“Hellboy II” had a lot to live up to after Big Red’s first theatrical outing, as well as being Guillermo Del Toro’s first film after “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and it definitely delivered more imagination and impressive effects than most of the summer’s movie fare combined. Appropriately, the “Making of” documentary of this film—one with tons of effort put into each tiny creature it contained—is longer than the feature presentation, and that’s without the deleted scenes, troll market set tour and commentary by Del Toro.
While the copious amounts of features offer a great view behind the scenes, the features are comprised mostly of long, rarely-cut shots of Del Toro directing occasionally mixed in with interviews. This style, at times, feels like a very natural look at how the movie was put together, but mostly leaves you wishing they put as much effort into the production of the special features as they did the movie. Still, it’s a look worth having when the movie has so many “I wonder what went into that shot” moments, especially to see Mignola and Del Toro riffing ideas about monsters for the flick.
Still, the whole two-disc set is pretty much worth purchase for the amazingly cool hologram on the cover that morphs from the live-action Ron Perlman Hellboy to an illustrated Mike Mignola Hellboy. At the very least, head to Best Buy and just watch that thing work its magic for a while!
The best this amateur photog/blogger can do to capture the magic.
