Blu-ray Review: Hellboy II - The Golden Army - Page 2

A loud, overwhelming 7.1 DTS-HD mix is the stuff you buy Blu-ray for. This one mixed several notches higher than your usual settings, so be aware. The low end of this mix is amazing. Every footstep of the big creatures, every explosion, and every gunshot resonates with an effective boom that you’d expect with the best summer efforts. Separation is incredible, filling the room with specific audio cues in every channel. At times, it can become somewhat muddy when the action becomes hectic (as stated earlier, it’s loud), but rest assured every speaker is receiving the expected amount of work at the same time purely because of the on-screen action.

Hellboy II comes packed inside a two-disc set. Disc 1 begins with a commentary from del Toro, and another one from Jeffery Tambor, Selma Blair, and Luke Gross. There’s enough details in there to keep you going, yet there’s still an impressive set tour of the troll market, six deleted scenes, storyboard comparisons, epilogue comic, and a somewhat fun comic book creator that lets you use stills to create your own story.

BD-Live features offer only one specific featurette on Hellboy. The rest is promotional. Del Toro hosted a live chat via the menu which has since passed. U-Control featurettes run via a picture-in-picture window, and remain the most annoying way to access content on these discs. Just give them a separate menu so viewers don’t need to watch the entire movie for a few features.

After all of that, disc 2 must be packed, but it exists purely for one feature: Hellboy: In Service of the Demon. This nearly 160-minute documentary is simply awesome. Nothing is left to the imagination, and to see the creation of the countless suits is incredibly informative. Sadly this isn’t in HD as it’s presented on a standard DVD. There’s a still gallery of posters on this disc as well.

Del Toro was determined to direct this sequel, turning down numerous projects. On that list were I Am Legend, One Missed Call, and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Peter Jackson even approached him to helm the much discussed Halo film, which he also turned down.

Article Author: Matt Paprocki

Matt Paprocki is a 12-year movie and game critic. He currently freelances for Blu-ray review site DoBlu.com and video game site MultiPlayerGames.com.

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