Making $35 million at the box office this past weekend, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" laid the Right Hand of Doom on its competition, dominating the weekend box office by winning its opening frame.
Which, in this town, means that by Wednesday morning, the film is already old news.
Fans of Big Red, Abe Sapien and the rest of the BPRD can take heart, however, since the "Hellboy" cast and crew are eagerly eyeing part three, a film director Guillermo del Toro insists has been planned all along. (Slight spoiler warning for those who've yet to see "Hellboy II.")
Indeed, during a particularly memorable scene in "Golden Army," Hellboy is brought badly injured to the chamber of the Angel of Death by Liz Sherman, where he is cured of his injuries at a grave cost to the rest of humanity. Save him and lose the world, the Angel tells Liz, prophesying Hellboy's future role in nothing less than the apocalypse itself. It's that choice — fate versus feeling — that will be a repeated theme throughout "Hellboy III," Del Toro said.
"The third movie deals with the grander choice, the grander issue in facing what you were meant to do, which is the end of days, and [Hellboy] has to go with that," he told MTV News. "The first one was the birth of Hellboy, the second one's the teenage choice, and the third one is the adult consequence of what he chose in the second movie. So the third movie would deal with essentially facing your destiny, if such a thing exists, and making the ultimate decision. The saying goes, 'As you turn 40, you turn into your father.' That's not good for Hellboy."
Hellboy, of course, is a demon spawn of, well, hell, which makes his old man the devil himself. In the comics, it is said that his Right Hand of Doom is the key to opening up the world to ancient beasties, thus beginning the end of days. While it is never quite clear, in the comics or the film, exactly how that will happen, it is known, somehow, that it will happen whether Hellboy wants it or not.
But could he want it? Hellboy, after all, doesn't truly belong to any world — certainly not the world of humans and almost certainly not the world of fantasy either. He is a stranger to both, only coming to realize this during "Hellboy II."
"The first movie was Hellboy saying, 'I'm human. Everything I see from the side I come from, I reject.' The second movie is him realizing that what he is defending may not all be bad," Del Toro said. "When he finds the empathy of the Elemental being the last of his kind, there is a moment in which Hellboy asks — thick-skulled as he is, because he is thick-skulled — it kind of dawns on him that it may not be wrong to be a monster, which is a nice character progress."
Interestingly, however, it's Liz, not Hellboy, who is given the active choice in "Golden Army," choosing to save her lover at any cost. It's a choice that, in "Hellboy III," will mean "lots of pain," actress Selma Blair said.
"I'd want there to be a lot of pain, like unendurable pain, and somehow getting through it. You know, take pain to the limit," she said of where she thinks the third film picks up. "She's made this choice in 'Hellboy II' to save her man, and she will suffer the most. The Angel of Death hints at this — that she will suffer the most. And what could possibly make someone suffer the most unendurable pain to save the one you love?"
"There is nothing that I could ever dream or imagine that [Guillermo's] not going to dream or imagine so much cooler than me," Ron Perlman said. "So I've come to stop dreaming and imagining when it comes to being around Guillermo del Toro, because what he provides for all of us is way beyond anybody."
That means waiting for the director to become available again, all agreed, whether that takes four years, five years or more. Del Toro, of course, is committed for the foreseeable future to "The Hobbit."
"I'm going to let him tell me how he wants it to go. If he wants to wait until 2013 when I'm 63, there's no problem," Perlman laughed. "I'll play Hellboy."
"We'll be the oldest superheroes in history," Doug Jones added. "But we have to have Guillermo for 'Hellboy III,' absolutely. No question. It has to be Guillermo del Toro."
Jones, in fact, already has an idea for where his character can go. While Hellboy and Liz are saving the world, or ending it, Jones just has one simple wish for Abe Sapien: More Abe Sapien!
I sat down with him at the hotel for breakfast one day and he said, 'Listen, before you even ask, I don't know where he comes from.' I was like, 'You created the comic book!' "
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