Fantasia: Guillermo del Toro and the Best Fantasy Films of the C21st

Here's something you don't see every day: a rootsy forest god who grows like bindweed on steroids to terrorise downtown Brooklyn, then collapses into an eerily beautiful floral mulch.

Or how about an elfin king whose twiggy antlers grow out of his head to suggest an organic crown? The Angel of Death is a blind old crone who unfurls her imperious black wings to reveal a sparkling set of eyeballs, and then there's the German, Johann Krauss, who's been reduced to a puff of smoke, but who has taken up occupancy in a modified Jules Verne era deep-sea diving suit.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army boasts a dazzling bestiary of imaginary beings, enough for half a dozen fantasy films, you might think, dominated by Hellboy himself, of course - a red-skinned giant with sideburns, a club fist, two shorn-off horns and a long, satanic tail.

The product of a fertile collaboration between comic strip artist Mike Mignola and writer-director Guillermo del Toro, the movie may not press as many buttons as The Dark Knight - or register the same kerching! At the box-office - but fans of the fantasy genre will be eager to see this underdog among all the over-hyped comic book movies, and when the dust settles, they may find they prefer it too.

Del Toro has an unusual background for a director - he came up via his makeup and effects company Necropia. Born in 1964, in Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised by his Catholic grandmother, Del Toro doesn't hesitate to identify himself as a film geek - at www.deltoro.com he lists more than 100 favourite dvds dvdshttp://www.deltorofilms.com/GDT_Favorites.php

His first feature production was Dona Herlinda and Her Son, a successful comedy that set the scene for the new wave of Mexican directors who would emerge to enjoy international success - among them, of course, Cuaron&field=search_directors">Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritua.

Del Toro's first film as writer director was Cronos (1992), a smart, inventive variation on the vampire movie that won the Critics' Week prize at Cannes, and led to a not entirely happy experience with Miramax on the subterranean bug movie, Mimic (1997). The pulpy Blade II (2002) was an improvement, but Del Toro's films outside the Hollywood system were far more adventurous: the Spanish horror allegory The Devil's Backbone (2001), and its even more imaginative successor, Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

The Hellboy movies may be less "artistic" than Del Toro's Spanish-language films (he quit Mexico after his father was kidnapped and held to ransom there), but they represent an equitable balance between his love for idiosyncrasy and more mainstream considerations. They also give him the budget to let his imagination run rampant. It's a place where he can let his hair down and have fun - not necessarily in the shooting (his predilection for "handmade, organic" creations over CG makes it a cumbersome process), but in the development process - and up on screen, where it counts.

That said, Hellboy II is a more personal film than you might expect. Del Toro plainly identifies with his somewhat immature superhero, not least, I suspect, in the competing pressures he feels towards his family, his job, and his need for personal glory. Like Pan's Labyrinth, it comes down to sacrifice: is anything more valuable to you than life itself?

Del Toro himself seems to be in his prime. There is a confidence about the new film that's a pleasure to see. Not that he means to take it easy. He's linked to half a dozen projects as a producer, and as you may have heard, he's signed up to direct not one, but two Hobbit films, to be made under the auspices of Peter Jackson at his New Zealand studio over the next four years. This represents a dream team collaboration for fantasy film fans, in fact many of us are wondering when we're going to wake up. Then again, if you're going to ask anyone to try to follow up The Lord Of The Rings, then you might as well go for the best...

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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