Guillermo del Toro’s meticulously designed comic-book adaptation, “Hellboy II The Golden Army,” staring Ron Pearlman and Selma Blair, about a cigar loving, loose canon son of the devil, Hellboy, is being released wide this weekend.
The character was evidently conquered by the Nazis who planned to use him was a weapon, his group of not-so-average friends help him lay waste to the intruders from the fantasy world who are threatening to destroy the earth. Neato, right?
And the critics are saying the movie might not be half bad. With a 74 out of 100 on Metacritic.com going into the weekend and with the same direction and crew from last year’s visually stunning “Pans Labyrinth,” the weekend numbers are expected to be quite large, maybe even surpassing those set by the original “Hellboy,” which only brought in around $60 million domestically and struggled to break even.
The numbers may be large in part of the quality of film del Toro is known to make but also due tothe utter lack of competition. “Hancock” was the talk of the movie world just last week, but it’s a critical shitfest and should die off soon enough. Will audiences be rushing out to “Hellboy II” in droves to erase the memory of “Hancock” or to get their comic-book movie fix to hold them over until “The Dark Knight”? One also has to consider the films “Hellboy II” is in competition with this weekend. Viewers will have to choose between the new Eddie Murphy abortion, “
Meet Dave,” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the movie that stars that guy who used to be a mildly popular B-list actor, Brendan Fraser (the mid-west will love it). Note, Variety says ‘II’
might still have to contend with high Hancock second week numbers, but we kinda think that’s off.
All of this plays well for the “Hellboy” franchise, but there is that nagging problem with having a 58 year old actor play your lead and i
n a recent interview with NY magazines blog, Vulture, the actor who portrays Hellboy onscreen, Ron Perlman, discussed his own personal smoking habits.
The week before del Toro wondered if he’d even be around on this mortal coil long enough for a threequel. “If Ron takes his medicine and vitamins and can stay healthy enough, we can have a Hellboy III,” he cautioned before putting on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” wiping away a tear and crossing himself.
When asked how he manages to smoke the amount of cigars necessary to portray Hellboy, Perlman said, “Dude, I smoke so many cigars in the course of a day that it’s not dramatically different.”
It appears as though “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” will be successful in pulling in a few bucks this weekend, and if it does well enough their could be a sequel, right? That is if Ron Perlman lives…
