Every good thing you've ever heard about Guillermo del Toro is probably true. His actors love him, his fellow filmmakers respect him, and he's one of the more accessible directors when it comes to talking to the press about his film projects. His latest film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, reunites him with Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor and Doug Jones (del Toro loves to torture Jones by putting him in heavy costumes and makeup), a group of actors who praise the filmmaker not only for his unique vision but also for his his ability to communicate that vision with his actors and his audiences.
At Hellboy II's Los Angeles press junket, del Toro revealed he has a plan to work with his Hellboy cast again sometime in the future (after The Hobbit movies). "There was four years between the first Hellboy and the second one. There can legitimacy be four years between the second one and the third one. It would take at least two years – it took two years and a half to solve this script for me. I spent huge amounts of time just solving. I wanted to make the action set pieces relevant to the story. The Elemental for example, making it a moment where [Prince Nuada] says, 'Choose between him or them,' things like that. And with the third one the ante is up considerably in that it is a very complicated movie because I wanted to signal the end of at least this incarnation of Hellboy, not forever, but I would not be involved past that. It will be probably the last Hellboy Ron has physically in him. It is a very grueling process. He is entering the silver years, shall we say. He’s a guy that I cannot demand physical action from again and again, and I think that we would love to make it a sort of a capper."
This second Hellboy film finds Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Abe Sapien and the gang at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense having to protect the citizens of our planet from Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), an evil underworld leader who wants to unleash all magical creatures and allow them to be free to roam the earth. In order to do this, Prince Nuada plans to awaken the Golden Army. And, of course, it's up to Hellboy and his buddies to stop Prince Nuada before it's too late.
The story told in Hellboy II veers away from Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics, with Guillermo del Toro and Mignola having collaborated on the script to create a brand new chapter in Hellboy's story. When asked about the rumor that Hellboy II is actually the Hellboy movie he intended to make all along, del Toro laughed. "I wish I was that wise. I wish I was that f*cking sleek, but I really thought I think it is, but it was not planned that way. The first movie I fully thought we were doing the exact version that would honor the comic and be faithful to the comic. But as time passed, I realized mistakes were made or short comings were evident because I was prudish, I think, on the first one a little bit and I was completely unbridled on this one. I think it made a difference because on the first one I was there to try and satisfy a specific aesthetic I admire, which was Mike’s, a specific character I admired which was Mike’s, and I made it my own only to a certain point. It was not conscious; it was not a process, it just happened. And I learned and I was desperate to make the second one to improve, expand, go a little wider."
And now del Toro thinks he's found the right balance between Mignola's work and his own. "I think that it is Mike’s creation. It will always be Mike’s creation, but I really allowed myself to disagree with more people on this one - sometimes including Mike. I feel it was a riskier proposition, but I feel if you were going to do the second one and be equally timid, you were going to come out with the exact timid approach."
Guillermo del Toro believes in using practical effects whenever possible, resorting to CGI only when absolutely necessary. He's a big fan of Jim Henson's work and turned to Solution Studios, which includes people who used to work in Henson's shop, to come up with creatures for Hellboy II. "They created some of the stuff I liked the most in Storyteller or they worked in Little Shop of Horrors and Return to Oz and so on and so forth."
"One idea I had in the movie is that first and foremost we wanted to make the movie feel handmade. We wanted the movie to have an artisan pride in craftsmanship, pride in the sets and the creatures. When they designed the Golden Army I told them, 'Make sure the gold is hammered not flat. It is hammered and a little rust or oil stains. Let’s make everything lived in,' because I wanted everything to be texturally palpable. So one of the approaches, which was in the first movie also, was, 'Let’s make the creatures as practical as we can.'"
And if you watch Hellboy II and are reminded of the Cantina scene in Star Wars, you won't be the first person to make that connection. "Actually that was Mike’s fear," said del Toro. "Every time we came to the troll market Mike [hummed the Stars Wars tune]. I said, 'No,' and we shot it completely different from that. Instead of doing a close-up of every creature that we had, I treated them like extras in the background. Sometimes we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a creature that happens only in the first shot. If you look at the movie ever again, you’ll see a creature called the Strider, which are three large elephant-like creatures with long legs like the elephants from the [knee] and no head walking past the archway. Only ones in the whole movie and I said, 'I will shoot it completely different from the Cantina scene. I will shoot it like we really wandered into a real place and I will use creatures that cost thousands of dollars to pass by,' and we did."
Page 2: On Recapturing a Childlike Spirit and The Hobbit
