This is also Del Toro’s best action yet.

LG: This is a guy who took to action very well, but he’s very good at not repeating himself. It was kung-fu in Blade II, it was wrestling Hellboy, and here it’s a very fluid mix. Hellboy is slower, Nuada is faster. And it’s very inventive. Hellboy flips around in chairs like Jackie Chan, he kills monsters while holding a baby like Chow Yun-Fat, and there’s also light comedy that recalls Chaplin and Keaton. It’s very fluid- Del Toro uses pans and dollies to keep everything in the frame, and he doesn’t cut a lot. The choreography is wonderful, too.

MO: The film has my two favorite fights in any of Del Toro’s films. One is with the Golden Army, which is this great Harryhausen-esque thing because even though it’s CGI, there’s something of a stop motion quality about their animations.

LG: I do like the design. They’re like eggs that open up into these robots with fire inside them. And I love that even though they’re mechanical they seem to feel pain, and they scream like train whistles.

MO: Hellboy and Krauss fighting against them is a lot of fun because they have to take them apart one-by-one, Hellboy with brawn, Krauss by possessing one of them. And then we learn that they can reconstruct, which leads to the next fight. In order to stop them, Hellboy has to challenge Nuada to a fight. It’s heavy-handed guy vs. a quick guy, and they’re fighting over a gigantic gear set. Del Toro uses it well to have Hellboy fall in the gears (Cough–Modern Times–cough) and hide and come back up on another one.

LG: There’s great levels to play with, and it’s very dynamic and fluid.

MO: Going back to thematic stuff- Abe’s justification for protecting Nuala is that she’s alone in the world, and he has to help her. She’s like him. And the fact that Liz and Hellboy are willing to go to the ends of the earth for each other is central. It may lead to something really terrible. In this film, it leads to the only truly great set-up for a sequel I’ve seen in any comic book movie ever, and it comes naturally in the story and not after the credits, so all the rest of you superhero movies can eat it.

(Spoilers from here on out)

LG: The first time Hellboy and Nuada fight, Hellboy is stabbed with a spear that breaks off in his chest, and we learn that it’s a magical fragment that slowly inches towards his heart, and any attempt to remove it brings it even closer. This gives a chance for a nice reversal, because in the first film, Liz turned into a damsel in distress by the end. Here, she has to be the hero, and she’s very internal, so it’s a great way to push her character to take charge. They go to Ireland to find Nuada, they go underground, and they meet the Angel of Death.

MO: Played very well by Doug Jones, in another first-rate performance.

LG: It's another great creature. Its eyes are in its wings. And the Angel of Death says that she’ll save him, but Liz needs to know that he’ll bring about the apocalypse, and that Liz will suffer more than anyone else because of it. But she doesn't care about the consequences, because she loves him. It sets up the sequel wonderfully. He is a demon sent from hell, and the idea that sets up where the hero will be either the villain or have to make the ultimate sacrifice. It’s an extremely bold choice, it’s unique problem for Hellboy, and bravo to Guillermo for finding a way to set this up that doesn't stop the momentum of the film or feel tacked on. In fact the knowledge that Hellboy will one day go through all this, I think, changes the way we look at the ending, particularly the last scene where they all quit.

MO: It’s not an in-joke, it’s not fan service. This is absolutely natural for who Hellboy is and how this has to end.

LG: But we’re not sure if it’s going to. These movies don’t cost a lot, blockbuster-wise, but they also don’t make an outrageous amount. I think Hellboy II could have made more, but it did come out in a very bad time.

MO: Two weeks after WALL-E, and a week before The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, it was only going to do so well. We are hopeful that Del Toro will get a chance to finish his, though he’s gotta hurry up, because Ron Perlman is 63.

LG: Luckily with Hellboy it’s easier to do things with stuntmen because of all the makeup, but he’s getting up there.

MO: Not that we’re afraid that he’s going to drop dead, but he is the only person who can play this part. Who else could deliver those lines? A great Bride of Frankenstein reference as Jeffrey Tambor promises him a cigar if he stays out of the spotlight: “Cuban good. Being seen bad.”

LG: And there’s something else of note at the end as Nuada dies, asking Hellboy if it’s going to be “them (humans) or us”, and Hellboy can’t answer him. I don’t think he has an answer.

