: (Danny Elfman) In
2008, director Guillermo del Toro returned to the world of Hellboy for
his second adventure in four years, following the success of
with a sequel that cranks up the exotic locations and
action sequences to the next level. With the background of the
superheroes established in the first film,
takes the same group of misfits under the protection of the FBI
(minus the dorky human agent from the first tale) and progresses their
narratives into a conflict with the nastiest creatures of the fantasy
world, ones just a single artifact away from being unleashed on
humanity. The broken truce between humans and the monsters of the night,
large and small, gives del Toro the opportunity to do what he does best:
dazzle us with amazing visuals of underworlds with giant turning gears
(once again) and bizarre creatures that Hellboy and his team must
contend with. Critical response to the sequel was more positive than
that of the first film, though a few noteworthy holes in the plot were
commonly mentioned. One member of the original
crew who
wanted to return for the sequel (but was never asked) was Marco
Beltrami, who wrote a stirring score with a memorable theme for that
film. Instead, del Toro hired Danny Elfman, still the master of the
superhero genre in the Digital Age at the time, to start completely
over. Elfman, after several years of less than stellar production,
exploded in 2008 with three remarkable scores in the first half of the
year alone. His Philip Glass-like work for
is the kind of
score that longtime Elfman collectors were destined to appreciate the
most. It's massively orchestral and choral, with rowdy action sequences
and beautiful interludes, complimented by several character and location
cues of zany instrumentation and rhythm. It even, for good measure,
concludes the first statement of the title theme with a big gong hit,
raising memories of Elfman's first and best superhero score,
Enthusiasts of the
Hellboy franchise will likely be
disappointed that none of the traits of Beltrami's score carry over; the
cool thumping of the electric bass rhythm in the credits and the
well-established main theme are absent. The director asked Elfman if the
composer could retain some of Beltrami's thematic material, but Elfman
declined. Interestingly, though, Elfman's replacement path does not
stray often into
Men in Black territory and utilize the
electronics you might expect. Movie critic Roger Ebert even compared the
action music in
Hellboy II: The Golden Army to John Williams'
Star Wars, a film that received significant mentioning in
relation to this del Toro vision because of similar portrayals of
strange creatures. That comparison is not really accurate from a pure
film music standpoint, though, for while Elfman does utilize a few
moments of classic romanticism in his orchestral outbursts, most of his
work is firmly rooted in the gothic sound that he used at the start of
his career. That should come as a pleasant surprise for fans of the
composer. Indeed,
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is, in its vast
majority, a throwback score to the glory days of Elfman's honeymoon with
Hollywood. There are extended sequences of grand tonality and choir that
pull at the same sentimental strings, with over ten minutes of such
material being the first uninterrupted performances of pretty Elfman
melancholy at the time since
The Family Man in 2000. Between "The
Last Elemental" and the first half of "Finale" alone, the album for
Hellboy II: The Golden Army was always likely be worth the price
for fans of this sound. A few of the action cues explode with complex
structures from
Sleepy Hollow, offering generally the same
instrumentation as well. Thematically, Elfman explores several
interesting lines throughout the score, led by a repeating four-note
motif that ominously sets the stage in "Hellboy II Titles" and outright
dominates the work. Ironically, this prevailing identity doesn't
represent the titular character; instead, it's a malleable theme for the
villains, one that stomps and growls through much of the score but turns
sorrowful for a moment at the end before a rousing send-off in its base
villain form. Elfman also applies the motif cyclically as a
rhythm-setting in some cues as well.
Among the secondary themes in
Hellboy II: The Golden
Army is an actual, somewhat cool identity for Hellboy himself, a
pair of descending phrases that mostly occupies the comedic conversation
scenes but also translates into some of the action late in the score.
Don't expect this idea to get the integration it really needs in the
score, instead known best for its carefree
Men in Black demeanor
early on. A forceful march on brass serves as a decent explosion of
menace for the actual army employed by the villains, previewed in the
opening titles and hinted in a few other places but save for its best
display in the latter half of "In the Army Chamber," where it explodes
with all the mayhem that Elfman can muster for crazed hordes of
weirdness. Two love themes exist in the score, both of them the lighter
variety of lamentation that Elfman excels at. The idea of romance for
Red and Liz is often carried by soft woodwinds and piano, though
Elfman's usual sense for the darkly melodramatic performances in "A Big
Decision" and "A Choice" aren't quite as deep or as resonating as Elfman
can get. These cues still make for lovely respites in the narrative, and
the same applies to the doomed, secondary love theme for another pair of
characters in "Reading Each Other" and "A Link." The composer handles
the narrative well in
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, though most
listeners will simply come away with the frequent villains' theme as the
only lasting melodic representation. Fans will inevitably compare the
Beltrami and Elfman scores, and being that they both exist in the
franchise, there is merit to such discussion. But they succeed for
different reasons. Beltrami played more strongly upon the sarcastic
humor of Hellboy and the general style of attitude he exudes. Elfman
does the same to a lesser extent, but the major difference between the
two scores is the inherent tragedy conveyed by the second score and the
difference in thematic continuity. Beltrami's catchy title theme for the
first film wasn't outstanding, but it was extremely consistent in its
straightforward employment. In Elfman's score, you hear many singular
highlights that form a whole based on tone rather than structure, even
with the villain theme's omnipresence. There are a couple of distinct
weaknesses to Elfman's work for the sequel, and indeed one of them is
the clarity of the secondary thematic development, particularly for
Red.
There are so many rich melodic ideas in
Hellboy II:
The Golden Army that it's quite disappointing that, at least on
album, they don't really come together in the end. The "Finale" even
masks the Hellboy and villains' themes by overlapping their various
four-note progression in layers that deny listeners the kind of clarity
in sendoff that the
Batman and
Spider-Man scores always
exhibited. The other detraction in the sequel score is Elfman's return
to pure silliness in several cues, letting rip with
Mars Attacks!
style of loungey jazz and even a theremin in "Hallway Cruise," a few
token high-range "la-la" vocals from the earliest days of his career, a
Nightbreed revisit in the quirky, bombastic rhythms of "A Troll
Market," and the totally bizarre, Eastern-sounding source piece for that
market which, for some senseless reason, ended up appended to "Finale"
on the initial album. (That was a really awful way to end the album even
though it cleverly states some thematic material from the rest of the
score.) Still, even with these detractions comes the comfort of knowing
that each of these modes is clearly within Elfman's typical realm of
creativity, so an avid fan of the composer will find nothing completely
out of place in
Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The texture of the
score is a compensating highlight, with very deep male choral work and
an occasional electric guitar sticking to memory. Also yielding a smirk
on any film music collector's face will be the composer's occasional
overt borrowing of Bernard Herrmann's classic monster mode at times, a
specific request from the director that culminates in the monumental
brass and timpani extravaganza in "Doorway Part 13." The original
Varèse Sarabande album of 2008 ran just under an hour and wasn't
completely faithful to the narrative. A 2023 expanded product from the
same label pushes the presentation out to 81 minutes and does more
justice to the secondary themes of the work. But, much to the annoyance
of the score's enthusiasts, the product is still missing critical music
from the final fight scene of the film and does not contain the prior
album's arguably superior version of "Finale" (before the source music
intrusion that partially overlaps it). For casual listeners, either
album will suffice, as
Hellboy II: The Golden Army represented an
overdue return to Elfman's often beautiful gothic tendencies in most of
its length, but it may not resonate with the same success as the best
music from his early days.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 153,889 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
