HELLBOY ANIMATED: SWORD OF STORMS (2006)

Hellboy, for those of you who haven’t seen it was a live action version of a comic book written by Mike Mignola. Released in 2004, Ron Perlman played the grown up version title character who, as an infant demon is summoned to the mortal world by some Nazis hoping that he will aid their cause to win the Second world war. Fortunately for the rest of the world, they never got to play at being daddy as the small red fella is rescued by the Americans who raise him with good honest family values. So, fast forward a few years and we find Hellboy is now part of an organisation, the ‘Bureau of Paranormal Research’ where, along with other specialist individuals (Abe, a walking fish man and a pyrokinetic girl called Liz) he goes out to smite the things that go bump in the night.
So now that we’re all caught up….in this film the story starts with a professor of folklore reading a forbidden scroll and then becoming possessed by the evil spirits of the Thunder and Lightning demons. These Japanese beasties are trying to take over the world and whilst doing so releasing their brothers – the Dragons. All in all this isn’t a good thing and so, when the bureau get wind of all this they decide to try to put a stop to it. However, when Hellboy gets his hands on the sword that the possessed professor is seeking (that traps the bodies of the two evil spirits) he is instantly teleported to a land of myths and legends where he must battle all kinds of monsters to find out what is going on and how to get home. With the disappearance of the big red dude, Liz and Abe set off to try to find out what’s happened to him. The story continues with all parties having their fair share of fights, be it with the undead or a particularly worm like dragon. Story wise there are no surprises and it plods along pretty much as you’d expect.

Unlike the first incarnation of the Hellboy screen adaptations, this film is purely animation, but some of the actors have returned to voice the characters. Unlike the hyper-sylish Amine presentations that I’ve been fortunate to watch over my time here at TFA, this is, for want of a better description, far more American. If you have seen any of the recent children’s cartoon series’ , like Batman, or Team Titans (no I’ve not watched them but I know of their existence (ok, maybe I have watched a few of the Batman episodes)) then you’ll know what I mean. All the animation is very clean, bright and quite stylised, nothing like the far superior look of the Japanese films, and I have to be honest, I’m not a fan. After watching the extras, however, I can understand why this had to be done.

I was never a fan of the first outing of this story. Don’t get me wrong, Ron Perlman was great as Hellboy, and having seen him in the roll I find it hard to imagine anyone else being able to fill those very large boots. Selma Blair I had more of an issue with as Liz, but maybe that was a personal thing as I’ve never really liked her as an actor. And here again, even though it was only their voices, Hellboy had to be played by Perlman, no one else would have done, but again, Liz could have really been played by anyone, Blair just wasn’t strong enough for me. So, as I said, I wasn’t a fan of the first film, and I’m afraid to say that I liked this one even less. It wasn’t that it was especially bad, it’s just that, as a whole, it didn’t do much for me. The story was OK, but predictable, the animation was disappointing and the acting was as good as can be expected, but again, nothing outstanding. I was really hoping that I was going to enjoy this as it has, in essence, all of the bits that, for me at least, make a good film. The some of the parts in this case, were less than the parts themselves.
Anchor Bay’s UK DVD offering contains the usual trailers for the fantastic Karas, the equally amazing Ghost in the Shell 2 and the GITS: Stand Alone Complex, and also for an Anime called Highlander that looks quite good, but I must confess I know nothing about. There is a second selectable menu option titled ‘Special Features’ which contains 9 things to keep you busy. They range from a 40 minute video taken from the San Diego Comicon, entitled ‘The Keepers of Hellboy’ to a selection called ‘To Hell and Back’ which is an interview with Mike Mignola and others about the creation of Hellboy. The ‘New Breed’ is another set of interviews that explain how the characters for the animation had to be reinvented due to a clause in the contract saying that they could not look like the original Mignola designs. There are 5 other selections, all of which help to flesh out the Hellboy world, and all, for a change, are worth watching. It’s a shame to say this but the DVD extras are better than the feature itself.