Search - Ultimate Avengers - The Movie on DVD

A promising idea ruined by poor execution

Seteger | 02/28/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"
The Ultimates comic is an excellent revamp of the classic Marvel title. The Avengers was a favorite of mine throughout my childhood, but recently, with the popularity of the Justice League comic and cartoon, it was hard not to see the Avengers as a weaker JLA.

What the Ultimates comic did was resurrect the team with grittier, more cinematic, more realistic angles: Captain America as the tough-as-nails but assinine patriot, Iron Man as the frivolopus alcoholic, Thor as the possible schizophrenic merely pretending (perhaps) to be a Norse god, etc. It's interesting, it's dramatic, and the concept of creating a PG-13 version for a straight-to-DVD release is promising.

The promise goes unfulfilled. First of all, only the bare structure of the Ultimates is followed. I can accept that; it's an adaptation, after all. But what is most missing is what was most vital, and that's the gritty characterization. In the "Ultimate Avengers," Captain America is the same boring hero we've already seen a million times. Thor and Iron Man are themselves, no more and no less. We get no new insight in their lives, we see nothing new about them, and they do what generic Marvel characters seem to do best: punch people and get thrown around.

So what we get is the worst of both worlds. We get the generic characterizations of these Avengers, except without the comic book fantasy and flourishes that could possibly compensate. And then we get SOME realism, but without the full depths and subtleties that such realism requires to turn into actual drama. The result is a bland story filled with boring characters--when they're not being outright annoying, as is the case with Banner and Pym (why "annoying," and ONLY "annoying," passes as "realistic" to so many writers escapes me).

The art is ok, but not great. It's what you would expect from an Avengers TV cartoon, if they made one today for, say, Cartoon Network. The animation is ok, but not great; CG is used randomly, as has become the custom in most TV cartoons, and there are moments of "not bad" to moments of "oh my god, that's awful."

There was a time--when I was a teenager and when I was starved for comic book films and cartoons--when this movie might have appealed to me. Maybe there are 12-15 year olds who might get a kick out of it. But in an era of Justice League Unlimited, successful Spider-Man and X-Men and Batman movies, and even decent super-hero live-action TV shows like Smallville, this is no longer acceptable. They're going to pump these out now, probably twice a year, until the well runs dry. In the meantime, the results are uninspired.

In short: Don't buy this movie. At most, watch it on Cartoon Network when they show it one day (which is probably very soon, knowing their track record with straight-to-home-video movies)."

Marvel dips its toe into the direct-to-video market with the

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 03/18/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Ultimate Avengers" is an interesting combination of the new and improved 21st century version of the Avengers written by Mark Millar and penciled by Bryan Hitch, and a revitalization of the 1980s style of animation. Now, "The Avengers" was the one Golden Age Marvel comic book that never really impressed me growing up. I liked the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, so it was not a question of not liking superhero groups. But the roster of the Avengers went from one extreme to the other. They started out power heavy with Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk, and then went ultra light with Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Either way there was always a problem with coming up with super villains for the Avengers to fight, and only the Vision really captured my interest.

Then Millar and Hitch came up "The Ultimates," the Avengers counterpart for the Ultimate series Marvel came up with the rework its superheroes for the 21st century. On balance, I like the Ultimates more than the Avengers, even though the way they play off of the "real" Marvel Universe does not always work (e.g., Hank Pym having Hawkeye's personality, Thor's divine delusion). "Ultimate Avengers: The Movie," is a direct-to-video effort that covers the same group as the first Ultimate's storyline, "Super-Human," which had to do with the formation of the group and their first collective effort to bring down the Hulk. The idea is that Bruce Banner's days as the Hulk are behind him and he is in charge of the government's effort to update the super-solider formula that created Captain America way back when. In charge of the proceedings is General Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The story begins with the final mission of Captain America during World War II, but after that point all of the superheroes who make up the Ultimates already recognized as superheroes, albeit with one large exception. The Captain America thread is the best of the bunch, with Steve Rogers getting caught up on his life 57-years later and free from that annoying guilt over the death of Bucky Barnes, but the movie moves so quickly (it is only 70 minutes long) that there is no time to give depth to Rogers or any of the other characters. The key difference from the comic books is that in addition to having to deal with the Hulk, when he finally shows up, the Ultimate Avengers have to contend with aliens. These aliens were around at the end of World War II and have apparently waited for Earth to develop advanced weapons and superheroes before launching their attack. But the advantage with aliens is that there are a whole bunch of them, they do not spout corny super villain dialogue, and the Ultimate Avengers can wale on them big time.

If they had added another 20 or even 10 minutes to this "movie" and expanded the characterizations beyond the bare bones, the retro-animation style would certainly be more acceptable and perhaps almost endearing. But that complaint comes from my adult perspective and clearly Marvel is aiming this at a much younger audience. That makes it more of a recruitment effort as well as a first foray in the direct to video market. But that is not to say the older audience is ignored. You can turn on the Avengers Trivia Track, so you can access trivia about the characters and the world of the Avengers which watching the film. This covers not only information about the characters, but also the World War II, the production company, and what scenes are lifted from the comic book. "Avengers Assemble" looks at the history of the group from September 1963 when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Avengers, to the creation of the Ultimates by Millar. Showing up as talking heads are editor Tom Brevoort, artist George Perez, writer Kurt Busiek, and editor-in-chief Joe Quesada from "The Avengers."

There is also a first look at "Ultimate Avengers 2," so there will be more of the same in the future and you can make the argument that things have to improve. This 2006 effort turns the comic book into a cartoon, which in this case is not a good thing. The results are not really bad, they are just ultimately disappointing."