Hellboy II: The Golden Army/Hellboy II - Les légions d'or maudites/Hellboy II - L'armée d'or

Hellboy II: The Legions of Cursed Gold/Hellboy II - The Gold Army

Me is BIG fan of Hellboy. This dates back from before it was fashionable to like Guillermo Del Toro (I had an obsession with Mimic and Jeremy Northam back in the days).

It is very silly, but a big red ugly superhero who likes cigars and cats and acts like a teenager gets my vote.

Hellboy II, the sequel is definitely a "post" Pan's Labyrinth film, with the same character aesthetic. (Note the evolution between the simple insect like creatures in Mimic and the definitely more complex creatures in Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II, although Hellboy and Abe Sapiens were an indication of good things to come).

Hellboy, nicknamed Red, is a creature who was found in Scotland during WWII and is now part of a secret organisation that fights the weird (a bit like X-Files?) and is still a big kid at heart. He now has a girlfriend (Liz - Selma Blair) who can set things on fire.
After years of undercover work, Red decides to go public. After that, he has to go and fight "the Golden Army", an army of golden robots that his father had told him about in a fairytale when he was little. The army is also known as the Avengers of Death.
There's a weird looking princess and her twin brother who is eviiiil and lots of more or less lovable monsters.

And it's all very pleasing to the eyes (There's a scene in the Goblin Market that looks a bit like Star Wars, but funnier), monsters galore and lots of fights with good one-liners.

So the original title is sort of a Rule 1 example: there's a little explanation of what the film is about. But actually, not really. The Golden Army could be Hellboy's mates (well, they're not but they could have been).

The French title, Les légions d'or maudites (The Legions of Cursed Gold) "reveals" that the legion (why legion and not army? There's a word for that) is made of "cursed" gold. Wot? It's not like it was stolen from an Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb or something. Didn't hear anything about the army being cursed (but as always, assume I wasn't paying enough attention and that I missed that detail - or that it was the French translators altogether who snoozed through the whole film and decided to curse the gold the soldiers were made of...).

The French Canadian title, once again, gets very close to a gold star but still not quite. It's L'armée d'or, The Gold Army.

There is a word for golden and it's doré. And why both titles refuse to use it is a mystery to me...