MO: And this happens because Nuala, for the good of the world, kills herself. It’s a beautiful moment of self-sacrifice, and it’s a throwback to the emotional ending that didn’t quite work in Blade II.

LG: And I like that this gives more emphasis to fantasy than the religious themes of the first one. It gives it a different flavor. I have no idea what they’ll do for Hellboy III, but I can’t imagine they’d repeat the same thing again.

MO: It’s a pure, fun film, and it’s one of my favorite superhero movies.

Loren's Grade: A

Max's Grade: A-

Roundtable Directory:
Geometria
Cronos
Mimic (director's cut)
The Devil's Backbone
Blade II
Hellboy (director's cut)
Pan's Labyrinth
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Unmade Del Toro
Pacific Rim

DEL TORO ROUNDTABLE: HELLBOY (DIRECTOR'S CUT)

Welcome back to Director's Roundtable. I'm Loren Greenblatt and joining me in this discussion of the directors cut of Guillermo Del Toro's 2004 superhero opus, Hellboy, is Max O'Connell of The Film Temple.

 Loren Greenblatt: We’re back with…(dramatic voice) HELLBOY!

Max O’Connell: (slightly frightened)…y-yes.

LG: Del Toro cites this as one of his most personal films, along with Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. And it’s easy to see why. It’s a Hollywood blockbuster, but there is a genuine heartbeat and emotional core to the film that’s really distinctive and indelible.

MO: I know Del Toro was a fan of the comic books, and a lot of that has to do with how much it’s into outsiders and misfits, something Del Toro has always been into.

LG: And the Mike Mignola comics are extremely gothic, yet darkly funny, they fit his sensibility so well that it’s natural that he’d direct it.

 MO: Basic background for anyone unfamiliar with Hellboy since it was only a modest hit- he’s from Hell, brought over by Rasputin (Karel Roden), who’s somehow still alive during World War II.

LG: He’s joined one of those fiendish Nazi experiments that Indiana Jones usually prevents, but Jones is busy that day, so they have Professor Bloom (played in the present day segments by John Hurt) doing the best he can with a group of American soldiers. The experiment is run by Rasputin and Kroenen (Ladislav Beran), a Nazi surgical-addict/clockwork man. They open a portal to Hell or Outer Space or something anyway it's where the seven gods of chaos live.

MO: It’s very Lovecraftian. I referred to all of those monsters on the other side as “Not Cthulu” (Del Toro’s trying very hard to get a film of At the Mountains of Madness going).

LG: Bloom and the soldiers stop Rasputin and seemingly kill him, but the portal was open long enough for infant Hellboy to get through. The film then jumps forward sixty years, where Hellboy is an agent for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, and a big celebrity among the Bigfoot/tinfoil hat crowd, appearing in blurred photographs and whatnot. The first Hellboy film is very X-Files-ish, where there’s a sense of paranoia where all the conspiracies are true.

MO: Hellboy is the sardonic version of Sasquatch. He’s beautifully played by Ron Perlman in what’s just about the best pairing of an actor with a superhero part outside of maybe Robert Downey, Jr. with Iron Man. It’s hard to see anyone else working in this role. Both Del Toro and Mignola wanted Perlman, which says something.

LG: The studio wanted Vin Diesel, which tells you something about studio mentality. We like Diesel fine, but no. Also in the idiot studio idea category- we have an unnecessary audience surrogate in this film, Agent Meyers, who’s there to babysit Hellboy and keep him from going out. He’s played adequately by Rupert Evans.

MO: Del Toro also considered Jeremy Renner and Jason Schwartzman, both of whom I like, but this is a pretty thankless role.

LG: He exists only to facilitate exposition and to give audiences a non-weirdo to latch onto, but it doesn't work. The character is Blandy McBlanderson, and it doesn’t help that the world around him is so bizarre and vivid.

MO: These films show Del Toro at his most Gilliam-esque.

LG: Meyers also doesn’t work because he’s not an outsider like the rest of the main characters. The film is very much about how one deals with being an other. We have Abe Sapien (played by Doug Jones, voiced by an uncredited David Hyde Pierce), a fish-man with psychic powers. He’s the most blasé about the outsider thing. He lives in a tank, and he’s just fine with his lot. There’s Hellboy, who resists being an outsider and tries very hard to pretend to be normal. He’s very arrogant about it, and his attempts to look normal just end up making him more eccentric. Then there’s Liz (Selma Blair), who looks human but has the least amount of control over her outsider status- she has pyrokinetic powers, and she has trouble handling it. Because she looks normal, she’s been hurt the most because she knows the pain of being outed, and she tends to recede from the outside world. It’s a wonderful combo- these characters give the film an aching emotional core. Even without knowing anything about Del Toro, one could sense how personal it is. If you’re a nerd or an outsider in any way, you'll connect.

