The Invincible Iron Man on DVD

Marvel has recently put out a number of straight-to-DVD animated features including the Ultimate Avengers and the Ultimate Avengers 2. The latest in this series is The Invincible Iron Man. It only makes sense for Marvel to choose Iron Man to get his own animated feature with a full length live action feature film currently in the works. While the Ultimate Avengers films were based on Marvel’s Ultimate universe canon, the Iron Man story is taken from traditional Marvel continuity updated so that it makes sense for audiences of today.

Read the rest of the review after the jump. No spoilers are in the review. Beware the comments, though.

While the animation of this feature still feels a bit off, the quality has improved vastly since the Avengers DVDs. The CGI blended much more smoothly with the animation, particularly with the different suits of armor and the elementals. The different suits of armor really leverage the CGI capability in the animation and doesnt look as out of place as it might have in a different animated film. The backgrounds and settings were very well crafted, while the actual characters were only slightly better animated than the other features already available.

The updated origin for Tony Stark creating and donning the armor was well done. It separated itself from any type of conflict currently taking place in the world, allowing it to remain timeless. The original backstory surrounded the Vietnam War, while this story centered around an archaeological excavation of the Mandarin’s temple. The Mandarin himself was also given a different backstory that flowed a bit better. Rather than being a villain of today finding some magical gems in an alien spacecraft, the Mandarin was actually the ruthless ruler over an ancient and violent dynasty in China. The elementals reawaken during the excavation and set about collecting all of the Mandarin’s rings in order to resurrect him. The strict fantasy of the Mandarin posed an excellent balance to the hard science fiction of Iron Man, himself.

Lin Mei is the most important character outside of the main characters. As a member of the Jade Dragons, she is doing everything she can to keep the excavation from continuing in order to keep the Mandarin from being ressurected. Once she sees Tony Stark don the Iron Man armor for the first time, she is troubled. This character was well developed by the writer, but its a little difficult to understand or relate to her reasoning toward the end of the movie.

Overall, I left with a much better feeling about these animated features than when I had after watching each of the Avengers films. After I watched the Ultimate Avengers 2 DVD, one of the special features on the Ultimates book it was based on, I was curious enough to actually read the original material. After I read said material, I felt the animation feature cheated and robbed the viewer of the potential of the source material. That being said, I have no such feelings after having watched the Iron Man feature.