This part of the plot is a bit like Prince Caspian, but nastier: the creatures of wood and glade are again rebelling under their elfin leaders, but we (humanity, the audience) we’re on the wrong side. On this occasion, he is challenged to choose between the uncontrolled greed and selfishness of humanity and defending the environment they have ravaged. In a choice that seems to mirror Mary’s, but with even more than a mother’s feeling, Liz chooses the pain of love, in the knowledge of this prophesy of appalling destruction: Hellboy’s destiny is to destroy the world.įor at some point in this sequence of films, this ‘Hellboy’, the ‘Child of the Fallen One,’ will be forced himself to choose between the human and the diabolical.

Death offers Liz a choice: life now, but only with the assured and certain destiny of a worse and more painful fate later. After the briefest of quests, Hellboy-in the arms of his beloved, almost like a pieta-come into the presence of the only creature that can save him: his own Death. This is more than a literal danger, for Hellboy is in love with another paranormal being, the beautiful and fiery Liz, by this point in the film known to be carrying his babies in her womb. Every time science tries to remove it, the lustrous metal shard magically grows a millimetre or two, further menacing the hero’s heart. On this occasion, Hellboy is mortally wounded by the magical tip of an elfin spear, broken off and embedded deep into his flesh. They are just one of the numerous reasons (an angry elf reminds us in the first fifteen minutes) why we used to be scared of the dark, until we forgot about the existence of that other, shrouded, shapeless world from which Hellboy and the other demons-not-demons in this film come from.Īnother nicely dark sequence comes with one of those moments of heroes’ weaknesses-as always, a combination of the physical and iconically male with something softer. These are released from the forgotten or repressed realm of the unconscious to scuttle around safe, urbane Manhattan with the speed and agility of cockroaches, the fearsomeness of scorpions and the rapacity of locusts. My top favourite is the tooth fairies: they’re called tooth fairies, because they start with your teeth-and then eat the rest of you. There are a number of thought-provoking and enjoyably dark moments in Hellboy.

Hellboy 2 toothfairies