MO: I love Abe’s line that “all us freaks have to stay together”. There’s a nice surrogate family here with those three. It’s lovely. Meyers doesn’t fit, so it’s nice that he won’t be back in Hellboy 2. Something I’d like to point out about the film is how Del Toro handles the villains. We have three villain: Ilsa (Bridget Hodson), the ultimate evil Nazi woman, there’s Rasputin, and there’s Kroenen, the clockwork-man Nazi character. It’s a wonderful combination of Del Toro’s view of evil- the organic, Ilsa,who we need more of. There’s Rasputin, the great supernatural villain. And then there’s Kroenen, the technological villain. He’s a wonderful villain who’s dedicated himself to removing his his humanity. He’s a literal clockwork man in that he has a clock on his body that he winds himself up with.

LG: He doesn’t even have blood - he has magic sand that keeps him alive. He has to wind himself up before he exerts himself too much. He’s also a very theatrical character. He has these ornamental masks- a different one for every occasion, and he has this very dramatic, balletic way of moving. We also have some third-tier villains- the monsters. One of the more notable ones is Sammael, the Hound of Resurrection. He functions similarly to the giant bugs in Mimic, but as with the Reapers in Blade II, there’s more personality and a better sense of how they work. Sammael lives in the sewers and lays eggs. I love also that Sammael looks like a tentacle-lion with double-joints.

MO: And I love that he’s the Hound of Resurrection- some Catholic and religious tropes flipped upside their heads. Whenever Sammael dies, his spirit splits in two and goes into two eggs.

LG: Good time to mention the Catholic stuff- the magical objects are very religious. We get rosaries, crosses, pinky bones in reliquaries, references to the Vatican. It doesn’t use these as an endpoint, but it gives the religious stuff a great weight and reverence.

MO: It’s notable that Bloom is a Catholic and that he’s raised Hellboy as his son. Something Frank Capra once said about Christianity is that it’s about second chances, and to a large degree that’s what the film is about. Hellboy is born with the ultimate original sin- he’s the offspring of Satan, with red skin, horns, a tail, and so on. Bloom has taught him religious and human lessons to give him a choice to be what he wants. He has a chance to reject his Satanic destiny.

LG: Which plays into the films wonderful emotional climax.

MO: What else is nice is that the Catholic material isn’t too full of itself, and the film has a nice balanced sense of humor coming from Ron Perlman’s delivery of sardonic one-liners. Rather than just have him say something self-righteous, Boondock Saints-style, when Rasputin says he’ll never fulfill his destiny, Hellboy says, “Well, I guess I’ll have to deal with that”.

LG: It’s a wonderful performance that’s conflicted, vulnerable and funny all at the same time, which is something considering that he’s under heavy make-up. Hellboy isn’t Del Toro’s character, but he is his to mold, unlike Blade, so Del Toro is able to take more potshots at macho material. Hellboy’s cool, but he’s very arrogant and pigheaded. Abe Sapien mockingly says that he’s doing “the lone hero thing”. This is a guy who doesn’t go outside much, so he’s probably learned a lot from TV. He has a gigantic bank of televisions in his room, which looks great visually. But this front of machismo gets him in trouble- he wants to ignore the bureau’s rules and go out alone, he gets hurt more than he needs to, and he ignores good counsel. A big part of the film is him growing up and Bloom trying to help him grow up.

MO: Bloom refers to him as a child, and there is something childish to the macho thing. Del Toro does a very good job illustrating that. And yet there’s some sensitivity there- he likes cats, he likes pancakes (which he adorably pronounces pamcakes), and deep down he’s a big softie. He’s also very aware of the flaws in his character. Earlier on, a couple of agent friends of his are killed in the line of duty, and he’s somewhat responsible because of his recklessness. There’s a sense of Catholic guilt, which is amplified after (spoilers) Bloom is killed by Kroenen because Hellboy was out spying on Liz, his not-quite-girlfriend. (end spoilers) She too has a sense of guilt, since she can’t control herself and how she could hurt someone. There’s a lot of Del Toro in here, since he’s a guy whose super-religious grandmother tried to exorcise him repeatedly because she didn’t like the monsters he drew.

