HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
Headline: ** Confused Mixture of Worldviews, Legends, Myths, and Fairy Tales **
Title: HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
Quality: * * * Acceptability: -3
SUBTITLES: -- Some English subtitles --
WARNING CODES:
Language: LL
Violence: VV
Sex: S
Nudity: N
RATING: PG-13
RELEASE: July 11, 2008
TIME:
STARRING: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Luke Goss, Ann Walton, John Hurt, Roy Dotrice, and the voice of Seth MacFarlane
DIRECTOR: Guillermo Del Toro
PRODUCERS: Lawrence Gordon, Mike Richardson and Lloyd Levin
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Chris Symes and Mike Mignola
WRITER: Guillermo Del Toro
BASED ON THE COMIC BOOK SERIES CREATED BY: Mike Mignola
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures/General Electric
CONTENT: (PaPa, RoRo, OO, BB, C, PC, E, LL, VV, S, N, AA, D, M) Strong, somewhat mixed and slightly mixed pagan worldview with strong Romantic elements where people make emotional decisions, strong occult elements (including a ghost is a major character and special occult glasses are used to see the "reality" of objects and beings, including creatures posing as humans), strong moral elements confused by other content, light overt and implied Christian elements (including a sacrifice solves a plot problem at a crucial moment) but which seem more subdued than the original movie, politically correct elements, and environmentalist elements; 16 obscenities, one or two strong profanities and six light profanities, plus hero says "crap" five or more times; strong action violence with some scary looking creatures such as large ugly trolls includes tiny carnivorous creatures with nasty looking teeth swarm around creatures and humans, tiny creatures swarm over human agents to carry them away, a couple decapitations with no gore, large creatures fight and punch one another in several scenes, martial arts acrobatics during fighting, sword fighting, hero fires big gun, creatures thrown yards away (sometimes against objects), patricide when a prince stabs his father the king to death with his sword that can expand into a spear, and baby in danger; no actual sex scenes but the villain lightly strokes his sister's cheek in a too-familiar way and an apparently unmarried couple living together are going to have a baby; upper male nudity; alcohol use and drunkenness in a couple scenes; hero smokes cigar; and, an off-hand comment on a TV mentions a controversy about "inter-species marriage" and some rebellion against authority by wise-cracking, hardboiled hero and seeming worldview confusion is never really resolved, though it could have been by a more intelligent filmmaker or writer.
GENRE: Action Fantasy
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
Please address your comments to:
Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman/CEO, General Electric
Jeff Zucker, President/CEO, NBC Universal Entertainment
Ron Meyer, President/COO, Universal Studios
Marc Shmuger, Chairman
David Linde, Co-Chairman
Universal Pictures
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608-1085
Phone: (818) 777-1000
Web Page: www.universalstudios.com
SUMMARY: HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY stars Ron Perlman as a grown-up demon fighting the forces of darkness, whose team of supernatural agents try to stop a mean elf prince from using a huge mechanical, magical army to destroy all humans. Despite some fun action and imaginative spectacle, HELLBOY II is a confusing mixture of legends, fairy tales, paganism, occultism, left-wing ideology, and religion, including light Christian elements.
IN BRIEF:
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY stars Ron Perlman as a grown-up demon who was raised by his adoptive Catholic father to battle the forces of darkness. Long ago, the king of the elves forged a truce between humans and the magical creatures in earth's forests, but the king's son refused to accept the truce. Now, the evil prince wants to awaken a huge mechanical army to destroy the humans once and for all. Into the picture steps Hellboy and his team of supernatural agents. They work for the American government's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Only they can save the humans from Prince Nuada's evil plans, but are the humans worth saving?
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY is a confusing mixture of legends, fairy tales, paganism, occultism, left-wing ideology, and religion, including light Christian elements. Consequently, it doesn't really quite know where it's going, though the ride along the way has many moments of fun action and entertaining spectacle. The filmmakers downplay Christian elements in their story, thus missing a chance to include a strong redemptive arc. The movie also contains some foul language and scary creatures, so parents beware.
NOTE from Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide Magazine. For more information from a Christian perspective, order the latest Movieguide Magazine by calling 1-800-899-6684(MOVI) or visit our website at www.movieguide.org. Movieguide is dedicated to redeeming the values of Hollywood by informing parents about today's movies and entertainment and by showing media executives and artists that family-friendly and even Christian-friendly movies do best at the box office year in and year out. Movieguide now offers an online subscription to its magazine version, atwww.movieguide.org. The magazine, which comes out 25 times a year, contains many informative articles and reviews that help parents train their children to be media-wise consumers.
