Hellboy II

[jack]

Hellboy II wasn't as awesome as I'd hoped, but was very good. It did a worthy job of following the original with new stuff, and was often funny, and interesting, and beautifully steampunky.

Nitpicks (spoilers)

However, in the climax, there were several things that just bugged me they didn't try earlier:

* Challenging Nuada's right to command the army. I felt sure they'd cry that as soon as he said "Does anyone challenge my right to command the army?"
* Klaus -- for a moment I thought he was going to take down the entire army one at a time. After all, if he could just take over another robot each time his host is crushed, it wouldn't matter which won.
* How about doping Nuala? Mightn't that knock Nuada right out?
* And once they had cured Hellboy, why didn't they just... go away? Did they just want to beat up Nuada, but Abe wanted to trade the crown piece for Nuala? Well, that's understandable, but we've no reason to think he would deliberately hurt her (although obviously he might).
* Why didn't Liz try nuking the army?
* Why didn't Liz melt the crown piece earlier? (fishpi correctly points out that Nuala might not have let them until Nuada turned up, at which point no-one knew where the piece was except Abe.)

Comments

[quism.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it more than the first one, at the cinema at least (the first one works well on TV, but when I came out of the cinema I felt fairly indifferent about it). Del Toro really picked up the whole European pre-Christian entities thing after Pan's Labyrinth and stuck it to Hellboy fairly well, and he knows how to make CGI work for him.

I'd guess the nuke isn't an option if she wants anyone within the blast radius to survive, which included all her friends at the time, and no handy windows or safes to hide in.

[minipoppy.livejournal.com]

> * And once they had cured Hellboy, why didn't they just... go away?
That's a complaint that could apply to nearly every film ever! Personally, *I* would have gone home, but these guys are heroes, and have to make good stories. And also, even if they destroyed the golden army Nuada would never stop. Granted it may take longer with tooth fairies and squishy face things, but they still had to stop him.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes sense. But they'd cured Hellboy, they'd defused the golden army. They seemed to have nearly everything they'd set out to do, and they know they can't kill Nuada. Going into the Golden Barracks just seemed asking for lots of trouble :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'd guess the nuke isn't an option if she wants anyone within the blast radius to survive,

Yeah, that makes sense. (For that matter, she maybe wouldn't like to, especially if she's pregnant, and it may be unreliable. But it would be nice to keep it as an option if you can.) Eg. if she had some distance, she could try melting the army freely.

Or, in an emergency, one of her friends is intangible, one is fireproof, and one is smaller than the one who is fireproof, so you could try it.

But yes, it probably wouldn't help in the end.

stranger here...

[wilhelminabenedict]

Oh, you movie-goers and your logic.

I thought the whole thing about Abe keeping it a secret from HB and Liz was also kind of a logic!fail--especially since he wails 'he lied' but he didn't because he didn't actually promise anything, especially not any guarantees of safety! Good lord.

And considering that Nuala just wanted it kept out of her brother's hands, I don't see why she wouldn't have allowed it. Just...plotholes, ergh.