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Writer and director Guillermo del Toro took us into the domain of fairies and demons in Pan’s Labyrinth. Those fairies tended to be forces of light, purity, and good. In this Hellboy sequel, del Toro returns to an unseen domain, but the creatures are not necessarily benevolent.

In a clever flourish of a flashback, we watch Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (John Hurt) put a young Hellboy to bed on Christmas Eve. The youngster wants a bedtime story and Bruttenholm obliges by reading an epic tale of ancient war between a powerful kingdom of elves and the human race. The elves react to a brutal defeat by creating a golden army of automatons that can only be controlled by the one who wears a very special golden crown. But so successful, so unstoppable, and so lethal are those warrior robots that the elves’ King Balor is appalled by the carnage he’s unleashed on mankind. His regrets provoke a truce and a treaty with the humans. He has the golden army hidden underground at a remote site and divides the crown into three parts to prevent the army from being reactivated. This angers his brutish son beyond words; Prince Nuada sulks away, vowing to someday return to restore the crown, restore the golden army, and restore the elves’ dominance on the planet.

As Bruttenholm reads the story, the viewer sees the conflict through the imagination of young Hellboy. Perhaps inspired by a favorite television show, Howdy Doody, he visualizes all the elves and humans as puppets. From a filmmaking perspective, it’s unexpectedly effective. When Bruttenholm closes the book at the end of the story, Hellboy asks if elves and the story are real. Bruttenholm’s answer is intentionally vague.

Flash forward to current day. Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) has taken over the administration of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, and he still has a contentious relationship with Hellboy (Ron Perlman). It’s not entirely Manning’s fault; Hellboy is not easy to get along with. Even the love of his life, the fiery Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), is tiring of his lack of sensitivity, his slovenliness, and all those cats. Hellboy also has a hidden agenda; he wants to be known, he wants to be liked, he wants to reveal himself to the public to be adored for all his heroic exploits. Manning is kept busy suppressing Hellboy’s more public slips, but eventually that effort will fail. A paranormal incident provides Hellboy with his best opportunity to introduce himself.

Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) had been in self-imposed exile for centuries; he’s trained himself in the martial arts and has found a brute of an ally, Mr. Wink (Brian Steele). Now, with two boxes of voracious creatures, tooth fairies who crave calcium, they interrupt an art auction in which a piece of the golden crown is being offered. The lethal attack sets off alarm bells at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Hellboy, Liz Sherman, the gilled Abe Sapien (Doug Jones without the voice of David Hyde Pierce), and Manning respond with a bevy of human agents.

The rescue mission does not go well. Hellboy becomes a feared public figure and faces Prince Nuada for the first time. The incident causes Washington to send a rather special oversight representative to the Bureau, Johann Krauss (James Dodd and John Alexander, voiced by Seth MacFarlane), an apparition housed in a mechanical suit.

Prince Nuada, having acquired the first third of the crown, returns to his father, King Balor (Roy Dotrice), to seize another third. He then pursues his twin sister, Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), for the third and last piece. What follows is a desperate battle to prevent Prince Nuada from reactivating the golden army and decimating humanity.

I suspect I’ve made this film seem more intriguing than it really is. In the first Hellboy, the novelty of the character and his interactions with both his adopted father and the woman he loves shored up the supernatural conflict. In Hellboy II, the emphasis is on action, fighting, and spectacle. There are three times the number of elaborate sets and six times the number of practically shot creatures. They are ingenious, original, bizarre, and imaginative. In one of the supplements, someone made the comment that this is a continuation of the director’s Pan’s Labyrinth; that was a very perceptive observation. Some efforts are made to bring humanity to the paranormal characters, but they seem sublimated. Action set pieces and elaborate visual sequences dominate. This isn’t to say that Hellboy II isn’t entertaining; I just found it to be weaker than the original. The cast is uniformly excellent, the production values superb, and the direction and cinematography are both excellent, but of all the comic book derived summer tent pole movies being released to disc this fall, I feel this may be the least absorbing.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is presented in a great looking high definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. The film’s density is conveyed with superior small object detail and finely grained textures. From the smallest creatures to the textures of costumes and flesh, it’s all up there on the screen. Color rendition is also outstanding; skin tones are very natural, Hellboy’s red skin is vivid, as is the blue-green of Abe Sapien. The golden robots glow, both their gold finish and their ember-hot interiors. Edge halos and other artifacts are a non-issue. Video dynamic range is excellent, but there is a bit of black crush that diminishes shadow detail. Since I hadn’t seen the film in the motion picture theater, I cannot comment on whether that darkness is an artistic choice. This is spectacle that’s perfect for an impressive high definition presentation.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track is demonstration-quality. The viewer is completely immersed in very active surround effects. As you would expect with a 7.1 track, enabling EX dematrixing is a must for the best possible imaging of the surround field. Expect both pans and discrete sounds emanating from every direction. Danny Elfman’s strong score is conveyed with delightful transparency and a pleasing sense of acoustic space. Sound effects are rendered with authority, fast attack times, and visceral impact. The deep bass extends into the lowest octave, pounding on the chest that makes the experience downright tactile. And among all the wonderfully excessive sonics, dialog remains intelligible and distortion-free.

