“Yeah, I know I’m ugly.”

One wishes that Guillermo del Toro had a screenplay worthy of the stunning visuals and the fundamental theme of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth was a masterpiece of storytelling, a rather grim faerie tale set in Franco’s Spain. That same stunning visual vocabulary is employed with a much wider range in Golden Army.

The central theme of the story is that human civilization has been bought at a terrible price. A pact between humanity and the forces of nature – faeriekind – has been violated. And while it is the faerie prince that has declared war on humanity, it’s not entirely unwarranted. The interesting conceit of the movie is that the only difference between the mythic world of the fae and trolls and that of humanity is perspective.

The story seemed little more than a comic book script, and not even a glorified one at that. One wishes as much care and attention to the details had gone into the crafting of the story that went into the crafting of the visuals. And in yet another season dominated by comic book-based movies, that’s disappointing. Let's hope his next project, The Hobbit, has happier results.