Definitely better than the first, though I enjoyed the first more than some. Definitely worth seeing, though. Lots of special effects, of course, but done in a very compelling way, more so than most of the other effects movies I've seen. Very very nice art design on most of it, and that's actually funny... when seeing the commercials and trailers, my first thought was "Damn, some of this totally looks like
Wayne Barlowe" (yes, I have an amazing speech-to-hyperlink ability), and it turns out, he did work on the first Hellboy movie, and he was a concept artist on this one! There are several designs in the movie that look very, very much like something he'd work on, and since I've become a huge fan of his over the years, it was cool to see something of his show up in a movie. I'm mostly familiar with him because of the aforelinked book,
Brushfire, and his book of
aliens, so I don't know what other work he's really done. I'm sure he's been involved in a film or two by this point. A big surprise to me, however, was to just now discover that he's also done
fiction. How the fuck did I miss that, especially when his portraits of demons and landscapes of Hell amount to my favorite works of his? I have to go buy that, like, right now.
