As if I wasn’t already excited enough about that new “Hellboy” film

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army comes out in about two weeks, and even though some pretty cool promo materials have come out, the press folks ain’t stopping there. A kick-ass new trailer, an animated comic that serves as a prologue to the film, and a behind-the-scenes featurette have just popped up over on Apple’s site.

Plus, ShockTillYouDrop points to three more clips that have recently appeared online, including a hilarious clip featuring Johann Krauss, a ghostly new addition to Hellboy’s team voiced by The Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane.

And finally, CHUD’s Devin Faraci gave the film 8.5 out of 10 in his review, describing it as nothing less than the successor to Pan’s Labyrinth... dressed in spandex. He also goes on to say:

...the movie’s heart isn’t the rousing action (of which there is plenty), but the people at the center. Del Toro breaks the rules by making us wonder if the monsters may be right, but he doesn’t stop there - he takes these characters and makes them real in ways most blockbusters wouldn’t imagine. When offered a choice between saving the world and saving the life of a loved one, the answer seems obvious… in a movie. But del Toro doesn’t look at these characters as being in a movie, he looks at them as people. And imagine yourself in that position, choosing whether to save the Earth or save the person you love most in the world.

So, are the monsters right? I think it’s easy to see that Guillermo’s sympathies lie with them. Prince Nuada complains about humans taking their territory - an ancient truce gave the elves and fairies and goblins and their ilk the forests, while man got the cities - and putting shopping malls and parking lots there; while I think Guillermo laments the loss of nature to these monstrosities, what he’s really talking about is another piece of real estate: our imaginations. As one of the fantastical folk says to Hellboy, ‘We die, and the world is a poorer place.’ Guillermo del Toro has thrown his allegiance down with the things that go bump in the night, and he’s doing everything in his power to keep them alive another day.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army comes out July 11, 2008.