Alternate language tracks are in Spanish and French, both in DTS 5.1. The optional subtitles are in English SDH, Spanish, and French.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Universal has included a second disc with this release; it’s a DVD from which you can make a Digital Copy. But it also holds some very significant supplements.

First is the documentary Hellboy: In Service of the Demon (2:34:41, 1.78:1, SD) that’s organized into nineteen chapters. At over a half hour longer than the feature film, you won’t be surprised when I suggest that this making-of feature offers great depth and breadth. Director del Toro is known for the remarkably thorough documentation of his films, and this is yet another example. As he’s followed around during preproduction, production, and postproduction, we’re enlightened concerning the incredible detail invested and the challenges of implementation within budget. All of the sequences are behind-the-scenes and without narration. I’m sure there were days of content, but they’ve been distilled into interesting chunks that in aggregate represent a comprehensive view of the entire production end to end.

Within the Marketing Campaign supplement, there is an array of stills in the Print Gallery and the Poster Explorations, supplements that sequence automatically but can be sped along with the chapter buttons. There is one other supplement on this disc, but it’s only available from your computer (see below).

The rest of the supplements are found on the feature film’s Blu-ray Disc. I’ll begin with Universal’s U-Control, which requires a Profile 1.1 player and which has four layers of information that must be enabled by the viewer. The Director’s Notebook will bring up, uh, the director’s notebook. Select a highlighted icon in the notebook and the disc will seamlessly branch to a high definition 1.78:1 clip. Scene Explorer will superimpose on the film’s frame several views of CGI in various states of completion. Set Visits will branch to HD 1.78:1 presentations of behind-the-scenes sequences on-set that correspond to the currently visible locations. The Concept Art Gallery will superimpose stills on top of the film. What is most convenient is Universal’s practice of allowing random access to the various U-Control supplements through the chapter navigation feature of the U-Control screen; this can save the viewer considerable time.

The Troll Market Tour with Guillermo del Toro featurette (12:22, 1.78:1, SD) is a guided tour by the director of that extensive set. The level of detail is quite remarkable. There are so very many details that they will completely escape the viewer during a first or second viewing of the film. Director del Toro mentions the origins and inspirations for the various elements. The color palette is also discussed.

Production Workshop takes us to an examination of Professor Broom’s Puppet Theater (3:12, multi-window, SD). After an introduction (1:29, 1.78:1, SD) by the director, we see two versions of storyboards sharing the screen with the final sequence as seen in the film. There is also an optional director’s commentary that is somewhat informative.

There are six deleted scenes (5:04 aggregate, 1.78:1, SD) that are mostly extensions of existing scenes. One is somewhat new. None add anything to our understanding of the plot or the characters. They may be played with or without director’s commentary.

Zinco Epilogue Animated Comic (5:14, 1.85:1, non- anamorphic widescreen) is a limited-animation short with both dialog balloons and spoken dialog. It’s produced complete with music and sound effects. I will not reveal the nature of the short, but the implication is that it may be a setup for Hellboy III.

Comic Book Builder is an interactive feature that allows the viewer to select favorite frames from the film and transform them into comic book frames complete with dialog balloons. The completed work can be shared over the Internet via Universal’s implementation of BD Live. Since enabling this supplement makes a BD Live connection, be prepared to wait until the online menu is downloaded and displayed. The process is rather tedious, but I was curious to see if the film images would be transformed from photo-like frames to a simulation of something drawn. It was not.

The Gallery offers numerous stills organized into specific sections: Creature Design; Mike Mignola Creator Gallery; Production Design; and, Production Stills. They may be viewed individually or as a sequential slide show. They are in HD, but since they don’t occupy the full screen, some resolution is lost.

And that brings us to two commentaries, one by director del Toro and the other by key players Jeffrey Tambor, Selma Blair, and Luke Goss. Once again, please indulge me as I skip listening to these; there aren’t enough hours in the day.

Universal has included its My Scenes feature that allows the selection and random access of favorite scenes.

The supplement disc has its own subtitle choices of English SDH, Spanish, and French. The audio is in stereo.

The 121-minute film is organized into twenty-chapters.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happen when you pop the DVD into your computer?

The supplement disc holds the film’s script.

Final Thoughts

A respectable sequel to Hellboy, the film has a thinner plot and a much grander scale. The presentation in high definition is excellent and the supplements are generous and informative. Despite the lighter weight plot, I’m going to recommend this disc set.