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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Danny Elfman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek a return by Danny Elfman to his days of
gothic melodrama, even if the consistency of thematic resonance isn't
quite the same.
Avoid it... if you demand firm connections to Marco Beltrami's entertaining score for Hellboy, Elfman himself opting to start fresh with the concept.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Hellboy II: The Golden Army: (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
Hellboy 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, Hellboy II: The Golden
Army 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 Hellboy 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 Standard Operating
Procedure and edgy crossover score for Wanted are impressive
in their own ways, but Hellboy II: The Golden Army 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,
Batman.
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. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
2008 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 59:25
2024 Varèse Album: Total Time: 81:53
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 2008 Varèse album includes no extra
information about the score or film. That of the 2024 expanded album
includes notes about both.
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