| Script Review - Hellboy 2: The Golden Army | ||||
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Our infamous contributor, Mr. E is at it again. Although the Hellboy 2 script has been previously reviewed, he felt he needed to share his take on it and point out a couple of key points that hadn't been discussed. Check out Mr. E's script review of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army below... {sidebar id=1}Mr. E here. Boy, in my line of work, I meet the strangest people. No, not reviewing scripts, but at my day job - writing comics. As most of you know, I've been working for ZERO POINT COMICS for about six years now (between you and me I think the company's name refers to our market share). I like it and all, but I'll be the first to tell you - we aren't the, uh, most progressive of publishers. Maybe you caught our big 2007 summer release: BING CROSBY'S CHRISTMAS PHOTO PHUNNIES? No? What about this springs SADE ADU and the FEMFORCE FIVE VS. THE Y FRONT LIBERTATION ARMY? Not that book, either? Really? I'm best known around the office for my STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES books: the LT. AREX IN THE EDOAN EXTINCTION three issue miniseries, and my Gorn titles: GORN IN 60 SECONDS, THE GORN IDENTITY, and GORN AND MINDY all illustrated by the late greats Nevio Zaccara and Alberto Giolitti. Back 2004, my editor, Georgette Taylor came rushing over to my cubicle, "I've just seen the greatest movie ever! This guy is hot-he's made for comics and we really need to get the rights for him!" As much as I admired her enthusiasm, I had to break it to her gently. "Uh, Georgette-this character you loved so much-HELLBOY-uh, he's been published by Dark Horse Comics since 1993." "Dark Horse," she responded, "Never heard of them." Last week, when a thick package postmarked Trenton, New Jersey came to me containing the HELLBOY 2 script, I rushed over to Georgette's office to gloat. "Look, I got the HELLBOY 2 script!" "Hellboy?" she asked, "Never heard of him." HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY by Guillermo del Toro had me with the first line of dialogue written in the script. There's nothing really special about the line spoken by a SHADOWY FIGURE-it was a case of not what you say, but how you say it, because the description for the first line stated it was subtitled from the Elvish. Ha Ha! Awesome! I knew from right there that I was in for a very cool ride and I better buckle up! HELLBOY 2 is a lot of fun. All of our friends from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) are back: HELLBOY, ABE SAPIEN, LIZ SHERMAN, and FBI dork TOM MANNING. Okay, LIZ SHERMAN-WANNABE STEALER JOHN MYERS is missing (to no great loss), but unfortunately, so is IVAN THE CORPSE, the big scene stealing rotting Russian torso! There are monsters and beasties everywhere, the action sequences are fantastically fantastic, and the characters are exactly how you remembered them from the first film. OH CRAP! SPOILERS! The film opens with WINK, the TROLL and a SHADOWY FIGURE wreaking havoc in a upscale auction house as they make off with a piece of a GOLDEN CROWN. Meanwhile, not all is kittens and pancakes over at the Trenton, NJ office of the BRPD. LIZ and HELLBOY are arguing and MANNING is complaining to ABE that it's getting harder and harder to keep "BIG RED" a secret from the world. The BATSIGNAL lights the night sky, calling the gang into action. (Okay - there's no BATSIGNAL) HELL, ABE and LIZ get themselves to the utter mess of the crime scene's feculence. (Hey, I learned that word from the CLASH OF THE TITANS script - this gig is better than the Reader's Digest Word Power page!) There's a tussle or two with some remaining beasties and in the process of removing them, HELLBOY & CO. get "outted" to the real world. Oh Crap! The action moves to a coup de etat in the world of the world of the FAIRIES with PRINCE NUADA and PRINCESS NUALA. The PRINCE it seems is so over a truce that was formed between MAN and THE MAGICK FAMILIES centuries ago. He wants to raise the GOLDEN ARMY and rid the planet of normal folks like you and me. (Yeah - not so fast there Hairless Vic!) Anyway, the PRINCESS escapes and in an effort to stop him, falls in with our BRPD heroes, who have been joined by a new team leader: JOHANN KRAUS. KRAUS is a charming, well-spoken containment suit, with a vacuum tube of a face. Apparently, he's nothing but his own vaporous form. There's action aplenty as HELLBOY dukes it out with increasingly incredible creatures, like THE ELEMENTAL - cross TREEBEARD THE ENT with GODZILLA and you get the picture. And along the way, the weirdest thing happens to ABE SAPIEN: he falls in love. This leads to my favorite scene of all. It's a very simple, very (if you'll pardon the expression) human moment between ABE and HB. 8TH GRADE GRADUATION SONG SPOILERS BELOW It turns out that ABE, like the rest of us, is an idiot when it comes to being in love. And, like the rest of us idiots, he's found just the perfect song to express his feelings. Brother, I gotta tell you what it is: It's "I Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow. And in a scene soon to be ranked up there with the "Tiny Dancer" bus sing-a-long in Cameron Crowe's ALMOST FAMOUS, RED and BLUE belt out the song together in a wonderful moment of male bonding. (On a side note, "I Can't Smile Without You" was the song my 8th grade class was forced to sing at our graduation ceremony. I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge Chris Adams for being brave enough to take on the solo.) SPOILERS BEGONE! Word around the Internet water cooler is that Guillermo del Toro is very pleased to bring Hellboy to Universal Studios. Why? Because, apparently, his crafty mind has plans for Hellboy and the-get this-the Universal Studios monsters! Pardon me while I drool a minute here. Could we be seeing Hellboy meets Abbot and Costello meeting Frankenstein's Monster in the future? Maybe. The team-up I reeeeeaaalllyyy want to see is Abe Sapien and The Creature from the Black Lagoon! Man, that would be legen-wait for it-dary! I mean, Abe and The Gillman floating in Abe's walk-in aquarium and Abe's all like: "So, Gillman my man, who's your momma?" Okay, back to THIS movie. My only quibble with HELLBOY 2's script is a technical one. There's a scene where HELLBOY, ABE SAPIEN, LIZ SHERMAN and MANNING go onto a very famous late night real world talk show. As they chat with the host, unbeknownst to them, major monstrous activity is going off all over the globe. Seeing the trouble, our heroes leap off the set and go into action. My quibble? The chat show they visit is filmed at the NBC Studios in Burbank CA at 3:00 PM PST - but HELLBOY and the group exit to exterior New York City in the middle of the night. My solution? Simple. Put the gang on Comedy Central's awesome THE DAILY SHOW with JON STEWART instead of the lame-o Burbank-based show and its chintastic host with the not so most. THE DAILY SHOW with JON STEWART is not only a much cooler show, but they do actually tape their broadcast in The Big Apple. Anyway, there's action, adventure and romance among the weird as HELLBOY 2 moves along to its MEGABUDGET BIG SHOW of an ending. This movie is so chock-a-block with mean monsters, antique automatons, troublesome trolls, fantastic fairies, and so many other weird and wonderful things, I can hardly wait to see what this looks like on the big screen! Mr. E would like to thank Paramount Pictures, a very friendly, not-litigious-company-at-all for the use of the words STAR and TREK and all related character and location names typed by Mr. E for this article. Mr. E would also like to thank Mr. Barry Manilow, because NOW I CAN'T GET THAT GODDAMNED SONG OUT OF MY HEAD!
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