Jet Li? That's right. The opening spear form in HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY is performed by Prince Nuada in the deepest, dankest, underworld Troll Market of New York City, a place where the subway rails never travel, where the maze of underground sewers dare not sludge, a Brooklyn Bridge underworld home for maverick monsters and mystical creatures--yes, that New York City--is right out of Li's pointed pole practice from THE NEW LEGEND OF SHAOLIN meets FONG SAI YUK. And of course Jet will be raising his own kind of hell in the upcoming MUMMY 3 in three weeks.
Anyone who has seen Guillermo del Toro's films may notice that each one has some sort of strange, flittering, fluttering thingy or creepy crawly creature scampering around in the foreground or background. Although he is quite obviously a major fan of Hong Kong Fant-Asia style martial arts films from the 1980s and 1990s (as evinced by Donnie Yen's choreography in del Toro's BLADE 2), he has one other secret passion in life that few have had to call him on?the art of bugging you.
"A good way of putting it," he laughs. "I am an avid phasmid collector, an amateur entomologist, and as you noted I always manage to obviously or subliminally sneak in something about them or other insects into my films.
I first spoke with del Toro many moons ago after he had completed his breakout film MIMIC (how bugs conquer the Earth), and since then have waged a campaign to have him appear at The Insect Film Fear Festival as sponsored by the entomology department a the University of Illinois, my old Alma Mater, where I received my PhD in entomology. So now you know why in Hong Kong I am called Dr. Craig, why Sam Raimi calls me "The Doc," and why Jackie Chan addresses me simply as "Doctor."
HELLBOY II is no exception to del Torro's ongoing homage to insects. One of the main creatures in the film is, indeed, modeled after a cross between a katydid, a leaf-footed squash bug, and his favorite phasmid insect, the walking stick. Now, be honest--how many of you out there would really have recognized that?
So where in the hell did this film come from? Dark Horse Comics published Hellboy's first adventures in 1994. Guillermo del Toro's debut as a feature film director came a year earlier with the critically acclaimed horror film CRONOS, which was one of Ron Perlman's (Hellboy) first major cinematic leads after his three-year stint as Vincent in the TV hit, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. As del Toro's work gained international attention, he kept his eye on Mike Mignola's Hellboy magazine creation. "I had always been a Mike Mignola fan," del Toro admits. "I fell in love with the brooding, Gothic, atmospheric work he was doing. When I was shooting MIMIC in 1997, the best part of the day was going to the comic book shop to look for more Hellboy issues. By then, I thought it was taking a direction that made sense for a movie. I had envisioned the film version of Hellboy as him being a blue-collar guy, plumber or an electrician, who comes in with a box of tools and says, 'Where is the leak?" and goes at fixing the leak. But he is a very jaded, reluctant investigator; his method of investigation is to beat the crap out of a monster and in this film, to beat them up with a bit more style.
Hellboy fights the good fight when duty calls in the form of the top-secret B.P.R.D.: the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, a secret bureau created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1943 that uses secret technology, mysterious powers and a network of operatives with otherworldly abilities to defend the world against Nazi Germany, and, later on, against violent supernatural forces. But, in keeping with his blue-collar shtick, Red (aka Hellboy) would rather kick back with a Cuban cigar, a six-pack of Tecada Mexican beer (no influence there by the Mexican born and raised del Toro), his pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), and their clutter of cats. But destiny has bigger plans for them.
After an ancient truce between humankind and the original sons of the Earth is broken, all hell is about to break loose. The anarchic underworld prince Nuada (Luke Goss) has grown weary of centuries of deference to mankind. He has returned from exile to the kingdom of Bethmoora to reclaim the land and the freedom that he believes was taken from his people. Armed with double swords wielded with cutthroat abandonment and whirly-gig spear techniques, the crack-faced, ruthless Nuada defies his bloodline and plots to awaken a long-dormant army of killing machines known as the Golden Army, to use them as a means to create an Earth where all the magical creatures are again able to roam free. Only Hellboy can stop the dark ruler and save our world from annihilation.
Taking two-and-a-half years to complete the screenplay, in HELLBOY II del Toro ignored the usual sequel conventions and focused on the dark fairy tale arc where rebellion is fomented by the magical creatures who have lived for centuries in the underground catacombs of Earth and have had enough of wonton human rule. Nuada's merciless drive for revenge is balanced by the regal compassion of his twin, the ethereal beauty Princess Nuala (Anna Walton). He offers Hellboy a choice: to side with humanity, which mocks, cajoles and treats like a pariah, or with the paranormal beasts and hobgoblins of the Netherlands who revere him as one of them.
"There was no need to recap or re-explain who everyone is," del Toro says. "We just get on with it. It's a completely new story, a dark, poignant fairy tale. You can take the most dire, melodramatic arc and plug it into a movie, but as long as you're acting it with monsters, it already has another meaning. The beauty of these stories is that, in an unrecognizable universe, you have very recognizable human emotions.
"The Prince is a great villain because he is very dangerous and a great fighter," del Torro continues. "But he also happens to have a strong moral stand on what he does and why he does it. I wrote the part with Luke Goss in mind, and he delivered all the way.