LG: We saw the director's cut. Overall it's a much better cut, but some of the additions are superfluous.

MO: Everything added with Meyers, specifically, as we get more of a blooming “this isn’t going to work out because she’s going to end up with Hellboy” romance.

LG: It’s padding- false conflict to make Hellboy jealous, and we get plenty of it in the theatrical cut. But there’s one subplot that makes the Director’s Cut vital - earlier in the film, we learn Bloom is dying of cancer. It’s a nice scene - after he gets an opinion from the doctors, he pulls out a tarot card, which is his second opinion. It really colors the Director’s Cut. It gives a great arc to Hellboy and Bloom’s relationship, especially with Bloom trying to get Hellboy to grow up a little bit before he dies. It also changes his death scene - we knew it was coming anyway, but it’s a touching moment of self-sacrifice. The inevitability of death is all over this cut. We also check in with the villains more in this cut. In the theatrical, the second half has the problem of the villains’ plan feeling a bit nebulous.

MO: In this cut, we learn that there’s a timetable for their plan, which helps make things a little clearer. The little bits we get learning that there’s an eclipse coming that’ll open the portal to hell is essential. The director’s cut just makes a better film.

LG: And there’s a bit before Bloom’s death in the Director’s Cut that establishes that Bloom is angry with Hellboy just before he dies. It’s a real stab at our hearts. Can I mention that the score is fantastic?

MO: It’s Marco Beltrami, the same composer Del Toro had on Blade II and Mimic, but the score is a lot better here. There’s some nice emotional moments, but there’s also a sense of playfulness, which goes with Del Toro’s own sense of playfulness. There are some bits where Del Toro is playing with blockbuster and monster movie history. The lightning when Rasputin opens up the portal in the beginning reminds me of Metropolis. Del Toro evokes a pose from Watchmen as he did in Blade II, when a Nazi flies into the portal and looks like Dr. Manhattan blowing up, but this time he does it with the Wilhelm Scream thrown in there. There are a couple of Raiders of the Lost Ark homages, like Rasputin’s melting eyes at the portal, or Hellboy pulling his tail from under a closing door like Indiana Jones with the whip. When Kroenen kills Bloom, “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn, most famous for it's use in Dr. Strangelove, and it’s a nice touch because we’ve also got a clockwork Nazi like in the earlier film and because this is an emotional apocalypse for Hellboy. When Abe takes Bloom for a look back in time to see how Rasputin got Sammael into a museum, it reconstructs time events in front of them. It’s almost exactly like what Cronenberg did with The Dead Zone, and it’s great.

LG: One of the other characters we love is the Bureau chief, Manning (Jeffrey Tambor of Arrested Development). Tambor plays him as a guy who hates Hellboy, but he loves going on TV to explain away the photos of him as if they were nothing. He’s the one there to stab at Hellboy’s Catholic guilt, but I love that they become a bit more buddy-buddy by the end, as they discover they’re both cigar aficionados (macho stuff again!).

MO: Yeah, the “light a cigar with a match, not a lighter” thing might be a pretentious cigar-aficionado thing rather than a real thing, but it’s a nice moment. We talked about Blade II and how it only needed the scientific approach to monsters, rather than the religious. This film, on the other hand, is amplified by the religious/occult/scientific mix. The bullets in Hellboy’s gun have Holy Water in them, for God’s sake. It’s wonderful.

LG: Often I get annoyed by Christian themes in occult films (other religions have intricate mythologies too, guys), but it fits this movie very well. Should we talk about the action in this film a bit?

MO: I think Del Toro has become much more assured as an action director. There’s a comic book feel to the action in Blade II, but it's too post-Matrix for me. With this, it’s wise that he uses longer takes, and the fights between Hellboy and Sammael really benefit from that. They also benefit from the fact that it’s shot as Perlman vs. a guy in a suit, with a bit of CGI doubling later. It gives it more weight.

LG: I think that kinetic stuff worked for Blade II, but I’m glad they don’t do it for this. Hellboy and Sammael are big, heavy guys. They need to have a more lumbering feel. This is a good time to mention the other guy in a suit, Doug Jones as Abe, who’s one of Del Toro’s go-to guys, and a man who specializes in complicated body work under heavy make-up.

