6. Hellboy
Blade II proved that del Toro could handle big-budget blockbuster movies - it made $155 million against a $55 million budget - and gave him the freedom to pursue his long-gestating dream project, adapting the comic book property Hellboy. After his two prior Hollywood works saw him compromised somewhere between his own artistic vision and Hollywood's natural excess, this is the first movie that made it clear that he
deserved to be let off the leash on his own with a huge budget, because when he does, he unearths some genuine gold (if the box office take might not quite agree). Smartly re-teaming with Ron Perlman to play the titular character, Hellboy is a perfect example of a comic book movie that doesn't take itself too seriously; it's full of cracking one-liners and visually impressive, large-scale set-pieces, even if it's also more lightly-plotted than, say, the Christopher Nolan Batman films. Thanks to firm characterisation alongside the thrills, this one managed to win over most critics, and demonstrated what a director can do with a property when they truly, from the bottom of their heart, give a damn about it. Sadly, it only reaped $99 million at the box office against a $66 million budget, yet this was somehow enough to warrant a sequel (which we'll get to in due course...)