Hellboy II: The Golden Army Set Visit Report

By Kellvin Chavez on September 24, 2007

Thanks to Guillermo del Toro and the good folks over at Universal Pictures, I had the ultimate opportunity to go and visit the set of one of a few comic book movies that are due out next year, HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army picks up after the events of the first film – Hellboy and his fiery girlfriend Liz are trying to make a go of living together, but there’s a lot of tension. Aquatic Abe Sapien still lives in a water tank, but he has a new and updated breathing gear for when he’s walking around. And Agent Tom Manning, the liason for Hellboy and the team at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development is still trying to deal with Hellboy’s antics, where he is more and more being noticed and photographed.

What made this set visit special was that it was more like a personal set visit and we were the first to visit the set, when I say “WE” it’s because I wasn’t the only guy on the set.  This guy is also really cool with GDT and on this long week trip (Earlier I had gone to Belfast and Dublin, Ireland to visit another set, which I will talk about later this week or next) I consider him a good friend is Devin Faraci from Chud.com.  So this set visit was more like a shared exclusive.  

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is being shot in Budapest, Hungary and on day 78 of 125 we got to see some cool ass shit.  I mean how cool is to have breakfast and interview Ron Perlman while he was in costume…well half of his costume was on, his face wasn’t finished yet but he was with the suit and the horns and his dog Nigel, who was dying to have some bacon.  I felt like a 5 year-old kid opening my favorite gift under the Christmas tree.

I am just going to give you a short preview of what we saw and whom we spoke to.

The mini models we saw were:

• Troll Market
• Fairy House Building
• Angel of Death Lair
• Golden Army Chamber Coliseum

We where then taken to the backlot and saw a stylized take of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge, funny thing is there is Brooklyn and then you turn around and you see the country side of Budapest.  The Brooklyn Bridge scene is where you’ll a five story tall tree elemental battling Hellboy.

Kordia Studio for now has four sound stages and Hellboy II has taken all four them to use. A lot of the sets in the sound stages weren't finished.


In these sound stages we saw:

• The Golden Army Chamber.  YES I got to touch the golden egg.
• Angel of Death Lair.  We got to go in this lair as well.
• CREATURE EFFECT, SOLUTION STUDIOS and SPECTRAL MOTION, and yes I got to finally to meet Mike Elizalde.  Mike and I chatted a bit, he’s company created this cool creature called WINK.  Wink has a fight scene with Hellboy.
  

The one creature that we got to see and definitely stood out for Devin and I was this creature called TAD POLE VENDOR, we saw how the animatics worked cause it was half animatic and the other half was a real guy inside this costume, they had this big fellow called “Clive” show us how he gets into the suit and at one point I felt like I was in the CANTINA SCENE from Stars Wars.  I turned around and told Devin “I’m fucking geeked out right now” and he agreed. That creature alone was freaking incredible.  We took a picture with the Tod Pole Vendor but that was just for us.  Sorry folks.

We finally ended up making to this real cave to the TROLL MARKET set and man what a set!  I’ve been to a few set visits with impressive and enormous sets but this set was different, this Troll Market set felt like you were there.  It felt like this market had always been there, it had a sort of Arabian feel to it.  I mean we knew that they had used this real cave for the market but it was like “You guys did this?”  

We saw this huge meat grinder with bones and skulls next to it, TV sets, rats on wires, creatures, the map room and a whole lot of extras.  We were now in Guillermo del Toro’s world and it sure felt like it.  The scope of this film is huge, way bigger than the first film.  This is by far Guillermo’s biggest film.

As we were walking around the Troll Market I heard “CABRON” and sure enough it was the main man Guillermo del Toro.  "We sell everything in this market even Viagra" del Toro added. Devin and I spoke to Guillermo del Toro and meet Guillermo Navarro who is the Cinematographer for the film and won an Oscar for Pan’s Labyrinth.  It was kind of cool to watch those two in action as they spoke in Spanish on who the scene should be shot and then del Toro talks to everyone else in English, nice Latin feel there. Devin turned around to me and said, “You’re lucky you can understand this.”

We saw a few takes with Ron Perlman in action, don’t want to say what we say cause I don’t want to spoil it for you.  After a few takes with Ron Perlman, they were ready for the second set and it was here that Guillermo showed Devin and I some cool ass dailies that they had shot the week before.  The stuff we saw there was freaking cool and I was just at awe.

As the day ended we went back to the Four Seasons were we got to interview the cast members from the film.  This was cool cause the cast went out of their way to talk to us on their day off.

We spoke to:

• Selma Blair
• Doug Jones
• Luke Goss
• Ann Walton

We also did talk to Ron Perlman and of course Guillermo del Toro.

Del Toro was cool enough to meet us later that evening and show this terrific choreographed rough scene. I think del Toro said he got the Jackie Chan stunt people this time around.  Most of the stuff we saw was action stuff and it really looked great and that's without adding the CGI.  So I can't wait to see the final cut for the movie.  What a way to end the day.

Overall this set visit was one that I will truly never forget anytime soon.  I would like to thank Leigh, Doug, JP, Peggy all from Universal Pictures and of course Guillermo del Toro.

I will have more stuff especially the interviews in the coming weeks.

Source:Latino Review