Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a 2008 American superhero film based on the fictional character Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. The film was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro and is a sequel to the 2004 film Hellboy, which del Toro also directed. Ron Perlman reprises his starring role as the eponymous character. Hellboy II: The Golden Army was released by Universal Pictures.

Plot
The evil Prince Nuada is hell-bent on bringing the Golden Army to life, which will help him to conquer the world. Hellboy and his team join forces to defeat the callous ruler.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Once again, it's still not faithful to the source material. Except, it now wants to act like an action comedy rather than a superhero movie, making it even worse than the last time.
 * 2) Seen in the first film, Hellboy has feelings for Liz Sherman, and he succeeds by kissing her while on fire. He tries so hard to appeal to her and even almost congratulates John Myers for bringing her back to the BPRD. In this film, for whatever reason, Liz now hates Hellboy while Hellboy constantly gets her into an abusive relationship., meaning every effort he put to build a relationship meant absolutely nothing.
 * 3) While the CGI is an improvement of the last film, it's still dull for 2008 standards. In fact, there's an animated segment at the beginning that looks like a late PlayStation 2 cutscene.
 * 4) The main antagonist, Nauda, is generic. He is your typical "father casts him out and comes back for revenge" type of villain, who's also just power-hungry for the sake of being such.
 * 5) As a comedy, it's not really that funny.
 * 6) * Most of the "humor" is Hellboy abusing Liz in their relationship, and it treats that like a joke.
 * 7) * A shameless attempt to advertise the song Can't Smile Without You by Barry Manillow by having Hellboy and Abe Sapien drunkly singing it.
 * 8) * Hellboy literally breaks Krauss's body, with revenge being slammed by locker doors. That, too, is treating as a joke.
 * 9) Just like the last film, it relies a lot on expedition over explanation (it's not a big issue unlike the previous, though). Because of this, it adds Krauss, a ghost inside of a suit, whose only motivation is to overprotect Hellboy from doing any trouble. Because, it forms "comedy" over Hellboy and him hating each other until Hellboy's near-death experience where he just goes into "okay, let's break the rules because screw the BPRD" mode.
 * 10) * If anything, it does basically anything to form "comedy," which is a problem considering Hellboy was never a comedy comic book series to begin with.
 * 11) The final fight scene. While it starts out with a decent action scene involving Hellboy and his crew fighting off the Golden Army, it then declines when Nauda challenges Hellboy, with his response saying "I'm going to kick his ass." Surely enough, he does kick his ass, nearly even without getting touched, which shows this movie was trying to portray him as a god-like creature. Hellboy may be hard to defeat, but going as far as to make nearly immortal? That's too much. But that's not it, predictably, Hellboy defeats Nauda, but instead of killing him for his crimes, he just takes the crown. Not like it matters, because he dies very anti-climatically by his sister committing suicide for him to feel the pain. Because of her death, he turns into a gold statue and dies, and that's it, that's how the film literally ends!
 * 12) * Followed by that, Hellboy and his crew quit the BPRD, and Liz confirms to having twins, baiting a sequel that never happened and instead, a reboot happened.

Good Qualities

 * 1) It's an improvement of the last film in many ways, including its CGI, a bit more explanation, and the action scenes (despite the final fight) being more fun than usual.
 * 2) The soundtrack that was performed by Danny Elfman was pretty good.
 * 3) Amazing performances from Ron Perlman, Seth McFarlane, Selma Blair, Luke Goss, Doug Jones, and other actors.
 * 4) The cinematography is still decent.
 * 5) Suck my ectoplasmic Schwanzstücke!

Reception
Hellboy II: The Golden Army received positive reviews from critics, but received more mixed reactions from audiences and fans. Although many saw it better than the last film, many still found it "unfaithful" and dismissed it.