HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

In 2002 or thereabouts, I sat down in the theater to watch BLADE II. It was a sequel to a film I loathed, and I was only there because there was nothing else to see. The next two hours held me in a near-giddy haze of nerdish delight. The movie was half horror film/half martial arts adventure, with heavy doses of an anime-influence. What held me most was the impressive blend of CG and live action, the unique and beautiful/grotesque images, and the operatic nature of the tone. Instead of yet another somber, Euro-trash Anne Rice wannabes jammed into a cliched urban action film, BLADE II had the blood of fairytales and Shakespeare, combined with a perverse sense of humor. As Blade's sword rammed into a vamp's skull and the words DIRECTED BY GUILLERMO DEL TORO came up, I knew I had a found a special talent.

His films to date: CHRONOS, MIMIC, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, BLADE II, HELLBOY and PAN'S LABYRINTH interlock together in ways that most film directors' careers do not.  One clearly sees connecting threads, from the textures and color palettes to the stories that find humanity in monsters and monstrosity in humanity.

One of the most wonderful things about HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY is the realization (actually noted by Del Toro himself during his introduction to the film at the premiere I was lucky enough to attend) that HELLBOY is a very unique breed of blockbuster.  Amongst filmmakers, you get the "one for them, one for you" theory, that a successful filmmaker must alternate every project between crass entertainment for the masses and smaller, personal films.  Even directors like Steven Spielberg appeared in some way (especially through the mid to late 80s and again nowadays) to look down on their popular entertainment films in favor of what I would suggest was "Oscar bait."  Of course, I believe that Spielberg's best films were indeed his populist films.  What's better, COLOR PURPLE or RAIDERS?  Or EMPIRE OF THE SUN or E.T.?

It comes down to heart, for me.  You felt Spielberg putting his heart and soul in his old entertainment like JAWS or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.  But these days he only wants to put his heart into "important" movies like MUNICH.  I ask you, where was his heart in INDIANA JONES IV?

HELLBOY 2 is a film that is obviously pure entertainment.  It's a movie with a bunch of guys in monster suits fighting each other.  But it is obvious that the director loved this film equally as PAN'S LABYRINTH.  HELLBOY 2 is a summer blockbuster AND a personal film, and it makes the film stand out from the pack of big, loud movies.  

You don't need to have seen the first HELLBOY to get caught up fairly quickly in the first minute of the movie:  As WWII came to a close, Nazi occultists attempted to use black magic and horrible technology to win.  The result was a doorway to hell out of which a child emerged.  The child was a devil (and may, in fact, be the son of THE devil).  The baby, instead of being destroyed, was raised as a son by a kindly theologian/exorcist.  The baby grew to be called Hellboy, a cigar chomping paranormal detective whose detecting skills usually mean beating up monsters threatening humanity.

The film has two prologues, the first setting up the above, the second setting up THE GOLDEN ARMY.  I won't spoil it for you, but imagine if the ten minute prologue of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS was made as a Rankin/Bass Christmas special.

The movie follows the last Elvin prince, Nuada, as he seeks to wake The Golden Army, a merciless horde of goblin-made robots.  Yes, Del Toro has taken J.R.R. Tolkien and realized the one thing LORD OF THE RINGS was missing: robots.  Prince Nuada is none too happy about the state of the world.  Humanity has forgotten the old ways, the faiths and truces with the worlds of spirits and fairies.  Mankind cuts down forests and puts up parking lots and shopping malls.  The Underworld has been forced to quite literally become that: lurking in caves and sewers, trolls and fairies and elves and goblins get by day to day, but every day that passes, their numbers are fewer.  The time of the elves (as in all stories about elves) is over.  Their race is fading away.  And unlike those wussies Elrond and Galadriel, Nuada has decided that he is not quite ready to retreat to the Gray Havens.  Not without a fight.  Of course, Nuada is our villain, but it is his broken faith in humanity that is the thematic spine of this movie.

Hellboy and his compatriots, pyrokenetic girlfriend Liz, empathic fish-man Abe Sapien, and living vapor (you'll understand it when you see it) Johann Krauss are the only ones standing between humanity and Prince Nuada and his army of forrest gods, tooth fairies, giant trolls, and indestructible robots.

While battling Nuada, Hellboy must deal with a by-the-book new leader (Krauss), console a love-sick Abe, and learn that his girlfriend expects him to do the dishes sometimes.  Here is where having seen the first film, although not necessary, adds the background to give these threads some oomph.  Hellboy and Liz have a few complications to their relationship, but their love is really discovered in the first film.  It's Abe Sapien's hopeless crush on Prince Nuada's beautiful sister that is the romantic heart that pumps blood through this film.

An interesting presence (or lack thereof) in this film is the absence of the Meyers character from the first film.  A good-hearted human picked by Hellboy's dying father figure to help guide his adopted son's moral path, Meyers is absent here, having apparently been transferred to a remote arctic station by Hellboy himself (one gets the feeling that Hellboy's insecurity about his relationship with Liz may have played a part).  Meyer's job is taken first by the bureaucratic, well-meaning but ineffectual Manning, and then by the knowledgeable but near-robotic Johann Krauss.  What's important here is that Meyers took the mantle as moral compass from Hellboy's father, and without that compass, all the characters in this film are lost.  This makes for every character making dubious, selfish choices through the course of the film.

******SPOILER: The most troubling choice in this film is Hellboy's ultimate abandonment of humanity at large, a choice he makes in the last scene of the film.  Hellboy had always loved humanity, wanted to be part of their society.  He arranges himself to be publicly "outed" and at first enjoys the attention.  But he soon learns (like Winston Churchill, or even George W. Bush) that humanity is fickle.  The people who love you and proclaim you their protector may turn around and mock you or even worse, consider you just as bad as the evil you fight.  This is not a good move on society's part, considering the lingering prophecies that Hellboy may be the Beast of the apocalypse.  Although typically I would have liked to see humanity given a little more benefit of the doubt here, I believe it is this alienation that sets Hellboy up for his arc in Hellboy 3, which may wind up being the Anakin Skywalker path, if some of the gloom and doom of this movie comes true. END SPOILER****

The greatest element of HELLBOY 2 is that the world feels real.  As opposed to the CGI drenched films of recent memory, Del Toro uses CG in touches, here and there, where it can be best used, or when there is absolutely, positively no way to do the scene practically.  It's this use of puppets, animatronics, costumes and CG that make the journey through places like the Troll Market into such a visual feast.

I also love Del Toro's sense of melodrama and opera.  Of course there must be death scenes and love lost and found and lost again.  And we must, of course, have a climactic sword duel for the fate of the world.  The last thirty minutes of this film left me breathless: the Nuada duel, the battle with the Golden Army, and the chamber of the Angel of Death.

If there is one weakness to the whole proceeding, it's remains the troubling fragility of Del Toro's faith in humanity.  Like a good horror director, he loves monsters, and you see clearly that he views humanity as ugly, not the monsters.  He nonetheless also understands basic morality, and Nuada's righteous anger does not excuse evil, and humanity's weakness does not warrant its destruction.  I had hoped that by the end of the film Hellboy had had his faith in humankind restored, but those threads will have to extend to the next film.

I had a blast during this film, and you will too.  It's more imagination and skill for your buck than any other film released this summer.  

For the LORD OF THE RINGS fans out there:  Go watch this movie.  Did you see it?  Good.  Now:  This is the guy who's going to be visualizing Smaug.  That should make us all very happy.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF SUCK

Indiana Jones. I knew one day you'd come back to the big screen. I never doubted it. Something made it inevitable.

And now I've learned to hate you. Not in the last 19 years that you've been gone. No, I've learned to hate you in the week since I've seen CRYSTAL SKULL. After the waiting, hoping, wishing, all I have to say is this:

You belong in a museum.

Yes, Dr. Jones, you belong in a museum. One dedicated to the good adventure films, the films of my childhood, the films where filmmakers were more interested an entertaining than political messages, the films that dazzled with music and stuntmen and awe-inspiring effects.

Put shortly, in bringing Indiana Jones back for his 4th adventure, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have created a towering monument, not to what was right with old-school movie-making, but instead what is so very wrong with modern fantasy/adventure movie-making. There is not one moment of genuine awe, excitement, emotion or fun in this film. In fact, this film is far worse than being "okay" or "meh." Somehow, through either arrogance or boredom, these great men have created the worst film of their lives. Frankly, CRYSTAL SKULL's incompetence make THE MUMMY look like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and NATIONAL TREASURE look like LAST CRUSADE.

I was very clear in earlier posts in the last couple years that I was very wary of the storyline. I knew of the several INDIANA JONES scripts floating around, and I was aware of one with the worrisome title INDIANA JONES AND THE SAUCER MEN FROM MARS. And yes, as the rumors of crystal skulls and new titles like CITY OF THE GODS began showing up, I grew more and more concerned. The idea of replacing the divine with the extraterrestrial as the film's central object of question was foolish at best, repellent at worst. And by the time we actually SEE the alien at the end of INDY 4, and by see, I don't mean a strange figure surrounded by light--I mean full on Grey alien from X-files in extreme closeup, fully soft-lit, scowling at us--by the time we see the alien, we realize one (or all) of four things: 1) George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have no idea why religion is so important to people, 2) George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have no idea what really makes an Indiana Jones film work, 3) George Lucas and Steven Spielberg didn't really care about this movie, or 4) We were victims of the greatest practical joke in movie history.

Indy was always chasing divine objects. These totems represented or contained great power from an unseen Source, whether it be the Ark, the Grail, or even the (unjustly) much maligned Shankara Stones. These artifacts (especially the Ark and most especially the Holy Grail) had the benefit of years of myth and storytelling behind them. The Ark is a holy symbol of the Bible, known and sacred to billions. And the Grail, while perhaps created many years after Biblical writings, is still linked to the faith of billions of people through its connection to Christ. In short, the true power of Indiana Jones was that the "MacGuffins" of his best quests were far more than that. And at the end of each Indy movie, the non-believing Indy would have his lack of faith challenged as the superstitious mumbo-jumbo turned out to be real, showing up just in time to nuke, scorch, freeze-dry or otherwise dispatch Indy's foe. The whole subtext of LAST CRUSADE was Jones taking the "leap of faith" to understand and accept his father's Christianity and in doing so, his father himself.

But having aliens be the central focus of Indy's latest adventure is akin to having vampires show up half-way through the movie. It's not just that it is an automatic drop in the awe-factor, but it's actually an entire shift of tone and content, perhaps even GENRE for the franchise. It is as silly and out of place as if Obi-Wan Kenobi found a prophecy in STAR WARS 3 that prophesied a messiah that would be born on a small blue planet and that this messiah would be the Son of God and that believing in him would give you eternal life (and that's why he and none of the other dead Jedi get to come back as blue spirits).

Here's the real kick in the nuts: Aliens are the least of INDY 4's problems.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is a BAD FILM. It is the worst film of Steven Spielberg's career. Beyond a lack of heart as found in JURASSIC PARK: LOST WORLD or completely missing the mark like 1941, CRYSTAL SKULL is actually a movie that is poor in basic fundamental filmaking 101 ways.

Let's start with the "special effects." Whereas old-school Indy relied on special effects for the big money-shots, INDY 4 uses CGI for everything. From the warehouse full of boxes to the army ants to the truck chase, everything is greenscreen and CG. But it's not good CG. Despite being the team behind Transformers and Iron Man, and despite the fact that George Lucas owns them, Industrial Light and Magic does horrid work here. Every effect shot screams EFFECT SHOT! That is not what a special effect is supposed to do. It's supposed to help tell the story, not distract you by calling attention to itself, especially if it not of quality caliber.

The music is forgettable. Think about how memorable the theme of the Ark is. It's so good that they can use it in trailers (and in a good portion of the film) and it still sends a chill up your spine. Here, the music is perfunctory to forgettable, save the few times stopping every now and then to do a useless riff on Jones' thematic Raiders March, or a few diddies from Last Crusade. John Williams is obviously uninspired by the film here, and he puts out uninspired work.

The editing is bad. Consider the diner scene. A second year film student could see the bad cuts here, especially around the dialogue. I wish I could talk to Michael Kahn, because this feels wrong. The action is cut too slow, the dialogue is cut too fast. Something's off from the moment Indy says "Russians..."

The lighting is bullshit. Despite Spielberg's claims that he and longtime collaborator Janusz Kaminski were painstakingly recreating the soft, saturated yet realistic light and colors of retired INDY director of photography Douglas Slocombe, they simply slip right back into the style they have developed since the turn of the century. Lots of smoke, metallic color palettes, hot highlights, they are all here, in no real rhyme or reason, turning the whole look of INDY 4 into a far more stylized affair than they were probably hoping for. My sister (not an industry insider) asked on the way out of the theater, "Why did that whole movie look like SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW?" If it were any other movie, I'd probably consider them beautiful, but here the lighting does exactly what the CG does: It draws attention to itself and it obviously doesn't fit the story.

Even the production design of this film manages to drop the ball. Somehow, despite being the most expensive Jones adventure, this feels the cheapest, the smallest. The sets of the final temple feel cramped and bland, especially when compared to what came before: the Well of the Souls with its towering Anubis and plethora of snakes and mummies, the menacing, glowing caverns of the Temple of Doom, or the treacherous and awe-inspiring cave inside the Canyon of the Crescent Moon. CRYSTAL SKULL's sets look borrowed and stolen from--you guessed it--the backlots of the Mummy and National Treasure movies.

The acting. The best actor here is Jim Broadbent, doing a rather wonderful homage to Denholm Elliot's Marcus Brody. Shia is pretty good with what he's got to work with. Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, John Hurt and Ray Winstone are given very little meat to work with, so they all chew the scenery best they can (Cate's having a great time, you can tell). The real stinker here is, funny enough, Harrison Ford. He's terrible. Every line falls flat. Although the script is an abortion, you would think he could show up and try. In some ways, I feel Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg have some kind of psychic link going on here. Are they bored? Are they over this sort of thing? Do they feel they're too good for it? Or has it been so long since they genuinely had to prove anything to anybody that they simply have forgotten the craft that made them so good? Ford misses the mark big time in this film, and it's one of the major knives through the heart of the flick.

We come to the script. How, after supposedly waiting twenty years for the right script, does George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wind up with this 120 page turd? There's even a line in this film that is a reference to an episode of Young Indiana Jones. READ THAT AGAIN. And you know what, that's what this feels like: An expanded universe tale, one of Indy's novels or comics or video games. But not the real thing. There is no humor, much less whimsy, much less suspense, needless to say any sort of awe. It's frickin' Indiana Jones, people! This movie writes itself, and yet somehow they failed.

Don't believe me that it writes itself? It's not hard. Look at LAST CRUSADE. You are just writing a mirror picture, a part 2. LAST CRUSADE was the film where Indy was fleshed out, humanized by giving him a past and a dad. Jones is searching for dad, who is searching for--literally--life. So in INDY 4, now Indy is the old man searching for life, who finds immortality by finding his son.

But David Koepp doesn't even seem to have ever seen a fucking Indiana Jones movie in his life.

First, within 30 seconds of the opening credits we are in our A story. That NEVER HAPPENS. An INDY movie is supposed to open with a PROLOGUE, a pre-adventure, where certain themes or characters are introduced, then we transition to our A story about twenty minutes or so in. In RAIDERS, we have South America, the Idol, and most importantly Belloq. In DOOM, we have Lao Che and the Obi-Wan nightclub, and of course the introductions to Willie Scott and Short Round, but the Shankara Stones and India are still a thousand miles away. In CRUSADE we have Young Indy in Utah, getting his hat, going after the Cross of Coronado, but really serving to introduce Henry Sr. and the Grail diary.

At the end of every prologue, Indy is bested, losing his artifact or payment and usually running away. In this movie, Irina bests Indy during the Area 51 "prologue." But because this is also our "A" story, something is amiss. CRYSTAL SKULL doesn't work because Indy would not give up on the crystal skull that had been stolen from Area 51. Indy would mount up and go after the Commies and the treacherous Mac. Instead, he goes back to teaching his class and only goes after the bad guys when he gets put on paid leave (like all good cop movies). This is like Indy going back to teach because he loses the Ark at the Well of the Souls or the Grail diary when Elsa betrays him. It makes for a lousy narrative.

Everything that's wrong with this movie is contained in this "prologue."

Bad dialogue and too much of it. Odd lighting and an over use of CG.

New characters with masked motives or completely unmotivated actions that are supposed to register with us. Take Mac. What idiot would introduce a major new sidekick to Indy, one that's going to be with us through the film, and have him betray Indy two minutes into the movie? Especially after they have apparently been lifelong friends? This is like Elsa in Last Crusade turning a gun on Indy in the Library, instead of a half hour later in the Castle. I don't even know why Mac is in this movie. It's like they wrote the role for Sallah, but John Rhys Davies smelled death on this project, and so they had to find another chubby actor--bingo Ray Winstone.

Then there's Irina Spalko, one of the most misused characters in the last five years. First she is supposed to be this dominatrix-style villainess, sexy and deadly. But the costume designer puts her in bulky, baggy gray unisex clothing that never allows her to even attempt a seduction of Indy. Oh wait, that's right. They didn't write a seduction of Indy. Despite the obvious possibilities inherent in having a femme fatale, especially a younger foil to Marion, the good brains on this movie decided to have Irina completely devoid of any romance or sexuality whatsoever. Then they tell us she's a psychic. Okay, that's fruity, but if you're going to bring it up, use it. This is the old dictum of introducing a loaded gun in a stage play. Eventually you have to use it. But it's not used. She stares into Indy's eyes, then apparently can't read him, and that's the last you hear of it. She's not given anything to do except Chase or Lead our heroes closer to the Destination. Frankly, she's also a big cartoon. Blanchet's accent is so thick that it borders on comical. Like most everything else in this movie, Cate needed to be reigned in, allowed to live and breathe, but be REAL.

And that's really the problem here. Nothing feels REAL. It's a CARTOON. Like The Mummy movies. Problem is, RAIDERS never felt like a cartoon. Belloq felt real, Toht felt dangerous. Even the loopier moments in DOOM or CRUSADE were grounded in some sort of reality.

As we go through the film, of the many problems that hit us, one of the bigguns is the fact that INDY DOESN'T DO ANYTHING. He's an observer. It's Mutt that finds him and brings him along on the quest, and then it's Irina explaining the crystal skull, and then it's John Hurt's Oxley who has figured out all the traps, all the secret passages, all the puzzles. Despite Indy claiming that the skull told him to bring it back to Akator, it is Oxley that returns the skull. What the fuck is this Oxley character doing here anyway? If this was supposed to be anybody, it was supposed to be Abner Ravenwood. That would have made a little sense. Marion discovers her Dad's not dead, goes after him, goes missing, sending Mutt to collect the only person who can help them.

That leads us to another narrative problem. Mutt has no idea who Indy is. So instead of two hours of an estranged father and son slowly coming together, this pair doesn't realize their connection until two-thirds of the way in, and by then the movie is going too fast to stop and give them any time together, and when the movie does stop, it's more interested in giving Indy and Marion time to reconnect. This movie couldn't do both. It could be an Indy gets a Bride movie or an Indy gets a Son movie. It didn't choose one, and so it failed on both.

Which finally brings us, after uninspired CG chases and stupid CG praire dogs and boring CG bugs and fucking CG monkeys and CG Mutt swinging like CG Tarzan and lame CG swordfights and bad CG branches hitting Shia's CG balls, to the lost city of Akator, where we learn that...

...the crystal skull belongs to an alien, people. It comes to life and burns Cate Blanchett. Why? I dunno. This is the worst. The skull claims that it wants to give the travellers a gift. When Cate steps up to get it, she gets burned alive by a scary E.T. But at the end of the movie nice music plays while Indy explains that their gift was knowledge. Excuse me? Knowledge about what? They just torched Irina, who although an utter evil bitch, had done nothing to harm, desecrate or otherwise irritate these beings. If Indy had been the one to step up, would he have been nuked too?

By the way, I don't know what sight pissed me off more: a flying fucking saucer in an Indiana Jones movie or Shia LaBeouf nearly putting on the fedora.

And the political crap. It's very hard for Spielberg et all to convince me about how eeeevil the Americans were in the 50s during the so-called "Red Scare." We're supposed to sympathize with lines like "What's happening to our country?" and feel wrong about the paranoia on campus and the "Better Dead than Red" banners, when at the same time Commie agents ARE IN FACT INFILTRATING our country, murdering US soldiers and stealing national secrets.

And please don't give me grief about this film not being that bad. Yes, it's worse than the Star Wars prequels. Yes. I said it. At least for moments during each film I found genuine entertainment. Even ATTACK OF THE CLONES, the absolute low point of the franchise, had scenes of excitement that connected.

I could go on and on and on, just stream of consciousness, bitching. This movie sucked on every level that it could have sucked, and found even new ways of sucking beyond that. We call that sucking in the space between spaces.

George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford owe the world another Indiana Jones. After 19 years, do you realize that they only started shooting last April? This movie took 35 days to shoot. Do you realize they could churn out one of these every year in no time flat? After all the abuse, like a beaten bride, I'm crawling back. Fact is, I don't want Indy to go out like this. If they do INDY 5, then we can always say that the even Indies were a little odd (although Temple of Doom is a masterpiece compared to this Crystal Skull Garbage).

I want one last go. I want a movie about Indy, not Indiana Jones and the Furthering of Shia LaBeouf's Career. I don't want National Indy where a family of five goes treasure hunting. I want an Indiana Jones movie. I want a great artifact. I want real stunts. I want good dialogue. I want good action pieces. I want awe. I want God back in my Indy. I want beats, moments of actual CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. I want to love Indy again.

Time will tell. Till then, we'll always have RAIDERS.

Gary Gygax Fails Saving Throw

The man who created Dungeons and Dragons and insured the virginity of millions of young men around the world has died today.

I have never played D&D. Growing up in hyper-conservative Christian schools and churches, you always heard that urban legend about the kid who killed his buddy because his level 15 Elf warlord did so in the game. Then I grew up and realized that D&D players are more afraid of girls than they are of red dragons, and so the concept of a 15 year old over or under-weight kid actually being able to muster the strength needed to kill somebody with their bare hands, much less being able to shoot straight without crying, was highly ludicrous.

Like I said, I've never played D&D. I'm not necessarily opposed to it. I sometimes wonder why it is that D&D is frowned on and something like fantasy football is not. I'm not sure that fantasizing about being an NFL franchise owner is any better than role-playing an Orcish gardener. But then again, I dressed up as a Jedi to see Episode One.

Gygax has insured himself a place in the Geek Pantheon. Hat's off, boys. He's gaming with Jesus now.


UPDATE: Apparently the D&D community are not as helpless as I once presumed:

Buckley Sails Away

I was shocked at the number of my peers who, in the wake of William F. Buckley's death, had no idea who this man was. I'm talking about young conservative Republicans, asking "Who was that guy?"

William F. Buckley was the father of American conservatism in the modern age--an ideology that, no matter what its flaws, I would argue has been the world's best and brightest weapon against evil since the fall of Nazi Germany.

My favorite musing as I perused the various eulogies over the last day went something like this:

Buckley gave rise to Goldwater, who gave rise to Reagan, who beat the Soviet Union. In essence, William F. Buckley won the Cold War.

Although Buckley will be remembered as a Founding Father of American Conservatism, I believe that his best moments were beyond a mere political ideology. Buckley's greatest achievement was his insistence on moral clarity, primarily on the issue of recognizing and combating evil in our time. This trait should not be specific to a political party--although sadly, it has become so.

To see this at work, take a moment and watch the two Great Minds of Right and Left do battle. This is William F. Buckley vs. Noam Chomsky (the patron saint of the modern American Left).

The debate is over the Vietnam War, but more importantly, over the Left's insistence that America's intervention abroad is always indicitive of a nebulous form of imperialism on the part of the United States.

Enjoy Buckley taking Chomsky to school.

INDIANA JONES AND THE BEST VALENTINE'S DAY EVER

BILBO'S LABYRINTH!

I know I've been gone, kiddies. The Holidays and the First Days of the New Year are always busy times for me. And I'm sorry I've been gone so long.

But I've come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.

It is being reported that Peter Jackson has tapped Guillermo Del Toro to direct the two new HOBBIT movies.

Although I would have loved to see Jackson return, if there is one director who would excite me even more, it is Del Toro. Although we all love Hellboy and Blade II, if you want to see Del Toro's real style and potential, watch his Spanish language films THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE and PAN'S LABYRINTH. I think this guy has the potential to make Middle Earth an even more magical place than it was, if that is possible.

We'll see, and all thing's are fluid in this strange land, but if Del Toro does indeed lead us back to Middle Earth, it will only be a good thing.

RETURN TO MIDDLE-EARTH

It's happening. Peter Jackson and New Line have buried their hatchets and decided to bring us two new Tolkien movies, one THE HOBBIT and one that sounds like a pseudo-Silmarillion.

This is good news, obviously, but two questions remain. Will the glut of poorly-recieved fantasy films--like Eragon, The Seeker, Stardust, The Golden Compass, etc.--dull the public's taste for High Fantasy? Probably not, but the powers that be can probably stem this tide even further by answering question two correctly:

Will Peter Jackson direct?

That is unstated as of now. It's true that Peter Jackson many times acted more as a producer on the first trilogy, sending different people off to direct different scenes. But his title on these two new films "Executive Producer" denotes far too little intrest and/or hands-on participation in these films.

If Peter Jackson decides not to direct, who would he bring in? Sam Raimi has already been discussed, and he might be a good choice. He and Peter Jackson share obvious similarities, especially in their earlier works. I will always take time out to pimp Guillermo Del Toro as a possibility, who knows how to handle SFX as well as being a beautiful and heart-breaking storyeller.

But really, I hope Jackson gets back behind the camera as the Director. After all this drama, to not be the guy helming the projects would be a let down to me.