Initially, Guillermo envisioned a trilogy of Hellboy films, but now he thinks a third Hellboy movie won’t happen. If Hellboy II: The Golden Army is Guillermo’s swan song to the franchise, he feels well satisfied. No film is ever perfect, or could ever fully transmit every notion or realize every detail, but with Hellboy II Guillermo is unconcerned, he says, “because I like it so much. I’m in love with what we got. I cannot be objective. I don’t want everybody to agree. I’m just declaring that, for me, it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve done.”
With Prince Nuada [Luke Goss] and Princess Nuala (Anna Walton), del Toro wanted to create a race of elves with pale, porcelain-like skin, an idea he explored in the notebooks (OPPOSITE), and which resonates with figures from his other films.
MSZ: Again, the continuity of ideas from movie to movie is interesting. You start, with The Devil’s Backbone, to use porcelain skin that cracks, and then you go do this. How did that play into your ideas about how to push elves and fantasy away from the Celtic tradition?
GDT: Well, I think elves should be kick-ass. I love Michael Moorcock’s Elric, and I think elves are really savage warriors. I love the idea of an elf being white, completely white, almost ivory-like. And being creatures of such perfection that they almost shouldn’t be flesh-like.
I’m very proud of Nuada and Nuala, his sister. They’re very beautiful creations, and the idea that when elves die, they turn to stone? I love that idea because I thought then entire fields—battlefields—of elves are now stones, fallen stones. And when they go to Bethmora and the Giant’s Causeway, they see a lot of stones, and I’m just thinking, “Those are fallen elves that fell defending the city.”
NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 28B
ARABIC!!
Signs indicating the names of the zones in the Troll Market, made of bronze or a similar material and posted on the columns in the tunnel.
–Lights made by sources in the floor and wall
–Why is A.S. so driven to speak with the princess so fast?
–A story that reunites the best moments of M.R., one by one.
–Perhaps the prince’s chamber could be in the TROLL MKT, which would be why the organ grinder’s monkey finds it so easily.
–Sufism is infinite and therefore it’s everywhere and nowhere. It’s inside us but eludes us. It doesn’t exist but it’s always present. It consumes us each day, as if we were petty nourishment for its fires, which are our own.
–Everything that happens strengthens us. Pain, loss (which is nothing but exchange),and death which is but another transformation of our energy.
–C.C. of the rest of the film
• Map Shop in Gold/Greens
• Army Base 1955. Earth tones, military green, and blue and yellow Christmas lights.
• Flashback in shades of Scarlet and gold that don’t regain their intensity until the end of the film.
– Nuada Silverlance
–The magic world’s color code.
– • The T.M. GREENS BLUES GOLD RUST RED.
• Throne Room: GOLD and BLACK
• Bethmora: Ochre/ Gray/Amber
• G.A.C. Golds/Scarlets
• Little hallway Ipepe: Greens/Gold.
NOTEBOOK 4, PAGE 24A
11/8/06 13 Goyas and I’ll throw out the A. Shave. I hope everything turns out well.
11/24/06 War, murder, people killing people they don’t know, those are facts. The barrier between us, that one we can’t break, you and I, that is tragedy. Pure and simple.
–If I move the prologue so that it contains the legend of G.Q., it will make the TROLL MARKET section lighter.
–It’s important for the “Elemental” sequence to feature a large-scale scene and show us “NATURE VS. M”
–They show the king the Elemental grenade and call it “the Bad”
–Placing our faith in organized religion makes beggars of us, starving people pleading for something that they carry, and have always carried, within
—You disgusting–meat sacks of GARBAGE.
HB [?] set.
—THE WORLD—etc.—“Keep up the good work”
The prince does his “cleansing,” little by little the graphics mix together with the graffiti.
Royal markings
–Angel of Death.
plays with lives.
–What is evil if not the work of the virtuous man?
–Perhaps it would be a good idea if Abe “read” the state of Liz’s pregnancy.
–“the immoral and impious straight line” Hunderwasser.
–Solitude and silence are the greatest gifts or the worst punishments.
–“Fairy cottage” or “Storybook architecture popular during the 20’s/30’s
Del Toro’s original idea for the Angel of Death was given a lair by Mike Mignola.
GDT: Yeah, the first time I designed the wings of the Angel of Death was for a project called Mephisto’s Bridge, but they were much more elaborate. Every feather had an eye, and each of the eyes in the feathers represented a soul. But the Angel is really rooted in medieval illustrations, which show angels with four wings and eyes in the wings. I just love that image, and I keep it in my head.
And I wanted him to be blind in the sense that he doesn’t care if you choose one path or the other. That gives him a distance. There’s something really, really sinister about the angel that is blind to human suffering, if you will. And we took a long time sculpting the faceplate because I wanted it to feel like a helmet, like a crown, but to give it the texture of real bone. And then we added the asymmetry of the crack—in a character that is all about symmetry, you put in an asymmetrical detail.
MSZ: The faceplate in the final design isn’t something I see reflected in the early drawings.
GDT: No, it literally came out when we were sculpting. I went to visit the makeup effects department, and when we started there was no faceplate. So I took a bunch of Plasticine and I started expanding it into a faceplate. And then Norman Cabrera found the half-moon shape. And we started saying, “Let’s make it bigger,” and it just happened. Sometimes I like “sketching” with clay. I used to sculpt, and am an okay sculptor, so I can get away with it, although not all of the makeup guys like it when I do it.