Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film, the Spanish fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, scored three Oscars (half of those it was nominated for), received honors from 15 separate critics groups and featured on at least 91 end-of-year top ten lists (or 94, if you count this year’s lists, too). But it didn’t quite make as much money as Del Toro’s movie before it. Actually, that movie, Hellboy, also ended up some top ten lists, but really it was just another well-made comic book movie. And by well-made, I mean that it looked great (shot by Pan’s Oscar-winning cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro) and was directed efficiently. I certainly don’t mean that the writing was all that remarkable. In fact, with all its generic ancient paranormal stuff, Hellboy’s plot was terribly derivative (I can do without the non-Indian Jones-based Nazi baddies for awhile, thanks) and even got confused in my memory with Bulletproof Monk, which was probably my least favorite film of 2003.

So, you can imagine I’m not all that excited about Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Yet thanks to this trailer, I’m a little more interested than I had been. Never mind the lack of Nazi bad guys, this trailer really wants to capitalize on the fact that it was directed by the guy who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth. First, we see a little insect-like creature that evokes the fairy/mosquito thing from Labyrinth. Then there’s a shot of Doug Jones (who also returns as Abe Sapien) as the Angel of Death, an eye-less character evoking Jones’ Labyrinth characters, Fauno and Pale Man, and a scene set in some Autumnally leafy place that closely resembles Labyrinth’s labyrinth. Yet the trailer also plays on this capitalization by addressing the fact that this world is not part of someone’s imagination (as in the case of Labyrinth’s Ofelia). Will Universal be able to combine the audiences of the comic book movies and foreign language films with this strategy? Well, Hellboy II isn’t going to be winning any Oscars, and it’s probably not going to gross more than the first Hellboy. But at least Del Toro (who has acknowledged the parallels between Labyrinth and Hellboy II) seems to be trying to respect his fans and appeal to the whole spectrum in which they exist. That isn’t something all filmmakers who fluctuate between highbrow and lowbrow fare are able to do successfully.