Goss, who portrayed the vampire Nomak for del Toro in BLADE II and the sleazy bad dude that Michelle Yeoh conked out in SILVERHAWK, sympathized with the Prince and trained hard to make him a worthy adversary. "He aims to balance the scales by the most succinct means possible," says Goss. "I can see his point. He wants to enjoy and not destroy the planet. When he walks into Blackwood's auction house, he sees people sitting there with no idea about what they're trying to buy. They're selling his history, and it outrages him.
Del Toro adds, "The prince hasn't surfaced with the intention of taking on Hellboy, but no matter. He's ready to engage him physically and psychologically, and at a crucial moment in the film, he calls Hellboy out and forces him to face up to who is he is and where his loyalties lie.
But when it is time to fight, del Toro cashes in on his second secret passion, Hong Kong cinema's martial arts-style action. When del Toro was making BLADE II, he initially wanted to make the action an over-the-top extravaganza but changed his mind after films like CHARLIE'S ANGELS took away the sparkle Hong Kong action offered to Hollywood.
"I tried to keep the fights more street style," he recalls. "I didn't want to do wire work in that film, although there was a little. But Wesley (Snipes) and I were clear that we wanted to steer clear of the influences of MATRIX and CROUCHING TIGER. But in this film, I felt it was time to bring a little bit of that back.
Apart from the rock-em, sock-em finale fight against the Golden Army (and you'll know what that means if you are familiar with the red and blue boxing toys and have seen the film), there are several one-on-one fights between Hellboy and the prince encounters that required a close collaboration between stunts and special effects. One descend to joking that at first the fights come across in-cog-nito, yet the dramatic design of the final mano-a-mano is heightened not only by the fight's ferocity, but also by the huge golden cogs flanking the stage where the prince first imperiously surveys the Golden Army, and then makes it an arena of doom for Hellboy and his cohorts.
To bring that Hong Kong sword and spear flair to the mix, del Toro hired fight choreographer Brad Allan, which is perplexing, not because of Allan himself but because of the action look. Allan is the first ever non-Asian member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team and you might recognize him from both TUXEDO and from his seven minute punch fest against Jackie in GORGEOUS. So it's surprising that the fights look like something out of Ching Siu-tung's MOON WARRIORS with HEROIC TRIO sensibilities. There is even a scene that mimics John Woo's HARD-BOILED.
One can only imagine that after watching the merry-go-round teeth of the cogs spinning vertically and horizontally, like the inner workings of an old clock in a tower, that Allan's mind must have been racing.
"It's true," Allan says. "Seeing the cogs spin, some with beveled gears, it's very much like a fighting ballet and that inspired me. We saw an opportunity for some comedy and some excitement. We're channeling a little bit of Charlie Chaplin from MODERN TIMES (1936 film with Chaplin's famous Tramp character trying to deal with the machine age) and a little Jackie Chan, plus our own HELLBOY flavor.
"Our two combatants have completely different fighting styles; Hellboy is a strength guy, a stone-fisted brawler. The prince is all speed and stealth, lean and like lightning.
Although the physically fit Goss performed much of the sword and spear work, Allan upped the ante by mixing top Chinese martial arts veterans from Jackie Chan's Stunt Team into the fray. Because the prince's fighting technique is based on evasion, del Toro and Allan decided to add somersaulting to his moves. "I had no idea how I was going to find a power tumbler with the stature and physique of Luke Goss, because most of them are stocky little guys," Allan says. "But by typing 'tumbler' on YouTube, I found Damien Walters, a tall, skinny, blonde, blue-eyed guy who is the No. 3 power tumbler in the world today. He's not a professional stunt performer, but his skill was exactly what we needed, and his work was so outstanding that the entire crew broke into applause after most of his takes.
Wielding the ancient spear of Bethmoora, Prince Nuada knows almost no equal. In fact, he almost destroys Hellboy once before they meet again in the Chamber. So, going back to the old Chinese kung fu films, it is no wonder that del Toro opted for a telescoping weapon. Del Toro says, "The main idea was for the spear to be a kind of telescopic device, so when it is short it can be used as a double-bladed sword and then extend to spear. All the weapons of the elf royalty are richly decorated. We were trying to stay away from just Celtic motifs and create our own patterns. In the end, we moved the design toward more Oriental and Islamic ornamentation.
Overall, HELLBOY 2 is slowly paced; to Chinese martial arts film buffs the action is nothing new and, unfortunately, the one thing that saved mankind at the end of the film could have easily saved mankind 20 minutes after the start of the film. Furthermore, a cool feature of the old kung fu films--the special technique that had to be used at the end of the movie as a last resort to defeat the villain--never comes in HELLBOY 2. This reduces the final fight to a martial arts version of that famous Shakespearean soliloquy, "To-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow?" from MACBETH, where the poor players fret and strut their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more?a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That is the doom of a film that ends back at the beginning without telling us why we had to wait for the end.
One final Chinese kung fu film nuance comes via Mr. Wink, Nuada's monstrous troll henchman. He has a gigantic club fist with an extendable iron mace. Which Chinese film is that from? Kung Fu Films 101 is now in session.
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Dr. Craig Reid :
Written by Dr. Craig Reid for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM
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