There really must be something in the rules about writers and directors working with properties they're fans of. Russel T. Davis and Doctor Who pale into insignificance when compared to Guillermo del Toro and Hellboy.
That's not to say they're bad films... just that it feels as though del Toro is so keen to show his audience how wonderful Hellboy is, he kinda forgets to make a worthwhile film to do so.
The first attempted - with some success - to introduce the cinemagoing public to Hellboy, a character created by artist Mike Mignola, and personified in the movies with great ablomb by the excellent Ron Perlman. Trouble is, the movie followed a rather dull formula. Rather than throwing the audience into Hellboy's world, it introduced a superfluous character to be our eyes and ears, to help us indentify with the characters. It killed off a major character so we'd know the bad guys were really evil (some were Nazis, but the main one was Rasputin... Most people wouldn't need much by way of hints to know they're supposed to be evil). It also had a terribly anticlimactic climactic battle, and a rather heavy-handed 'touching' moment at the end.
In many ways, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army follows the same formula, but with more and greater spectacle thrown in. It opens with a scene from Hellboy's early days on Earth (allowing for a brief return for John Hurt as Professor Broom, and a quite clumsy setup for the story, though the puppet effects are cool), then cuts to the present day. The main bad guy in this film kills his own father - rather than someone else's - to prove the depths of his evil. There's lots of running around, shooting and big fights. The climactic battle is far more impressive (less CGI), and yet it's pretty much ruined because the result has been made blindingly obvious from the very beginning. Worse still, the 'touching' scene towards the end directly mirrors the equivalent scene in the first film.
There are also far too many brief scenes which seem to exist for no purpose - they don't advance the plot, they're not dealt with in any depth, and they're not returned to later.
It's far better than the first film, but it just seems as though del Toro wants to show everyone why (he thinks) Hellboy is so darned cool.
Still, Luke Goss was pretty good, and Ron Perlman was brilliant as always.
Before the film, I popped into Argos and took advantage of their 25% off TransFormers Animated figures, and picked up Leader Class Bulkhead. I really don't get why he's warming shelves at Toys'R'Us. For £40 (or £30 from Argos) you get a decent-sized, quite poseable figure that's full of character and has a decent collection of light and sound effects. His three spoken phrases are well-chosen and, while the lights in robot mode just do the usual (boring, pointless) flashing, in vehicle mode, they're cleverly arranged to set off his roof-mounted lightbar as his siren sounds.
Transformation is, I'd imagine, quite close to the Voyager Class version, but with a few extra bits here and there. The Headmaster gimmick is quite interesting, but adds only one spoken phrase to his repertoire.
Much as I dislike the design aesthetic of the TV show (though I'm beginning to think I'd like to watch more of it, and will be trying to find the pilot DVD), the toys have turned out to be very well-designed. Quality Control has been rather poor, and most of the models are lacking in the paint department, but they're cool nonetheless.
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