SINGAPORE : Only half a year has gone by and we superpower-less plebeians have already been bombarded by superheroes who have kept our childhood fantasies well satisfied till now.

“Iron Man”, which marked the big screen comeback of Robert Downey Jr was Marvel’s runaway box office hit, quickly followed by “The Incredible Hulk” who didn’t leave a huge impression after barging onto the big screen, and then most recently, we saw Will Smith as “Hancock”, the unconventional superhero with an attitude and PR problem.

Now add to the already long list of superhero movies, “Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army”, the second instalment to the adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book series, which made its theatrical debut in 2004.

Once again, armed with his oversized hardened lava fist and his posse from the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, which include his sexy love interest, the pyrokinetic Liz (Selma Blair) and mind-reading sidekick Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) aka Fish Sticks, Hellboy (Ron Pearlman) is enlisted yet again to save the world from the clutches of evil.

This time round, his nemesis is the sword-wielding, European-accented rebel, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), who has broken an ancient truce between mankind and the realm of the fantastic.

It’s up to the cigar-smoking, kitten-loving Hellboy to ironically prevent all hell from breaking loose on earth, when the coveted pieces of a crown that controls the formidable golden mechanical army, fall into the wrong hands.

Like in many other superhero movies, the storyline is predictable from the start and I can’t help but feel that the episode being featured has been plucked out of no where, with no relation to the Hellboy saga.

Instead the storyline allows for more action-packed scenes with even more queer and fantastical creatures – from flesh eating tooth fairies to forest giants and trolls, amongst others. Some may say this is a marked improvement from the first instalment which effectively saw only three creatures make it to the big screen.

This brain child of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro should satisfy all Hellboy fans despite its similar feel to “Pan’s Labyrinth”, which del Toro also directed.

While effort was made to get the audience warmed up to the normal, ‘human’ side of the superheroes, such as when Hellboy and Abe drown their sorrows in beer and croon along to Barry Manilow, I personally found it difficult to relate to the red-skinned and larger than life, Hellboy.

I’d put my money on the more highly anticipated Batman sequel, “The Dark Knight”, which is set to open a week after “Hellboy 2”.

- CNA/os