Hellboy Animated: Sword Of Storms

I liked it. It's interesting how kid-friendly it is. There is mild cursing of the TV-PG variety, but it's clearly designed to be appropriate for young boys. It's not trying to be super adult and unwatchable by kids like the DC Universe Animated movies wound up being.

The tone reminds me most of the Lionsgate Marvel animated films from a few years ago, with a major exception. For some reason, in order to create "dramatic conflict", or whatever you want to call it, most of those Marvel cartoon movies made their versions of the famous heroes shockingly detestable and obnoxious. For some reason they thought it would help the brand if the viewer absolutely HATED Iron Man and Doctor Strange. Weird mindset if you ask me, but those movies also seemed to be aiming for 11 year old boys instead of adults. But I find Hellboy, Liz, and Abe as likable as they were in the first two movies. So it's way better.

Liz's animated design is crap however. She looks nothing like Selma Blair. I'd accuse the movie of cheaping out on the likeness rights, but Blair actually voices Liz, so that clearly isn't it. The design is just bad.

I like Hellboy squashing it with the Samurai ghosts at the end using reason. I think that's probably the thing all hauntings really need. M Night Shyamalan came to the same conclusion in "The Sixth Sense".

That breath of life kiss between Abe and Liz tells me we were perhaps shipping the wrong characters in the first two films. I laughed that it was actually a burp.

Lots of good and scary monsters and battles in the film. It was a lot of fun. ****.