I love Hellboy!  I love Hellboy enough to forgive Ron Perlman for doing Stephen King’s Desperation!  I love Hellboy so much it makes me highly interested in Bubba Nosferatu (or it could be that I really liked Bubba Hotep).  But while watching Hellboy 2 I was once again plagued with the nagging questions of stupidity that kept coming up.  Overall I would say that the stupidity doesn’t take away too much from the film itself for me, and while it is still a stretched departure from its dead-tree counterpart, I still can find a special place in my heart for this stupid movie.

Hellboy really hates that fucking grass!

“Poppa! Poppa! Tell me a story filled with CGI puppets! ”

Sit down my little ugly child and I will tell you the tale of a great nation of magic folk.  Of times long past, of golden armies, of a truce between the nations of the magic folk and that of the humans.  I will tell you the tale of what proceeded after the fact.  As you know the elves made a truce with the humans at the end of a bloody war in which the elves had all but practically won.  Yes you heard me right, they won, and yet still gave up and called a truce,  because they were winning so much.  The terms were that the humans were to have the cities, while the elves and their magical kin should have the forests.   Then to ensure that truce, the elves gave away their only form of leverage.  Because thats obviously what you do when you’re winning a war.  You give up and destroy greatest weapons.  

“But poppa, didn’t the elves live for countless years?  In that time, shouldn’t they have gained at least a modicum of sense?”

Nope.  Not only did they give away their only form of leverage, but over the years they hid themselves, gave up their lands, and let their great numbers dwindle to but a few shanty towns hidden in the refuse of the humans.  They never thought to keep their society well known and present for all to see.  They didn’t want to remind the human world of the treaty they had signed, by remaining an ever present and highly visible population of the world.  Staunch defenders of the woodlands, which they fought so valiantly to protect.  No, they hid themselves behind glamours, only to be known to a few secretive humans.  

“But, surely with the truce they were able to maintain an even footing with the humans.  What with undeveloped forest land at that time qualling the size of civilized towns of the period.”

Once again you’re wrong, my buck toothed freak  child.  They made no stipulations for growth in the peace treaty.  They basically just stopped killing the humans even though they easily could have, and in return for this act were reduced to freaks, hiding in the dark hovels that became their homes.  In other words my dear lad, the elves were stupid.

——

The humans that this story portray are basically complete assholes at all times.  You can’t even save their damn babies without their horror shows of a mom yelling at you.  Even though it was plain as fucking day that the savior of your child, just shot the evil plant giant in the head with a really large gun.  I couldn’t tell whether I hated the humans more for their stupidity in the face of their obvious savior, or the elves for being so stupid to having gotten into this predicament in the first place.  

Now that the lines in the sands of idiocy have been drawn, lets take a look at some of the smaller bits of stupidity.

The princess and prince of the elven nation are twins.   They not only share a biological connection, but through magic are connected to such a degree that pain inflicted on one affects the other.  Knowledge known by one is learned by the other.   So when men come and save you from your evil brother, and take you back to their secret base, wouldn’t it have been better to share that knowledge with them beforehand?  This bit of stupidity seems common enough in movies.  Characters with hold vital information, that in any logical situation would have been shared at the earliest convenience.  Much like Harry Osborn’s butler, decided to hold onto the little tidbit about his friend being an evil maniac, and that his death had not been caused by Spiderman, only after Harry’s face getting blown half off, and adopting an evil alter ego as the goblin.

Another oddity came in the actual confrontation at the BPRD between the twins.  After announcing to a room full of agents that any damage done to the princess affects the prince, the prince was somehow allowed to take the princess hostage.  He was then able to walk out of the room.  He basically took himself hostage.

Oh baby you are so talented, and they are so dumb.

Let’s face it, these aren’t wise elves.  How else can you explain making the key to your indestructable army of robots more destructable than the actual map that leads to said army.  Liz barely got warm and the damn thing disintegrated. How did something so flimsy even last so long?  Why wasn’t the keystone piece just melted when they first met the princess?

Going back to this whole shared twin connection thing, when her brother was dueling hellboy, why didn’t the princess just sit on her hand until was numb, or hell even punch herself in the crotch.  Instead of stabbing yourself in the heart, why not just stub your toe a bit, or smack your wrist against a sharp ledge.  

Superheroes never use their powers to full potential.  If you have a connection to a villain, exploit it.  If you have the power to turn yourself on fire than start with that when faced with thousands of tiny biting creatures, rather than shooting off a hand gun.  If you have the power to control any creature control the guy controlling the army, or control an indestructable robot to kill the controller.

Thankfully Hellboy redeems himself by using his powers to their fullest potential.  He punches shit.

3 Comments »

1. A lot of those things bugged me too, but I tried to dismiss them as plot logic. I was bugged by other stupid things in the movie instead, which I touched on in my review.

   Comment by Skeeter — April 21, 2009 @ 10:03 am

2. Agree 100%, the plot has so many loopholes, it’s really annoying. And I actually enjoyed the movie, but these illogical things kinda stopped it from being great. Especially the ending sucked. IT MAKES NO SENSE that the princess has to stab herself at that point.

   Comment by Miika — August 2, 2009 @ 5:11 am

3. Claro sois derechos. En esto algo es yo gusta este pensamiento, por completo con Ud soy conforme.

   Comment by cubrikaska — October 3, 2009 @ 6:27 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment