Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

78th and FINAL Kill

Never any doubt really because what do I do with my spare time other than watch movies - a testament to the lack of jetsetting derring-do in my life - but here endeth my HoopTober challenge - 78 movies done and dusted. And a couple of days to spare. Fucking tragic, really.

The year 2008 was a turning point in the development of mainstream cinema, although we didn't know it. What was the seminal film that acted as a harbinger for this profound change?

Not Hellboy II, as it happens. There was a plucky little superhero movie that unlikely lad Jon Favreaux dropped on the world. No one other than die hard marvel comics folk was sparing a thought for Iron Man before 2008. Cut to 14 years later and the MCU has taken over the world (in fact, it's probably peaked already and may well be on the downswing), and every spare moment when one of their movies isn't playing in a multiplex, DC is dropping some giant turd on us in a desperate attempt to catch up.

But Guillermo Del Toro's off-kilter, big budget take on what is effectively a superhero film is a tantalising glimpse of an alternate reality, where fantasy and monsters and practical craft became the dominant mode of blockbuster cinema. This isn't intended as a tirade on superhero CG fests because, as a quick browse of my Letterboxd diary attests, I'm a fan of that stuff. But I couldn't help but think, as I watched this strange film unfold again after quite a gap between viewings, this is much more the model of the kind of thing that really floats my boat.

As with its predecessor, the narrative is pretty confusing. There's an argument to be made that neither Del Toro Hellboy film is particularly good from a basic storytelling point of view. But I just dig it's skew-whiff sensibility, and the narrative messiness is part and parcel of that. The fact is, Del Toro was always far more interested in the aesthetic of Hellboy than in any notion of "canon" or plot. Looking back from a world in which you need to spend at least a few years binging whichever cinematic (or televisual) universe that takes your fancy, the narrative looseness feels liberating. Basically, it doesn't really matter how much sense you make out of Hellboy II's storyline - all you need to do is get to know and love its characters and just bliss the fuck out on the visuals.

Is there a more beautiful film from Hollywood from the last 20 years? The visual wonder of Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth seems largely beyond dispute, but I'd argue it's not a patch on Hellboy II. Apples and oranges - as an overall package, you can't compare the two films, and Pan's Labyrinth clearly has the weightier emotional substance. But the lineage in terms of art design is very clear. The Faun could be one of the many monsters we see in this film, and he wouldn't even be particularly remarkable.

I could study this film forever. I could obsess over its glimpsed characters - meticulously designed and realised creations who someone spent months on for a sum total of about 2 seconds on screen. It reminds me a lot of the original Star Wars films in that way - if only there was a big enough market for it, this film could have spawned a range of figurines to rival the old Star Wars ones.

But it's not just the creature design and make-up - the whole frame of film never looks anything other than ravishing. It's so gorgeously realised and conceptualised. It's a strange mix of bright colour and dark shadow. I'm utterly defeated at the prospect of trying to describe my love of the imagery of this film. The only possible way to summarise that might be a slideshow of a selection of highlights, but that reel would be so lengthy, you might as well just watch the film.

Character-wise, I can accept that Prince Nuada and his sister Nuala are not the most fascinating ever to grace the screen. It's true that Nuada acts mainly as device, a character-level McGuffin, and perhaps there was an opportunity lost there. But would a more compelling villain have allowed this hang-out style immersion into the characters of our protagonists? There's a little soap opera going on here, focused around Hellboy's and Liz's fraught relationship, his struggle to emotionally come of age. The juxtaposition of Ron Perlman's obviously older, rugged identity with his mental adolescence mirrors the modern manchild phenomenon. The fact that Generation X has grown up in a world that hasn't forced adulthood onto it, and people have had to mature on their own merits, to highly variable results. I for one didn't grow up at all (assuming I have) until I was about 40, the age at which my own Dad had probably felt like a worried, beleaguered adult forever. I identify strongly with Hellboy's character - he's the manchild I still struggle with every day, but who I desperately need to avoid killing off altogether.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

In Del Toro's and Mike Mignola's world, Tooth Fairies are terrifying monsters. They feed on human flesh and they're only called Tooth Fairies because they love to eat bone and they start with the teeth. One hapless BPRD agent gets stripped like a Bond minion falling into Blofeld's piranha pool - down to the skull in seconds flat. This is the kind of thing that doesn't happen in the MCU.

Meanwhile, not sure I'd call it a great kill, but the Nature Elemental's death scene is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen - the strangely bittersweet mood enveloped in a rain of verdant, goopy green life-essence, raining down on the cityscape and turning everything to moss and grass and blossoms - glowing green in the darkness like all colours burst from the shadowy canvas of this film.