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| Saturday, April 21, 2007 11:48 AM |
| The Cavalcade of Reviews Continues... |
 by Fëanor |
Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms - I'm one of those crazy people who didn't really like the Hellboy live action film all that much. It was just a corny, ho-hum, every day action adventure movie, with all the same cliche plot points and melodramatic lines and lousy character stereotypes. I was hugely disappointed. I do love the Hellboy comic, however, and the whole concept of a demon creature and a paranormal investigative force fighting for good against evil monsters and spirits. So I was excited when I heard about these animated Hellboy movies, which have the cast of the live action movie doing the voices, and comic creator Mike Mignola involved in the writing of the story. I saw part of this one on Cartoon Network a while back and thought it looked okay. Then Yagathai was nice enough to lend me his copy and I got to watch the whole thing.
And I have to say, I was really impressed. This is a really good movie! It's clever, it's funny, the art is very cool, the story is interesting, the characters are entertaining, and the dialogue is smart and humorous. The basic idea is that ages and ages ago a samurai defeated two evil storm gods and trapped their spirits in a magic sword. But a noted Japanese researcher digs up a magic scroll that tells the whole story, and the scroll happens to be imbued with some of the power of the storm gods. They possess him, and he goes to try and get the sword and release them fully upon the world. Hellboy investigates, and ends up getting sucked, along with the sword, into a weird parallel universe of Japanese folk tales, monsters, and myths.
Meanwhile, Hellboy's colleagues in the real world are trying to find the possessed researcher, and help fend off the attacks of the storm gods' slowly awakening brothers - giant dragons who slumber beneath the earth all over the world.
The best part of the film is definitely Hellboy's adventures through Japanese myth-land. I don't have a lot of familiarity with Japanese folklore, but his various encounters with various different monsters and ghosts have the wonderful feel of real ancient fairy tales, proceeding according to their own fascinating set of magic rules.
The weak part of the film is the subplot involving Abe Sapien and firestarter girl Liz. They end up trapped on a rock in the middle of the ocean, facing off against an undersea dragon. The battle consists of Abe getting caught or running away while Liz keeps trying to burn the thing, and it keeps not getting burned. It's just kind of boring and repetitive.
That being said, the rest of the movie is really quite excellent, and I highly recommend it. They've already made another movie in the Hellboy Animated series called Blood and Iron that I definitely want to see now, and I see yet another film listed on IMDB for 2008 called The Phantom Claw, so I'll have to keep an eye out for that one, too. |
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