Laika pits stop-motion characters against each other in animated fight challenge video

Zoe Bell's Boss B*** Fight Challenge was just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Matched action combat has entered the world of stop-motion animation with a new video from Laika Studios — the film company behind Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link.

A high-jumping Boxtroll, a small army of plastic cows, a katana-wielding ronin made of silver, and a pair of sentient shoes are just a few of the characters that duke it out in a series of short, interconnected fight sequences. It's impressive when people do these viral fight challenge videos in live action, so just imagine how much time and effort went into making this one.

"No one ever said animating was safe," reads the Twitter caption, which asks fans to follow the studio on TikTok. Laika's page on the Vine-like app boasts a collection of behind-the-scenes videos.

In the most recent awards season, Missing Link won Best Animated Feature at the 77th Golden Globes, but lost out on the equivalent Oscar to Pixar's Toy Story 4. Despite receiving Academy Award nominations for all of its movies produced so far, Laika has yet to win an Oscar. Kubo racked up a second nod for Best Visual Effects, but lost to Jon Favreau's remake of The Jungle Book.

"The films that we’re developing now are really challenging for us as a studio, and really exciting for me personally, because I think they are so unique and so different, unlike anything that anyone else is doing or that we’ve done," Laika CEO Travis Knight (also director of Bumblebee) told Deadline earlier this year, teasing the company's upcoming projects. "At the same time, we’re recognizing how much the landscape across the industry has shifted, where it effectively isn’t just the theatrical experience any longer, with so many different avenues opening up, including streaming."