Until it heads off to the fabled Giants Causeway in Antrim, Northern Ireland, Guillermo del Toro‘s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is a New York film, like its predecessor, 2004’s Hellboy. As I wrote in my post on Hancock, New York is still superhero central. (Though I’m told that Gotham City in The Dark Knight, which opens this week, is meant to be seen as a version of contemporary Chicago.)
In Hellboy 2, the elvish prince, Nuada (played by Luke Gross), emerges from under the streets of Manhattan to declare war on humankind. And underneath the eastern end of the Brooklyn Bridge is the troll market, which seems to be Del Toro’s homage to the famous cantina scene in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). Last Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times featured an article about Del Toro’s fascination with fantastic creatures and the diaries of artwork in which the inspiration for Hellboy 2 took shape. [Click here for a multimedia version of the article.]
In both Hellboy films, the title character (played by Ron Perlman) chafes at being kept out of view and hidden from “the outside world.” He lives, after all, at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Development, located in …. Trenton, New Jersey.
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