MO: Jones doesn’t voice Abe here like he does in the second film, but Pierce was so impressed with Jones that he went uncredited in order to not take away from Jones’ work. The effects work here is great, too. Even some of the shakier ones are kind of charming. I like Ivan, the half-skeleton guy Hellboy brings back to life as a guide who insults Hellboy in Russian.

LG: It feels like a living comic book. Everything feels brisk and cartoony and fun. And even though this is PG-13, Del Toro finds ways to have fun with the limitations. When Hellboy slams Sammael with a Payphone, rather than blood coming out, we see coins fly everywhere like in a videogame.

MO: Or how about inventiveness that’s moving. (Spoilers) Bloom’s death, it’s very cleverly framed as Kroenen steps behind him and stabs him. We don’t see it, but we hear it, and the impact is greater. (End Spoilers)

LG: It’s done so well that even if Del Toro could make this an R-rated film, he probably would have done it the same way.

MO: I love the fairytale-style narration we get at the beginning, as we learn where Hellboy came from and who he is. It fits right in with Del Toro’s sensibility.

LG: I remember when I first saw this film, my biggest gripe (apart from Meyers) was that there was a lot to digest, and it was a little too top-heavy with exposition. I’ve grown a little softer on it, since it’s a big world we need to set up. He's learned his lesson from Mimic and focused on the few characters that are important rather than trying to breathe life into an entire city. He’s also resisting the urge to drop in too many expository monologues.

MO: He sets it up so well that after the first twenty minutes we get to explore a lot of character bits rather than having more exposition. The relationship between Hellboy and Liz is one bit, and that’s one of the best superhero-girlfriend relationships in comic book movie history. There’s something very sweet about it. I think Del Toro can relate to being the big guy dating a woman he feels might be out of his league (not saying he’s an unattractive man). There’s a line Hellboy has when he’s courting Liz, “I can promise you, I’ll always look this good”. That’s something Del Toro really said to his wife when they met.

LG: It is a very earnest film. With another director without those experiences, it might feel false, but it works here, damn it!

MO: And that self-deprecation really fits in with everything else Hellboy says. Favorite Hellboy lines? Everyone loves his signature “Oh, crap”, but I also like the quick bits to Sammael, like “Hey…stinky…”

LG: “Didn’t I kill you already?”

MO: Or when Sammael plants an egg-sac in his arm, “He didn’t even buy me a drink”.

LG: “What’s a good, solid word for ‘need’?” “’Need’ is a good, solid word.” “Too needy.”

MO: “On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you about this?” “Two.”

LG: Or even one of Tambor’s lines, since he’s in the field for the first time in his life, after Kroenen attacks him- “Hey, what’s wrong with you?!”

MO: Probably one of our bigger complaints about the film is near the end, when Hellboy fights the big Not Cthulu monster that’s a hundred feet tall. Big build-up! How long is the fight?

LG: About a minute, minute and thirty seconds.

MO: The way he deals with the monster is nice, as he’s swallowed with a bunch of grenades (“this is gonna hurt”), but it is anticlimactic.

LG: It’s a boss fight that might not need to be there, or maybe it’s a problem with money, You got an expensive movie, you “gotta” have an expensive climax. But since the the action climax doesn’t match the emotional climax that came right before it and it feels perfunctory. But at least it has an emotional climax that actually means something. It works well enough especially compared to Blade II, but he still hasn't found a way to do both at once instead of in rapid succession. I used to think that Hellboy was just OK, but it’s grown on me over the years, and the Director’s Cut helps. And if anyone has the Director’s Cut DVD, for the love of God listen to the audio commentary. Some of it is about the film, but some of it becomes this TED-talk about 20^th century pulp literature, showing that Del Toro really is the poet laureate of pulp horror. He’s a relentlessly fascinating man.

Loren's Grade:  B+.

Max's Grade: B+

The theatrical cut of Hellboy (which I'd give a solid B)is available for streaming via Netflix Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and Xbox Live. If you enjoyed this review, please like us on Facebook.

Roundtable Directory:
Geometria
Cronos
Mimic (director's cut)
The Devil's Backbone
Blade II
Hellboy (director's cut)
Pan's Labyrinth
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Unmade Del Toro
Pacific Rim