Ultimate Avengers on DVD

I am a casual Avengers fan and have never read any of the Ultimate books yet. I watched this movie going in with no expectations other than who most of the characters would be.

Read on for the rest of the review.
Note: Contains spoilers

While I was passively entertained by this animated feature, disappointment best describes my post-viewing opinion.

Firstly, I was disappointed by the animation. It seemed sub-par to current offerings and really should have been much better considering it was a direct to dvd movie. This felt like it was just a regular saturday morning cartoon with no real style of its own with the exception of the main characters and even then the style didn’t push any boundaries or do anything spectacular. I expect more from animated features.

Secondly, I was disappointed by the lack of story for most of the heroes on the team. Half the team was unseen through most of the movie, in particular Thor who was asked to join at the beginning, said no and then was not seen again until the final fight. Ironman’s two scenes were rather lacking and felt rushed for such an important character. Being a casual Iron man fan I was extremely disappointed by that. Giant man and Wasp had some slightly better character development. We see Hank Pym as an arrogant scientist who lets his ego get in the way a lot and Wasp, his wife in maybe a not so healthy marriage that I’m sure they’ll probably go further into in the next movie. (Yes there is a sequel already being made.)

Lastly and most prominently, I was disappointed by the story. I found it severely lacking in some respects in addition to being a ripoff of the Justice League 3 parter that kicked off that series.

There were three main plots to the story:

• Captain America waking up decades after he disappeared and being forced into a leadership role that he is not sure he is ready for.
• Bruce Banner dealing with being the Hulk and attempting to use the Super Soldier Serum from Cap’s blood sample to control the Hulk.
• Aliens

Let me preface this by saying that I really enjoyed the Captain America plotline and his struggle to deal with being alive long after everyone and everything he’s known and being thrust into a leadership role in charge of a bunch of hot shot super powered civilians. Captain America was probably the only character I felt I could connect with.

I thought the Bruce Banner tie-in to Captain America was an interesting twist in his efforts to try and keep his consciousness awake and assert it over the Hulk’s while in his transformed state. As the story progressed we never saw Banner change until the end of the movie. They only mention the destruction he caused in the past and showed some of the devastated areas from when he went beserk as a helicopter flew over them.

I think the key part that ruined this movie for me was the fact that aliens were the main foil. I’m sure I’ve been partially spoiled by all the comic movies of late, but its incredibly hard to relate to a story where something as out of left field as aliens are involved particularly in the first episode. Considering the enormous cast of villains or terrorist groups they could have pulled from the Marvel universe to encounter, I find it difficult to understand why the writers chose to use the perception of an alien threat as the very first storyline. Not only that, but Justice League used a similar premise in their series premiere 3 parter. In the Justice League story though, the entire planet was overrun and was threatened to be destroyed. The aliens in the Avengers blew up a satellite and that was about it aside from stealing some top secret information. I did not feel the urgency for this team to be formed, nor did I feel the threat of the aliens. No motives or objectives were given for the alien activity.

After the aliens were summarily dealt with by an Avengers team that mostly formed minutes before and during the fight, the team had to deal with a rampaging Hulk. I thought dealing with the Hulk could have been a challenge enough by itself that it could have taken up much more of the movie and had more of a pivotal role in the plot of the movie. Instead we had aliens.

In the DVD, there was a teaser for the Ultimate Avengers II, in addition to the insert saying that an Iron Man and a Doctor Strange feature are also on the way in the next year.